The stage is a picture-perfect English garden, all pastel foxgloves and iced-cake fences. Yet within minutes George Bernard Shaw’s anarchic spirit starts slicing through the prettiness. Director Dominic Cooke delivers the play in a single breath, about one hour forty minutes, stripping away interval niceties so the ideas land before they cool and your bladder […]
A heavy desk, rows of well thumbed Hansard volumes and the tell tale scent of pipe smoke set the scene of this 1970s political play. Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky unravel their ninety minute political comedy drama The Gang of Three with disarming ease, inviting you to eavesdrop on a trio of Labour heavyweights who […]
‘Faygele’ is Yiddish for ‘little bird’, though it’s more often hurled as a slur against gay men. Shimmy Braun’s script, drawn from personal experience, carves out a bold narrative within the American Orthodox Jewish community – a world rarely seen on stage, and even more rarely with this kind of candour and specificity. Walk into […]
Lindsay Posner’s revival of Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea has journeyed from a small studio in Bath to the grand Theatre Royal Haymarket, proving once again that the quietest tragedies can command the biggest rooms. From the first moment, as you see the apparent corpse and anticipate its discoverers, a faint smell of gas […]
A Not-So-Secret Spy Caper (Plot Synopsis) It’s London in the swinging 1960s, and a not-so-secret mission is underway. In a swanky hotel straight out of a Bond film, covert agents from the CIA and KGB have converged in pursuit of a rogue British agent and a stolen top-secret file . Add to this mix an […]
You shuffle into Southwark Playhouse clutching a free sheet called Retro while a marshal in high visibility orange bellows spoof announcements through a megaphone. Inside the auditorium a battered Piccadilly Line carriage awaits complete with sticky blue seats, route maps and the faint whiff of stale sock thanks to the first passenger who proudly whips […]
Imagine an old farmhouse in County Sligo where family resentments simmer beside rumours of miracles. That is the spine of The Brightening Air, Conor McPherson’s first new play in more than a decade, now filling the Old Vic with dread and the tang of peat smoke. You sit down expecting domestic comedy; two hours later […]
There’s something a little odd about sitting in a West End theatre, surrounded by the hum of anticipation, and realising you’re about to watch a play called Unicorn. Not a musical, not a revival, just a straight-up new play about sex, marriage, and the sort of midlife malaise that’s probably more common than people admit. I […]
This was easily my favourite new show of 2023 when it first appeared at the Southwark Playhouse. 18 months later, with a slightly tightened script and a new cast, the Curious Case of Benjamin Button at the Ambassador’s Theatre is going to be the big hit of 2025. It asks: what if life came with […]
Nick Hyde’s “Double Act” at Southwark Playhouse is a darkly comedic exploration of a man’s internal struggle, brought to life through a unique two-hander performance. The play delves into the complexities of mental health, using the dynamic of a classic comedy duo to personify the protagonist’s conflicting thoughts. The premise is deceptively simple: a young […]