Partially Obstructed View

Theatre review: Dark of the Moon

2026-06-16T23:17:00.000+01:00

Look, none of us are perfect, I never said I always choose which shows to see for the purest of reasons, and whomst amongst us can say they've never slowed down to look at a car crash? When I saw Stranger Things: The First Shadow a couple of years ago I assumed that the subplot about the high school kids putting on an unbelievably cheesy school play featured a deliberate parody of Twilight, all angsty teenage love between human and supernatural characters. When Dark of the Moon turned out to be a real Broadway show from 1945, which genuinely did become a school drama staple in the next couple of decades, I predicted it wouldn't be long before someone revived the real thing as a curiosity. I was expecting Howard D Richardson and William Berney's actual original play to resurface in some small scale, but instead we get a full-blown new musical.

Jonathan Prince (book,) Lindy Robbins, Dave Bassett & Steve Robson's (music and lyrics) show takes us to an Appalachian mining town where the humans wear denim and sing bluegrass, while in the mountains invisible witches wear laddered tights and fur bikinis and sing rock.

They are led by Josie Benson's Conjure Woman and Gary Turner's Conjure Man - essentially Ursula the Sea Witch and the Count from What We Do In The Shadows, respectively. When John the Witch Boy (Glenn Adamson) falls for a human girl, he asks to be turned human so he can be with her. The Conjure Woman is the only one who can turn him human. The Conjure Woman really does not want him to become human. At no point does it occur to the Conjure Woman that she could just... not turn him human, so she does, but with Terms and Conditions of the mwahahahaha variety.

So John becomes visible to humans and takes on the persona of a guitar douchebag student who carries a guitar with him everywhere so he can never play it. This inevitably makes Barbara Allen (Lauren Jones) fall for him, but the bargain he's struck says he'll gradually turn human over a year unless one of them cheats on the other in that time. If that happens John will turn into a Witch Boy again while Barbara Allen (everyone always calls Barbara Allen by her full name, including to Barbara Allen's face, like Tracy Jordan to Liz Lemon) will die.

Georgie Rankcom's production could definitely have played this tongue-in-cheek, and I could almost admire it for trying to take the thing seriously, if the end result wasn't just us laughing at the show instead of with it. In part this is because at every turn the story chooses the most hilariously banal option available to it, not least of all the fact that the mystical Witch Boy is called... John. He proposes to Barbara Allen over potato salad, and The Conjure Woman decides to stop the marriage because when humans marry they invariably stay faithful forever.

She hatches a plan to sabotage the couple by doing... absolutely nothing as far as I can tell.

What the chorus of witches does do is regularly turn up on the roofs of Libby Todd's set to sneer at Witch Boy, crawling out of the windows to cackle at him then awkwardly trying to crawl backwards into them again. They taunt him by calling him "Witch Boy" which (a) yes he is a Witch Boy, this is the main thing that's been established about him, (b) they are all also witches and (c) everyone they know is also a witch so they really shouldn't find this so hilarious, it'd be like the humans taking the piss out of Barbara Allen for being human.

What the humans actually take the piss out of Barbara Allen for is being a slut. No, no, there will be no need for any backstory to this. The most subversive thing she seems to have ever done sexually is not wanting to have sex with Marvin (Samuel Murray,) to whom she's been promised since birth like a mediaeval princess. John attacking Marvin with a bolt of lightning is what finally alerts the town to his otherness, the fact that he's been constantly openly using his residual witch magic in front of them not having tipped them off before.

Not all the jokes are unintended, but the unintended ones are the only ones that land - if you ever want to know true silence, check out the audience after the Preacher (Martin Callaghan) does one of the running gags where he slightly paraphrases a bible verse. The cast properly throw themselves into all this, with Jones the one who truly transcends the material, giving a vocal and emotional performance that really stands out. But if I went into this with the slightly cynical idea that it might be the right kind of bad (and who knows, maybe the hope it might actually be good,) I did get the car crash I was there for.

In the end John the Witch Boy learns the moral that while the witches have always claimed to understand love, actually they don't. Which is weird, because all through the show the witches have been bragging that they don't understand love because human emotions are beneath them, but actually it turns out John isn't the first and they keep falling for mortals. So technically the moral is the complete opposite of that.

Dark of the Moon by Jonathan Prince, Lindy Robbins, Dave Bassett & Steve Robson, based on a play by Howard D Richardson and William Berney, is booking until the 8th of August at the Charing Cross Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Tom Bowles.

Theatre review: Equus

2026-06-13T23:13:00.000+01:00

30 years after graduating I still feel compelled to see the four plays I worked on in my directing module at university, whenever I hear of one being revived somewhere I can get to. Now on the fourth production of it I've seen, Equus easily has the top spot of most regularly revived. I'd originally planned to make a Peter Shaffer-themed weekend of it last week, but when the Sunday performance at the Menier was cancelled I had to reschedule - I guess two Saturdays in a row is still a themed season of a kind. Last week Black Comedy was very much a throwback to the 1960s, and Equus is very much rooted in the 1970s both in its references and in the countercultural R.D. Laing psychiatric theories that inspired it, so why does it seem to hold up better? Lindsay Posner's production certainly keeps the original setting, from the otherwise long-forgotten advertising jingles to the child psychiatrist smoking in sessions with his patient.

Toby Stephens plays Dr Martin Dysart, who takes on the case of 17-year-old Alan Strang (Noah Valentine,) a previously unpreposessing boy who, seemingly out of nowhere, blinded six horses at the stables where he worked. As Dysart uses various techniques to get to the truth, he starts to wonder if "curing" the boy is to actually deprive him of a primal connection the psychiatrist himself wishes he could access.

I try to approach each version of a familiar play afresh, but I was very aware that I'd left Ned Bennett's 2019 production feeling as if I'd seen the play with new eyes, and that this one would have a lot to do to match that. It doesn't - in many ways it feels like a pretty standard retelling of the story, although it definitely does have an angle that it focuses on. It doesn't quite resurrect the onstage seating from the original production that Shaffer was so enamoured by, but with Paul Farnsworth's thrust stage with benches as the only furniture, and most of the cast spending their offstage time sitting among the audience, there's certainly more than a nod to the conceit.

Where it does feel like there's been a specific focus is the homoeroticism in the story. I heard one audience member during the interval complaining that the overt homoeroticism had been tacked on, which I definitely don't agree with: Even on the page, it's a gay writer telling a story about a young man who can't perform sexually with a woman because he's being watched by the object of his worship, played by a group of half-naked male ballet dancers, clearly nothing queer about that.

Still, it has been heightened here. For better or worse, one of the things Equus is best known for is its extendedFULL FRONTAL MALE NUDITY ALERT!at the climax, but Posner goes against the text and has Valentine strip off not once but twice. (Shaffer specified that at the end of the first act Alan doesn't get fully naked but does at the end of the second, to show that the latter time is when he fully commits to "abreacting" his experience.) As he's riding the shoulders of the actor playing the horse Nugget, there may have been the practical issue there as well of the actors having to make so much intimate contact - something that only really occured to me watching this version where Valentine spends the scene with his genitals resting on the back of Ed Mitchell's neck, Intimacy Coordinator Clare Foster really earning her paycheck here.

By contrast in the final violent scene Alan and Jill (Bella Aubin) stay clothed for their unsuccessful sexual encounter, Valentine only getting naked again when he confronts the men playing the horses he worships. Mitchell and the other five dancers (Luke Hodkinson, Aristide Lyons, Zach Parkin, Tommi Sutton and Moses Ward) are a strong physical presence throughout the play, often joining together to form one giant horse-god, and again James Cousins' movement direction doesn't hold back on the skin-on-skin contact.

The other thing that I found notable about the production was that Colin Mace and Emma Cunniffe as Frank and Dora Strang really do seem like the much older parents that they're described as, which I don't remember coming across as strongly before. They're out of their depth dealing with a teenager but this also explains at least some part of why Alan grew up quite so otherworldly and detached from his peers.

The downside of focusing so strongly on the homoeroticism and physicality of the story is that the part where it bleeds into a twisted sense of religion isn't as much under the spotlight, and Stephens' Dysart isn't distinct enough in his own mental breakdown to make us see how this is important. It means that, where I always read the psychiatrist as being the central character on the page, this production takes us back to Alan at the heart of the story, and Valentine does give us nuance as the teenager starts to reveal himself psychologically as well as physically.

Equus by Peter Shaffer is booking until the 4th of July at the Menier Chocolate Factory, then from the 14th to the 25of of July at the Theatre Royal Bath.

Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.

Theatre review: Police Cops - The Original and BADASS Be Thy Name

2026-06-12T23:12:00.000+01:00

Although there's no sign of The Musical making a return any time soon, the three original, lo-fi comedy shows from Zachary Hunt, Nathan Parkinson and Tom Roe aka Police Cops continue to resurface every so often. I've previously caught Police Cops in Space, and now marking their 10th anniversary as a comedy troupe, the three shows have all been playing in rotation. This includes a London residency at Soho Theatre (the one that's actually in Soho,) where I caught the two I hadn't seen before. First up The Original, which was the story they later adapted into The Musical: A 1980s-set American cop show parody in which Hunt's rookie Jimmy Johnson teams up with Roe's grizzled old cop Harrison to take down Parkinson's Fernandez, a Mexican criminal who's sometimes Police Chief Molloy. And also sometimes a cat.

Then their 2019 show BADASS Be Thy Name, a tribute to the 1990s Madchester dance scene, in which Roe's Tommy wants to ditch his dead-end job to put on a bucket hat and take drugs at the Hacienda, but instead ends up becoming a trainee vampire slayer to Parkinson's Father Badass (His drink of choice? Bourbon. His biscuit of choice? Bourbon.) They have to foil a plan by the vampires to bring the actual Devil (Hunt) to Earth at the turn of the Millenium, when he intends to eat all the sweets.

As usual there's little point trying to actually nail down what works about the team's chaotic mix of scripted and improvised comedy - The Original was tonight plagued by mishaps, most but not all caused by Roe's faulty microphone, but since so much of it involves ad-libs and the cast trying to make each other corpse the mistakes hardly detracted from anything. As for BADASS, highlights include the cast's constant references to incredibly specific '90s TV moments, the Devil's big musical number about sweets, the way Roe and Parkinson make Hunt's head explode, and an action figure-based chase sequence. There's not quite the partial nudity from Roe that I would normally expect, but there is the character of Mr Bum-Bum Man, who speaks out of Hunt's arse cheeks, and which in an intimate space is the kind of view people normally charge extra for on Onlyfans. Obviously this is recommended wherever they pop up next; I've now completed the set but given how much of it is constantly rejigged or outright made up on the spot I wouldn't rule out return visits to any of their shows when they inevitably come back to London.

Police Cops - The Original and BADASS Be Thy Name by Zachary Hunt, Nathan Parkinson and Tom Roe continue to tour and are available to stream.

Running time: 50 mins straight through / 1 hour straight through.

Theatre review: Under the Shadow

2026-06-11T23:21:00.000+01:00

While I'm generally happy to trust in Rupert Goold's judgement and have been booking every show in his final Almeida season, the announcement that the latest was an adaptation of an Iranian film about the 1980s Iran-Iraq War seemed like it might be a hard sell to get any of my friends to join me, so I only bought a ticket for myself. Maybe if I'd realised it was based on a horror film I might have got an extra seat, as there's a couple of people that Under the Shadow would have appealed to. Set in 1988 Tehran, Carmen Nasr's adaptation of Babak Anvari's film could of course be using supernatural horrors as a metaphor for war and carnage in general, but in fact the story being told here is much more specific to the time, the place, and particularly the experience of women whose rights have recently been curtailed, perhaps more than some yet realise.

Shideh (Leila Farzad) is married to a doctor, and was planning to become one herself, but paused her studies when she had her daughter Dorsa (Esma Akar, Atlanta Chaniac Golding or Erin Jemmotte.)

By the time she tries to return to medical school she finds out that, thanks to some left-leaning political activity during the revolution (the details of exactly what she did that offended the regime even she isn't privy to) she's been placed on a blacklist. We join the story as she gets news that she's highly unlikely ever to be allowed to return to medical school and become a doctor. Shideh can't accept her husband Iraj's (Nicholas Karimi) opinion that she should lean into her new future as a housewife and mother, let alone that they should move from Tehran back to his family to escape the bombing.

The air raids are the play's method of slowly introducing the other residents of the apartment block, with whom they have to share the basement when the sirens go off: The drily sardonic Mrs Fakur (Souad Faress) is a highlight and frequent visitor to their flat, while upstairs Pargol (Transphobia Ltd Employee Nadia Albina) cares for her ailing father Mr Bijari (Bijan Daneshmand.)

Meanwhile the landlords (Mona Goodwin and Rachid Sabitri) have recently taken in their orphaned nephew Mehdi (Jago Agrawal, Rohan Berry or Adi Gimziunas,) who provides the first seeds of something creepier: Seemingly mute since his parents' death in front of him, he's apparently been whispering in Dorsa's ear with stories and warnings about evil djinn that are coming for her from above. After Iraj is called to the front and a missile hits the building, killing Mr Bijari, these shadows appear to have started literally haunting the flat.

This is definitely a slow build that doesn't even get its first jump-scare in until just before the interval, but the work Nadia Latif's production has put into building the scene and the characters pays off, keeping us interested in the story and invested in them getting out of danger - both the human and supernatural kind. Once the djinn do start to appear Khadija Raza's costumes give them a suitably eerie look, Ben Stones' set gives them plenty of nooks and crannies to appear out of, and Scott Penrose's illusions help complete the creepy effect.

It still won't end up ranking as the scariest in the recent batch of stage frighteners, a psychological horror that definitely leans more on the psychological side of that description than the horror. It's effective at what it does though, holding the attention in its gradually encroaching dread, and making clear the connection in the heart of the story with a woman feeling like she's losing everything, and having trouble holding onto what she has left.

Under the Shadow by Carmen Nasr, based on the film by Babak Anvari, is booking until the 4th of July at the Almeida Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.

Theatre review: Are You Watching?

2026-06-09T22:09:00.000+01:00

The Royal Court Upstairs seems to be making a new specialist subject out of hardcore prawn of the most disturbing and misogynistic kind, as six months after Prawn Play the venue takes another - different, angrier and more scattergun but no less memorable - stab at the genre in Georgie Dettmer's debut play Are You Watching Question Mark. Jess Edwards' production takes place on a tiled traverse set by Georgia Wilmot, at one end of which are bunk beds with colourful bedding. The childlike setting is at odds with the actual, unnamed teenage girls (Kosar Ali and Abby McCann) we meet there, whose sleepover chat revolves around one-upping each other in the most disturbing thing they've seen online. Inevitably this involves a lot of violent prawn, and the particular focus becomes a series of videos Ali's character has seen.

These are based on the notorious recent real-life case of a French woman drugged and assaulted by her husband and multiple strangers, but along with the horror the girl mixes in some glee at the grisly story this provides her to entertain her friend with.

We will eventually get to a twist in quite why she's so keen to share these videos with her friend, but in between these conversations the girls also serve as audience for the fragments performed by the rest of the cast: These include a Journalist (Maimuna Memon) taking part in a clinical trial about women's reactions to extreme prawn, that she will find to be more invasive than she expected, in more senses than one.

Memon also plays a woman who's convinced her boyfriend (Billy Bolt) to film them acting out an intruder fantasy that includes a real hammer; he seems to have put more thought into keeping the role-play safe than she has. Lucy McCormick plays the mother of a missing teenager whose police handlers (Memon and Bolt) seem more concerned with how to sell her daughter's image to the public than actually finding her; as well as a Hollywood star whose nudes have leaked and been used to create increasingly disturbing deepfake videos, and who can't seem to convince her agent (Nicholas Rowe) of quite how violated she feels by them.

And finally deepfakes appear in an even more disturbing context when a son (Bolt) finds out about the AI images his father (Rowe) has been creating on his laptop. With the exception of the story about the missing girl - which takes a turn into a very different area which I really thought could have been a play in its own right and I'd have liked to have seen explored more - these fragments work well on their own and as a loosely connected tapestry. If there's a running theme beyond sheer rage and frustration it's in how having this imagery so accessible can desensitise us not only to the violence itself, but also to the fact that those close to us might be much more deeply emotionally scarred than we first realise.

All the screens the characters look at are mercifully blank, although XANA's sound design is disturbing enough that the production's trigger warnings feel the need to assure us the soundtrack isn't real. As an exploration of the place violent fantasy has in the modern world and particularly for women Are You Watching? has a broad sweep - not all of it critical, as the thread of the young couple with the hammer, which is hinted to be connected to one of the horrific videos the journalist sees, actually ends up with a lovely time had by all, suggesting that there is a place for exploring this in a healthy way. It's certainly a blunt instrument of a first play but an often effective one.

Are You Watching? by Georgie Dettmer is booking until the 4th of July at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Upstairs (returns and day tickets only.)

Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Madeleine Penfold.

Theatre review: Black Comedy

2026-06-06T17:34:00.000+01:00

1960s British farces rarely get revived these days, generally because they're built on attitudes and situations that haven't exactly aged well (with the exception of What The Butler Saw, which gets away with it because how horrible those attitudes and situations are is basically the whole point.) But back when I was in school our drama club did a scene from Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy so - about as long after that performance as it was from the play's 1965 debut - I gave the Orange Tree's revival a chance in what I had originally planned to be a weekend of Shaffer, pairing it with his more famous Equus. This is a much less violent affair, other than in the slapstick sense: The high concept is that the play begins in what the audience sees as complete darkness, but in which the characters can see perfectly well.

Impoverished sculptor Brindsley (Joe Bannister) and his fiancée Carol (Leah Haile) are preparing for a visit from millionaire art collector Georg Bamberger (Javier Marzan,) who might become his patron if he likes the work. To impress him they've "borrowed" neighbour Harold's antique furniture without his knowledge.

But just as they're preparing there's a blackout in the story, which in the play's conceit means the lights go up and the audience can see everything while the characters stumble blindly. With Harold (Simon Manyonda) returning unexpectedly early, the young couple have to sneak all his furniture into the neighbouring flat in the dark. Complicating matters are Carol's demanding father Colonel Melkett (Jason Barnett,) nervous, teetotal neighbour Miss Furnival (Julia Hills,) who keeps "accidentally" downing alcoholic drinks in the dark, and electrician Schuppanzigh (Chris Chilton,) whose voice is indistinguishable from Bamberger's.

The play doesn't suffer as badly as it might from the cultural changes of the last 61 years, although this seems to be largely because Caroline Steinbeis' production has smoothed out the more offensive stuff - certainly Manyonda's performance doesn't give away the fact that Harold is written as a big old camp gay stereotype (why yes this is the part I played at school, why do you ask?)

Unfortunately little else seems to have travelled into the 21st century either, particularly the jokes, which struggle to raise much of a smile. Granted, a lot of the laughs here come from the absurd physical comedy of characters flailing in the dark, but as Simon Daw's set has put a scaffolding tower leading to the upstairs bedroom in front of what is usually an unobstructed view, I didn't always catch what the cast were doing until a few seconds after everyone else, and had to rely on other audience members' laughter to figure out that anything had happened at all.

Patricia Allison is a reliably entertaining addition when she arrives, late on in the play, as Brindsley's ex-girlfriend (although he doesn't seem to have told her that) Clea, and with the target now being the philandering young man we get some fun moments as she casually announces a whole list of bedroom kinks to the unseen assembled party. It's mercifully short at least, but as I suspected it hasn't aged well - just not in quite the ways I was expecting.

Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer is booking until the 11th of July at the Orange Tree Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Sam Taylor.

Theatre review: Redcliffe

2026-06-04T22:37:00.000+01:00

Musical theatre performers sometimes turn their hand to writing for the genre, and this is not the first time I've seen one of the resulting shows staged, but it's got to be the most accomplished debut I've caught. Jordan Luke Gage has been lucky enough to perform in a few outstanding musicals and Redcliffe, which he's written book, music and lyrics for as well as starring in, proves he's been paying close attention. Set across 1752-1753 in the titular area of Bristol, William Critchard (Gage) returns home for Christmas from his job as a footman at a rural mansion. He hasn't yet told his family that the return is more permanent than a seasonal holiday, as he's been let go on vague grounds of "not being quite right." Inevitably this boils down to him being quite an effete, bookish young man who's never really fit in, and whose mother (Rebecca Lock) is still hoping might meet the right girl soon.

Instead William meets Richard Arnold (Daniel Krikler,) a sailor on shore leave until Boxing Day, who invites him to a dance soirée where they might meet girls. But it's obvious from the start that it's each other they're most interested in flirting with.

Paul Foster's production keeps things simple and lets the story tell itself on Andrew Exeter's wooden platform set, that evokes the docks with packing crates that get used as furniture, and is overhung by a wooden frame bearing the two men's names, and the location and dates the (true) events took place. It means the 18th century setting (which Martin Hanly's costumes suggest in a slightly off-kilter, dreamlike way) is always in the audience's eyeline. Along with early references to two men in a nearby town recently hanged for sodomy, it's a constant reminder that this is a time when Richard and William's relationship is a dangerous one.

But Gage and Krikler have incredible chemistry together so it's easy to see how they might risk it, and in the first act especially Gage as writer is interested in really pursuing the joy and excitement of their relationship. So we get a fun, slightly combative and modern flirtation as the educated Richard and self-taught William compete over who knows the most trivia, before the pair give in to their mutual attraction.

Inevitably the second act goes to a much darker place, as what the local pub landlord (Adrian Hansel) thinks he saw in a cave during a storm becomes if not quite a witch-hunt, then something very close to it, and shows how little it takes for the town's moral outrage and disgust to turn them on one of their own. There's a great supporting turn from Jess Douglas-Welsh as William's sister Abigail, who despite the family scandal meaning her own engagement to Arthur (Joseph Peacock) gets called off starts to question what's so bad about what her brother's done; and little glimmers of hope in characters like Georgie (Melissa Jacques,) who secretly helps out the beleaguered family.

Throughout the show holds onto the sense of humour that largely defined the first act - Gage gives a lot of the best lines to the mother, and as was the case ever since her Avenue Q days Lock continues to be stronger at the comedy side of things than the drama, but pretty much everyone in the ensemble gets their moment to shine, both vocally and comically. There's also a few knowing nods to the genre itself (“We don’t need a reprise.”)

Phill is hardly the most restrained of my regular theatre companions at the best of times but I don't think I've ever seen him quite as effusive after a show than after Redcliffe, in fact pointing out how many of my regular gripes about theatre the show avoided: There's the aforementioned changes in tone that stop the evening from becoming monotonous once events take a darker turn, and the book is tightly plotted, even providing a minor twist at the end that's been properly seeded throughout, and among the most impressive elements is the way this manages to make an uplifting ending out of something that you'd expect to leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Musically it's tuneful and memorable, not particularly groundbreaking and taking some inspiration from Pasek and Paul in particular - just about the biggest criticism I can make of the show is that "A Million Things I Know" is a bit too obviously derivative of "First Date/Last Night" from Dogfight. But there's also a rousing romantic duet in "Never Getting Rid of Me" along with a few subtler riffs on other songs, plus an incredibly dark but boisterous number from the local newspaper magnate (Steven Serlin) and the ensemble in praise of the hangman, which has a direct line to present-day media choosing violence and hatred for engagement.

It's great timing that the team have managed to get this into Southwark Playhouse for Pride month as it's a perfect distillation of what that means - a combination of respectful memorial to those discriminated against in the past, angry protest at the injustices still going on, including a dozen countries where homosexuality is still a capital offence, and genuinely joyous celebration of queer love. It's also sexy as hell, funny, moving, and highly recommended.

Redcliffe by Jordan Luke Gage is booking until the 4th of July at Southwark Playhouse Borough's Large Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith.

Theatre review: Mother Courage and Her Children

2026-06-02T23:10:00.000+01:00

Although the run of popular Shakespeares that make up most of the 2026 Globe season are clearly going to be the big sellers, for me the show I was most looking forward to this year was the one that was most obviously the passion project for the Artistic Director, as she took on the lead in the first Brecht play ever staged at the venue. So it's unfortunate timing that Michelle Terry was indisposed for the performance of Mother Courage and Her Children that I caught. All things considered Ayla Wheatley did a pretty heroic job of performing script-in-hand, covering the role of Mother Courage or, as she's often called in Anna Jordan's new version, MC. Though young for the role Wheatley managed to inject some of the character's exhausted gruffness, and the blunt, smutty humour that's a feature of Jordan's script. Being thrown in at the deep end means she had a lot of audience goodwill behind her, so technically I guess the playwright himself would have disapproved*.

His antiheroine is a small-time trader who drags her cart of food, weapons and everyday essentials around the battlefields of a neverending war - here implied to be a post-apocalyptic battle for resources between interchangeable, colour-coded sides.

She's accompanied by her three children, each known for a particular virtue which will, as the story and the wars go on, end up being the end of all of them: Eilif (Vinnie Heaven) is the brave one, Swiss Cheese (Rawaed Asde) the honest one and the mute Kattrin (Rachelle Diedericks) the kind one. Along the way other characters also come and go, including Nicolas Tennant's Chef, who is teased as a potential romantic interest for MC. But as with everything, her insistence on profiting from war will always trump any other potential path for her life to take.

Ferdy Roberts is suitably amoral as the Minister whose religious conviction is easily discarded once it becomes a danger, and who hitches himself to MC's wagon for most of the play; Nadine Higgin as the prostitute Yvette gets the most showstopping of James Maloney's oom-pa-pa songs that punctuate the action, but in her first appearance at least she also shows a lot of simple vulnerability - her taking off her famous red fuck-me boots and putting on slippers at the end of a long day is a tiny, endearing moment.

Elle While's production, which uses a Narrator (Max Runham) instead of Brecht's captions to introduce each scene, feels like a very successful fit to the Globe's stage. takis' set design extends the stage out into the yard to have MC's cart take endless circles on a built-in track. This also creates a central pit into which bodies are regularly thrown in an evening that doesn't shy away from the brutal violence and sexual assault that's a major element of how Brecht views war and those who profit from it. It would have been nice to actually see Terry in what appears to be one of her dream roles, but the good news is that even under imperfect circumstances the production itself holds its own.

Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht, in a version by Anna Jordan, is booking in repertory until the 27th of June at Shakespeare's Globe.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.

*Brecht didn't want the audience to sympathise with Courage, and kept rewriting the play in (unsuccessful) attempts to stop them doing so

Theatre review: End of the Rainbow

2026-05-30T18:44:00.000+01:00

My mum remembers being about 20 and watching Judy Garland on Sunday Night at the London Palladium, promoting a series of London concerts that would turn out to be her last, and seeming... not entirely at her best. She was also a fan of Jinkx Monsoon's appearances on Drag Race, so when Monsoon was announced as playing Garland in a revival of Peter Quilter's End of the Rainbow, dealing with just that period of her life, this year's birthday present was easily decided. Judy arrives at the suite of the Ritz that will be her home for the next six weeks of concerts, in full diva mode grumbling to her new young fiancé and manager Mickey Deans (Jacob Dudman) that it's not as big as she demanded. Soon she has bigger things to worry about though, as she's attempting, at Mickey's request, to stay off the cocktail of drugs and drink that's been alternately waking her up and sending her to sleep since she was a child star.

Over the course of those six weeks in 1969 she constantly tries to get her hands on something, preferably Ritalin, to keep her going, and we see glimpses of the concerts themselves as her performance gets more and more fractured.

Although Mickey remains present, the central relationship in Quilter's play is with her gay pianist Anthony (Adam Filipe.) He's a character in his own right, a more nurturing and supportive figure than her future husband, but he's also a representative of Garland's enduring queer fanbase: The love is genuine, but the question is also asked to what extent that love depends on her life being a car crash.

Another thing my mum remembers about that time was Garland's death about a year later, and the newspaper headlines that squarely placed the blame on Mickey, by then her fifth husband, for supplying her with the cocktail of drugs that killed her. To some extent the play is about questioning that: Quilter's portrayal of him is far from sympathetic (made less so by Dudman playing him on a single abrasive note throughout,) but it's not wholly unsympathetic either; he's well aware that Judy's finances are in a state where he won't make a quick buck out of her (half his time is spent trying to make sure they don't get kicked out of the hotel for non-payment) and he's strict about her trying to stay off the substances. It's only when it becomes apparent she won't be able to function at all without them that he capitulates and provides her with Ritalin.

But the male characters (there's also Fred Double as multiple lackeys who all end up on the wrong side of Judy's mood swings) are all a side-show to the star wattage of Judy, and Monsoon reliably steals the show. She gives the exact right mix of recognisable impersonation and layered performance in its own right that you need for this sort of portrayal, all the more impressive when you consider this started out as a Snatch Game caricature. Although it's got a tragic centre the play is also full of barbed comic lines from its leading lady, and Monsoon reliably delivers big laughs as well as the tears the show is leading up to.

The play itself doesn't always come off brilliantly - it's set between the hotel suite and the Talk of the Town stage, with Jasmine Swan's design very much favouring the latter so we never quite get the claustrophobia of the former. We do get the repetitive nature of the spiral Judy's life has shrunk to though, with Rupert Hands' production never quite finding a new rhythm for the similar scenes. Fortunately the central performance is barnstorming and moving enough that the flaws never really matter that much. And, in a series of costumes recreating iconic Garland looks, Judy is brought back to tragic life.

End of the Rainbow by Peter Quilter is booking until the 21st of June at Soho Theatre Walthamstow.

Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Danny Kaan.

Theatre review: Sherlock Holmes

2026-05-28T23:19:00.000+01:00

Many of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories have been put on the stage over the years, with various degrees of seriousness, but now that the character is fully out of copyright writers have also been free to write the great detective into their own, new adventures. Books, film and TV have done it and now Joel Horwood does it at a theatre whose nearest tube station is, appropriately enough, Baker Street. At least that's the theory behind the play simply titled Sherlock Holmes, which opens the Open Air Theatre's season with the promise of a new mystery. What Horwood actually gives us is a deconstruction of the iconic detective and his place in British culture, a central conceit that's pretty bold and iconoclastic - is just a shame that the way it's actually delivered leaves a lot to be desired.

Taking place early on in Holmes (Joshua James) and Dr Watson's (Jyuddah Jaymes) career, the latter's first book A Study in Scarlet has just come out, and Watson is trying to find a subject for the follow-up but none of the cases he suggests interest his flatmate.

Until the arrival of Mary (Nadi Kemp-Sayfi,) the illegitimate daughter of a late officer and an Indian woman he met while serving in the Empire. Watson instantly falls in love with her, while Holmes is intrigued by the case of her being sent anonymous gifts of priceless jewels, the latest of which comes with a cryptic note. But no sooner has the detective accompanied her to a mysterious meeting than two men are dead, and Mary has found herself in a kangaroo court charged with their murders.

Conan Doyle's stories often dealt with uncovering weird international conspiracies and secret societies, and that's the angle that Horwood takes on, but with a very modern perspective on the history: Debuting near the end of the Victorian era it's the height of the British Empire, and everyone except the title character thinks this is a great thing. But James' nihilistic, depressive Holmes is a man out of his time who can't easily accept that Watson received physical and psychological injuries in a pointless war in Afghanistan, that the mixed-race Mary is casually scapegoated, and that the villain he's trying to foil is escaped slave Tonga (Mervin Noronha) trying to restore Indian treasures that were stolen by the British in the first place.

It leaves me in the odd position of admiring the show in retrospect but really not enjoying it at the time. A lot of the problem comes from the combination of a convoluted plot and Sean Holmes' frenetic production, which doesn't leave much time for us to actually catch up to what the hell is going on. James and Jaymes are constantly rattling off a list of unconnected cases which have turned out to be incredibly connected, and once you realise everyone's far too busy clambering around the scaffolding of Grace Smart's set to properly explain the plot it's easy to get disengaged.

The tone is also all over the place - this is clearly the kind of show that will hope to grab a big family audience (and the venue was packed tonight, although almost entirely with adults,) and there's a couple of great action scenes including Holmes and Tonga's final confrontation on the gangway behind the audience. But the swearing and focus on Holmes' drug addiction are at odds with the child-friendly energy of the action, let alone a subplot about escaped zoo animals that means there's always someone hovering around the back of the stage in a panda mask. And for a show that's got the frantic energy of a comedy, it rarely contains an actual joke.

There are appearances by fan-favourite characters like Lestrade (Will Brown,) Mycroft Holmes (Patrick Warner) and Marcia Lecky's incredibly blunt Mrs Hudson, but the characterisation of the central pair always seems a bit off. This too turns out to be deliberate, as Watson's books about Holmes will sanitize him and turn the sharpest skeptic of Victorian England into its biggest icon. But once again this explanation comes too late, at the end of a show whose genuinely disruptive and clever ideas have been a bit too well-hidden in the guise of overcomplicated plots, askew character takes and heavy-handed takes on Empire.

Sherlock Holmes by Joel Horwood, based on characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle, is booking until the 6th of June at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton.

Theatre review: The Last Man

2026-05-25T22:12:00.000+01:00

Jishik Kim (book and lyrics) and Seungyeon Kwon's (music) The Last Man is the latest piece of K-culture to land in London, and it confirms something many a Netflix show has suggested over the years: South Koreans do like their zombies. Set in a semi-basement flat (designed by Shankho Chaudhuri) reminiscent of the one the family in Parasite lives in, The Survivor (Lex Lee, alternating with Nabi Brown) has converted it into a bunker in preparation for an apocalyptic event he's sure is coming. When it arrives in the form of the walking dead - which also just happens to be his favourite movie genre - he bolts himself in with an air purifier, a phone and a large supply of K-Pop Demon Hunters-branded cup noodles to keep him alive. Also running water and electricity which seem unaffected by the cataclysmic events outside.

There's a couple of clues like this from the start that maybe not everything is quite the way The Survivor describes it - his 360-degree tour of the solid, impregnable walls surrounding him also neglects to mention the very obvious, pavement-level window.

The most overt sign that we might be dealing with an unreliable narrator comes when his childhood teddy bear starts appearing in the bunker, in places The Survivor doesn't remember leaving him. He starts giving John Bear a voice as someone he can have a conversation with and break up the loneliness. This does allow Daljung Kim's production to move away from the conceit of his leaving video messages for future survivors on his phone, which has made the first twenty minutes or so of the show feel constricted.

As with the last South Korean musical I saw, there is a keen sense of this being quite a new genre there, that's still borrowing heavily from Western sources until it can find its own identity - Kwon's music feels particularly influenced by Jonathan Larson, and while Lee has a strong voice that can really belt them out, the big overwrought numbers don't really end up that memorable. And despite having had additional dramaturgy by Jethro Compton for its English-language debut, the story lacks much background to the character, with both songs and monologue focusing on what's happening in the present. It means the final twist manages to feel both predictable and unearned at the same time. Not that this isn't entertaining enough, but it did leave me with the feeling of something frustratingly undercooked.

The Last Man by Jishik Kim and Seungyeon Kwon is booking until the 13th of June at Southwark Playhouse Elephant.

Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Rich Lakos.

Theatre review: I'm Not Being Funny

2026-05-22T23:07:00.000+01:00

Piers Black's accurately-titled I'm Not Being Funny begins with an interesting high concept: A mix of bleak drama and stand-up comedy, it follows young married couple Peter (Jerome Yates) and Billie (Transphobia Ltd Employee Tia Bannon) as they practice comedy routines in their living room, preparing for an open-mic night Billie has signed them up for. She thinks it could be a good form of couple's therapy for them, and at first it seems she might be trying to help Peter deal with his anxiety over never being able to make their three-year-old daughter laugh. As their attempts to build a "tight five" minutes each go on though we discover that the trauma they're dealing with is a lot more serious: Billie has a terminal disease and four to six years left to live, and the open mic is her way of dealing both with her own feelings, and how the news has impacted the relationship with her family.

So the play begins with Peter flailing as he rehearses a routine consisting entirely of ancient dad jokes; Billie fares a little bit better with a more personal, confessional routine, thinking she can do her own Nanette in five minutes.

The real audience serves as the imagined one the pair are aiming their rehearsal at, and Bryony Shanahan's production handles the jumps between performance and domestic conversation smoothly. The idea that they're going to play around with anecdotes from their past for material is a good template to introduce flashbacks to how they met - at school, aged 12, becoming each other's first girlfriend and boyfriend before splitting up and getting back together years later - as well as the diagnosis that's put a shadow over their lives.

But as we get to the more serious heart of the story the interesting format falters. The initial stand-up conceit fades away, and we spend a lot of time with them trying to come up with gags by ad-libbing a kind of double act; a premise that doesn't make sense if the idea is to end up with two separate routines that'll be ready by the next night.

Even so the structural issues weren't enough to explain why I was really struggling to connect with the play, until I realised it falls into a trap common to stories about terminal illness: Black has given us a lot of insight into the physical and mental pain and how it's made Billie lash out at her husband, but he's not given us enough moments to like her: With all the focus on making us care about her impending death, he hasn't made us care about her life.

It means the constant arguments make the evening increasingly claustrophobic and shrill, and the moment the audience thinks we might get a little respite another screaming match starts. For me the last straw was the revelation that the reason Peter's act is so bad is that, having agreed to do an embarrassing public performance he didn't want to for his wife's sake, she then vetoed every subject he tried to joke about. The performances are good and the production slick, but by the end the tone has steered so far from the initial balance between comedy and drama that it's hard to empathise.

I'm Not Being Funny by Piers Black is booking until the 13th of June at the Bush Theatre's Studio.

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Richard Lakos.

Theatre review: CARE

2026-05-21T22:42:00.000+01:00

Alexander Zeldin's CARE takes place in a care home for the elderly, which Rosanna Vize's set design and James Farncombe's lighting bring to clinically realistic life, but with the odd flicker into something a bit eerier befitting a liminal space between life and death. Joan (Linda Bassett) arrives there after a fall damages her hip, believing that she'll be there for a few days at most until the physical injury recovers. But her daughter Lynn (Rosie Cavaliero) is already looking into making this a more permanent solution, as the accident was in part due to Joan's failing mental health, and the family can no longer trust that she won't be a danger to herself. As she spends her first few weeks in the home, an increasingly confused Joan does find some moments of joy as the residents share their life stories and highlights.

She also makes an unexpected friend in the home's resident troublemaker Simone (Hayley Carmichael,) whose dark sexual past reveals itself in her gleefully trolling the old ladies with graphic language, and a sad, quasi-romance with John (Transphobia Ltd Employee Richard Durden,) even though she knows he mistakes her for his late wife.

The playwright has translated and adapted this from his own earlier play that premiered in French under the title Une Mort Dans La Famille, and it's easy to assume this is about where Joan's story is going to end up. But it could also be about a death in the family a couple of years earlier when Lynn was widowed, and she and her teenage sons Laurie (William Lawlor) and Robbie (Charlie Webb, alternating with Ethan Mahony) are still struggling to process it.

This means that as Lynn's promises to visit daily become weekly then monthly and longer, she variously looks like victim or villain depending on the scene and the circumstances, and this is a central feature of a show which aims above all to look at its situation and characters from a point of impartiality.

Even its commentary on the care system's lack of funds comes down to a dispassionate mention of having to save on cleaning wipes and the occasional ominous flickering of the electrics. Llewella Gideon's head nurse Hazel doesn't get any big dramatic speeches but she does get to reveal that under her impatience with the residents and her trainee Fanta (Aoife Gaston) is a very tired woman who just wants to look after people.

Needless to say this isn't the easiest of watches at times, and the production's conceit that every time a resident dies their actor joins the audience gets used so many times it can be employed for a final twist. Also a show about octogenarians that runs well over two hours without a pee break could definitely be said to be dicing with danger. But it's as funny as it is sad, which makes it not as bleak as its subject matter might suggest. Although the two women sitting behind me cackling "ooh, that'll be us in thirty years' time!" probably needn't worry: If they keep talking that much in the theatre they're bound to be murdered long before that. (The woman next to me's head almost went full Exorcist turning to shush them.)

CARE by Alexander Zeldin is booking until the 11th of July at the Young Vic.

Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.

Theatre review: Stage Kiss

2026-05-19T23:03:00.000+01:00

Sarah Ruhl takes a decidedly metatheatrical stab at romantic comedy, a genre that over the years has seen many stage and screen couples emulate their characters' relationships in real life. Whether the stars actually managed to recreate their happy endings, though, has never been guaranteed. The unnamed leads in Stage Kiss are actors cast in a regional revival of a forgotten 1930s romance; only when She (MyAnna Buring, as opposed to YourAnna Buring) and He (Patrick Kennedy) arrive for the first day of rehearsals do they discover they've been cast opposite someone they had a tempestuous relationship with two decades earlier. As they go through weeks of rehearsal and performances, kissing each other dozens of times a day, the lines between play and reality start to get blurred.

Despite both having moved on to seemingly happy relationships with new partners, they rekindle their affair once the play's run has ended. But by the time they've signed up to another stage job together the cracks are starting to show, and they remember why they broke up in the first place.

Ruhl's play for my money really hits the level of the screwball comedies it takes inspiration from: It's not non-stop laughs but there's a regular enough supply of them to keep a smile on my face for most of the evening. The highlights invariably come from the play-within-a-play, a convoluted melodrama the Director (Rolf Saxon) is inexplicably convinced is ripe for reinvention, but which he has his actors perform in the broadest possible style.

So we have swooning, slaps that turn into kisses, a leading lady who constantly fluctuates between the brink of death and being basically fine, a script that can't decide whether it wants to be a musical or not and doesn't seem to have noticed that it's named all the supporting female roles Millicent, and a gay understudy (James Phoon) so worried about being unconvincing in a straight role that he's overcompensated in a very... particular way.

The second act, which sees the reunited couple attempt a terrible new thriller with incredibly dubious politics, isn't quite as consistently funny, in part because it's dealing with the relationship turning sour. But it does continue to blur the lines between stage and reality in fun ways, like when Her husband (Oliver Dimsdale) and daughter (Toto Bruin) and His girlfriend (Jill Winternitz) show up for a confrontation not that far from the OTT play of the first act.

Blanche McIntyre's production revels in the way Ruhl plays around with the different levels of reality in the story, and the way the audience's perspective is constantly shifting through them; Robert Innes Hopkins' set also bounces back and forth between bare stages and naturalistic scenes. There's a more serious undertone here about being able to distinguish the real person from the fantasy version, but Stage Kiss wisely focuses on giving us an entertaining take on the chaos that ensues when we can't.

Stage Kiss by Sarah Ruhl is booking until the 13th of June at Hampstead Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream(Shakespeare's Globe)

2026-05-17T16:47:00.000+01:00

I hope what I've seen so far of the 2026 summer season at Shakespeare's Globe isn't a sign of things to come, as it could spell the beginning of the end of my relationship with one of my favourite venues: After avoiding it for years due to the original management's insistence on original practices sounding a bit theme parky, once I started going I loved the genuine exploration of how the space helps actors play with the text, as well as it becoming one of the few companies where you could count on catching the odd Shakespearean rarity. The latter has been stymied to the point of non-existence recently by economic demands, and the venue has depended a lot on the four most popular comedies - AMND, As You Like It, Much Ado and Twelfth Night.

I thought we were out of the Enema Rice/Covid financial hole but the announcement of three of those four in a single season, with zero Shakespearean tragedies, the mid-table Love's Labour's Lost being classed as a rarity, and only one left-field choice coming up, was concerning for anyone who likes variety. Now the season actually opens with Emily Lim's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which certainly doesn't assuage any worries I might have about the venue going full tourist trap.

It comes less than six months after the company's last production of the same play indoors, and at least it returns it to its status as a comedy after that downright aggressive reinterpretation. But this Dream does have something in common with Holly Race Roughan and Naeem Hyat's, in that neither is going to let what's actually in the script get in the way of its high concept. Here that focuses on the community theatre aspect of the story, which sees a group of amateur actors rehearse a very silly play to perform at a royal wedding.

So the production leans very heavily on audience participation, with Puck (Michael Grady-Hall) conducting the crowd in singalong moments, and Quince (Victoria Moseley) holding auditions before the show starts, for groundlings to take part in the performance later. There's definite shades of panto, as well as of the edited and slightly sanitised productions aimed at younger audiences. But I've enjoyed some of the Globe's Deutsche Bank productions specifically tailored to schools more than this, and in any case if this is Baby's First Shakespeare it would have been nice for it to be advertised as such.

These scenes of the Rude Mechanicals are the strongest of the afternoon, with Adrian Richards as very much a drama camp Bottom in a Cats T-shirt, enthusiastically hogging the spotlight, and Jamal Franklin's Snug also getting a nice little comic through-line as he tries to learn how to roar. But the lovers (Gavi Singh Chera as Demetrius, Sophie Cox as Hermia, Mel Lowe as Lysander and Romaya Weaver as Helena) feel like they've very much been left to their own devices, and while most of the audience did laugh a lot over the course of the afternoon, what is usually this quartet's funniest scene went by unusually quietly.

And I think this is ultimately what failed to grab me: I love Shakespeare comedies being mined for all the physical and visual gags the setups suggest, as well as the dialogue being adapted to fit the time and place it's being performed in. But outside of the 400-year-old standup routines there's actually a lot of funny lines that do still work for a modern audience, and it's a bit sad to see all the inspired nonsense in Pyramus and Thisbe getting tumbleweed because it's being rushed through so we can get to the next pratfall or ad-lib.

There were some encouraging moments: Rather than getting bogged down in deciding Theseus' (understudy Jason Battersby) "I wooed thee with my sword" is the only line of any significance in the whole play, Lim quickly dismisses a lot of its problematic implications by giving it to Hippolyta (Audrey Brisson) and making her the dominant one in the power dynamic. We also get a tweak of "do you marry him" to make it an actual joke that might conceivably work in the 21st century. Plus the whole thing's quite short. These three positives aside though, this sexless production which deals with the chaotic story by giving up on even trying to tell it was not for me.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare is booking in repertory until the 29th of August at Shakespeare's Globe.

Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.

Theatre review: An Ideal Husband

2026-05-15T23:45:00.000+01:00

The National Theatre's recent Importance of Being Earnest found a new angle by introducing a formidable Caribbean take on Lady Bracknell, and now Nicholai La Barrie extends that idea by giving us another Oscar Wilde play where the entire cast of characters has been reimagined as first or second generation Caribbean British. In An Ideal Husband class, power and money are constantly intertwined in a relationship that proves precarious as Lord Chiltern (Chiké Okonkwo,) a politician whose career benefited from his personal wealth, gets blackmailed about the source of that wealth: The unscrupulous Mrs Cheveley (Aurora Perrineau) has obtained a letter proving that, at the start of his career, he benefited from his parliamentary knowledge to do a bit of insider trading. She has an investment project of her own on the go, and if Chiltern publicly endorses what is very obviously a scam, she'll keep his secret.

Before worrying about the truth becoming known to the world at large, Chiltern's first concern is what the news will do to his beloved wife Gertrude (Tamara Lawrance,) and turns to his best friend for advice.

Jamael Westman gets his teeth into the most dandyish character even in an Oscar Wilde play, and his bisexual-coded Lord Goring takes great delight in flirting with pretty much everyone, but is also appealingly genuine in his love and protective instinct for his friends. Westman has an entertainingly bitchy take on Wilde's famous epigrams, but his funniest scenes are those with Chiltern's younger sister Mabel, whom he intends to propose to when he can be bothered to get round to it. Tiwa Lade's giggly, enthusiastically girlish performance sparks well off his mannered nonchalance.

The production's Caribbean conceit is probably most effective in Goring's relationship with his father the Earl of Caversham (Jeff Alexander,) whose constant grumpiness reflects his disappointment at his son's determination to do absolutely nothing with the power and status he's secured for him. It's generally a fun evening although it does falter in the second act - Wilde going to a darker dramatic place while still insisting on filling the script with bitchy bon mots is a tonal dissonance La Barrie never quite finds a way around.

There's also an imbalance between the performances that sucks some of the energy out of the room: Lyric Hammersmith audiences tend to be loud in the best way - that of being properly invested in the action - and they were not holding back at the interval about Perrineau's stilted performance. It stands out particularly as everyone else in the cast is throwing everything into a heightened, borderline drag queen performance style to milk every laugh from the show in Rajha Shakiry's attention-grabbing costumes, from Suzette Llewellyn and Nimmy March's gossipy aunties to Sule Thelwell's destined-for-disappointment suitor to Mabel.

Even the Chilterns' almost entirely silent butler seems to have an unspoken storyline of his own being told, with his employers a little bit terrified of Emmanuel Akwafo's furiously flouncing Mason. Once the tone shifts radically again into outright farce for the third act the evening gains momentum again, so while there are a couple of things holding the show back from quite soaring, it does offer a lot of moments of brightness.

An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde is booking until the 6th of June at the Lyric Hammersmith, and from the 10th to the 20th of June at Bristol Old Vic.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.

Theatre review: Firewing

2026-05-14T22:38:00.000+01:00

Tim (Gerard Horan) is an established wildlife photographer - well-regarded and sometimes award-winning, but not quite successful enough to have made an international career out of it: He's spent much of his life in the same wooden hut by a lake near where he grew up, taking photographs of birds and urban foxes. In recent years he's become keen to find a successor he can pass on the tricks of the trade to, and perhaps even replicate an image that has, for better or worse, defined his career: A rare Siberian Firewing that somehow made it to England, an event so unlikely he was accused of forging the photo. He's begun advertising a weekend apprenticeship programme for aspiring photographers, and after various disappointing applicants he's hoping Marcus (Charlie Beck,) a young man from the same, still-deprived area as him, will be the one.

So David Pearson's Firewing treads fairly familiar ground as a two-hander between a curmudgeonly older man and a cocky young one, their initial personality clash turning into a grudging respect as they find common ground.

And all the weaker elements of the play come from how familiar this setup is, not just to the audience but seemingly to the playwright himself: We know the dynamic of this genre so well that Pearson throws us abruptly into it, with Tim impatiently snapping at Marcus and calling him an idiot within seconds of the latter first setting foot through the door.

The story continues with familiar beats - moments of connection, a tentative new trust that the younger man is planning to betray, and a revelation about just why the older one is suddenly so keen to find an heir to his legacy. But if the framework is one we've seen before at least it's executed nicely, with some snappy dialogue and a premise that, through its exploration of photographic composition and the way a single image can tell a complete story, gives quite a literal take on the idea of how we see and frame the world.

Alice Hamilton's briskly unsentimental production also helps, smoothing over some of the clumsier storytelling moments, and letting Horan and Beck build an interesting relationship. It never feels essential, but it never feels like a waste of time either.

Firewing by David Pearson is booking until the 23rd of May at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs.

Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith.

Theatre review: Grace Pervades

2026-05-07T23:18:37.746+01:00

Playing in the West End at the same time as one of his earlier plays that's starting to show its age, David Hare's latest one consciously harks back to an even older tradition of performance than Teeth'N'Smiles: Grace Pervades centres on the most celebrated actress of the Victorian theatre, Ellen Terry (Miranda Raison) and her longstanding professional and personal relationship with actor-manager Henry Irving (Rafe "Ralph" Fiennes.) The latter chose her as his leading lady when he was setting up his own theatre company, convincing her to come out of retirement after she'd decided she would never be as good an actress as her sister. But once they start working together it's Terry who has the bigger impact on him, helping an actor who was admired for his intensity but criticised for his stiffness, to find a style with more connection to castmates and audiences alike.

But while he shows her a lot of respect for a man of his time the power imbalance is never entirely overcome, and despite promising her she could play Rosalind, his preference for tragedy and for putting himself centre stage meant he didn't keep it, and Terry never played Shakespeare's biggest female role.

There's a few themes of how the theatre can be a place where contradictions live together: Terry had two illegitimate children but although this was sometimes snidely referred to in reviews, her talent was enough to have her remain respected and beloved in a society superficially obsessed with propriety. Those two children serve as the play's narrators, and the huge contrast between them is suggested to be because of the different standards their mother held them to.

So Terry saw herself in her daughter and was stricter with her, and Edith (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis) grows up to be a brisk, sensible feminist living in a lesbian throuple with Chris (Maggie Service) and Tony (Kathryn Wilder,) ending up building a small local theatre in tribute to her mother. In her son Ellen sees the man who left her but she still loves, and Teddy (Jordan Metcalfe) is an insufferable brat with ties to the Nazis, constantly declaring his own theatrical genius while failing to produce any watchable work of his own.

But the figure who serves as the play's comic foil does evidently have an appeal we never quite see, as Teddy is surprisingly successful with women, including an affair with the famous American dancer Isadora Duncan (Saskia Strallen,) and despite his own failure as a producer and director, Edward Gordon Craig's writing ended up becoming hugely influential later in the 20th century with the likes of Peter Brook.

But the amount of time spent on her children means I could never quite find the focus on Terry and her relationship with Irving that I wanted to see at the heart of the story. And while Raison is magnetic enough in the lead to show the actress the public always wanted to see more of (but Irving held back from them,) Hare teases an insight into her darker side he doesn't fully explore.

Bob Crowley's sets and Fotini Dimou's costumes give Jeremy Herrin's production the lush but severe look of 19th century staging that recreates the kind of event theatre that Irving was aiming for, and we also get a strong sense of his and Terry's commitment to taking the show to the people, often leaving London for regional UK and US tours. (They also seem to have had a few opinions about theatre that align with my own, like Irving's statement that "Hamlet works because it's a play, Romeo & Juliet doesn't because it's a poem.") An interesting sweep through the lives and legacies of these Victorian legends and Terry's in particular, but it does come out of focus a lot.

Grace Pervades by David Hare is booking until the 11th of July at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.

Theatre review: Please Please Me

2026-04-30T23:11:00.001+01:00

As the title gives away, Tom Wright's Please Please Me deals with the Beatles - or at least with the outsider credited with making the world sit up and pay attention to them, their gay, Jewish manager Brian Epstein. That's Brian Epstein. We first meet Brian (Calam Lynch) working in his family's department store, nominally in the closet but with his various encounters with rough trade (all played by William Robinson) often proving dangerous, his father (Arthur Wilson) is well aware of what's going on. Following the advice of one of his regular hook-ups, he visits the Cavern Club to catch the band that's got Liverpool's teenage girls screaming, and despite having no experience in the field decides he has to become their manager - and convinces them to give him a go.

It's long been thought that Brian was in love with John Lennon, and Please Please Me is firmly in the camp that says this was what encouraged him to take such a career risk. But it also goes on to question whether this went further, and if the two ever slept together.

Wright's play is structured as a pretty straightforward telling of the Beatles' early days from Brian's perspective, taking us through his rebranding of them from generic rockers to wholesome boys who wouldn't scare off their fans' parents, and the meteoric rise that follows. For him, though, that's the beginning of the end, as he starts spiralling into the drink and drug use that would end up killing him at 32.

The crux moment here is his and John's mysterious holiday to Spain, where the two have sex (Lennon publicly denied this happened, but according to Yoko Ono he privately confirmed it.) The chemistry between Lynch and Noah Ritter's John is part of what makes this last scene before the interval the play's most memorable one - director Amit Sharma ramps up the tension as John all-out seduces Brian, who's frozen by having his obsession confronted quite so directly.

The second act sees Brian's fall, possibly as a result of how this encounter with John panned out. The play remains consistently interesting and sexy - possibly too sexy, as Ian "complained" that Lynch is far too good-looking to play Epstein and everyone is too gym-toned to realistically be young men from the 1960s. But this second half did drift off a bit for me, especially towards the end as Wright doesn't seem quite confident in how he wants to approach Epstein's death.

Lynch's performance anchors the evening though, with great support from the cast, especially Eleanor Worthington-Cox in all the female roles. Composer David Shrubsole is left to provide the musical atmosphere of the time since Beatles songs are too expensive to licence; we do get a bit of Cilla Black's "You're My World," though fortunately this cuts out before we find out if Worthington-Cox can accurately emulate the sound of a goose going through a shredder.

If Please Please Me isn't entirely slick it is an interesting take on the story, and what may have happened behind closed doors. We do find out that the road Lennon grew up in was called Menlove Avenue, and I can't decide if a play about him having sex with a man not making a joke about this is admirable restraint or a criminally missed opportunity.

Please Please Me by Tom Wright is booking until the 29th of May at the Kiln Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Mark Senior.

Theatre review: Tender (Soho Theatre)

2026-04-28T22:41:00.038+01:00

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The show has not yet officially opened to critics.

Dave Harris' Tender is the latest play to deal with a modern crisis of masculinity, although maybe one without quite the same level of toxicity as some of its predecessors. Darren Bennett plays a former adult performer who now leads a trio of male strippers called the Dancing Bears: Exploiting a loophole in New Jersey law, they are to all intents and purposes prostitutes, the mostly-female clientèle being allowed to do a lot more than just look when the men take their clothes off. But business has been tailing off lately, which turns out to be largely down to a new copycat club opening down the road - where the performers are a bit fresher, better dancers, and a couple of inches better-hung. The club's owner sends her daughter in to freshen up the show, but having previously attempted to be an artist and then a therapist, Bea (Jessie Mei Li) is less interested in choreography and more in deconstructing the men's feelings.

So Bennett's daddy figure turns out to have more than a few issues around how he's raised (or completely failed to) his own daughter, while youngest dancer Trey (Kwami Odoom) is so obsessed with being a great lover to his girlfriend he hasn't figured out how to enjoy sex himself yet.

Meanwhile Jeff (Dex Lee) has become prone to panic attacks on stage, while offstage he hides his insecurities behind an exaggerated persona - his gradually revealing the real person behind the comedian is one of the most interesting performances in an evening that isn't short of them. Jeff also manages to turn the tables on the frosty Bea, who turns out to be even less qualified to lecture anyone on "trusting us with your pleasure" than she initially appears.

Matthew Xia's production is very entertaining, even when it's only been previewing for under a week - it feels like it'll tighten up a bit and get even slicker after a few more performances. The quirky ending could definitely feel a bit tighter though. Harris has written a comedy-drama that wears the drama side lightly and reaps the benefits when those more serious moments do come. The overall effect is of a very funny evening with likeable characters.

It's also sexy when it needs to be, even if the whole point is that that sexiness has gone slightly off the boil. Hen parties who book by accident certainly won't get what they expected but there are a few moments of the Dancing Bears in action (the show has gone to some lengths to ensure that any audience participation is reserved strictly for those audience members happy to get involved.) Its premise could attract a lot of interest, but whatever the reason people end up at Tender what they'll get is funny, clever and indeed tender.

Tender by Dave Harris is booking until the 30th of May at Soho Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Alex Brenner.

Theatre review: Avenue Q

2026-04-24T23:40:00.001+01:00

After Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx (both contributing music and lyrics) and Jeff Whitty's (book) Avenue Q closed (for the third time) its original West End production, my favourite musical didn't stay away too long, with smaller-scale productions and tours meaning I and a group of similarly addicted friends could keep getting our live fix. It's been away for a few years though, meaning what I think is my fourteenth time seeing it live is in fact a 20th-anniversary production of it opening at the Noël Coward (the first show to play there after the theatre had been renamed.) Now at a reduced-capacity Shaftesbury Theatre while its upper level is being repaired, original director Jason Moore returns for a show that was always being tweaked to keep up with the times, and has now had a few extra rewrites to bring it into 2026.

But not too many, as this is definitely a show that wasn't broke and didn't need fixing: You know the drill, it's Sesame Street's mix of real humans, puppet humans and puppet monsters, in scenes and songs that teach life lessons. About porn, racism, romantic disappointment and noisy sex.

Recent graduate Princeton (Noah Harrison) moves into the titular New York neighbourhood, makes new friends and a potential romantic connection in Kate Monster (understudy Meg Hateley,) and faces up to the fact that his life won't work out the way he always thought it would. Along the way we also get the wedding of Brian (Oliver Jacobson) and Christmas Eve (Amelia Kinu Muus,) plus a falling-out between definitely-not-gay flatmates Rod (Harrison) and Nicky (understudy Jonathan Carlton.)

The show is a mix of the original Broadway script and the West End one along with the new changes - the (better) West End introduction to Gary Coleman is back, but per the original staging the former child celebrity is played by a woman - Dionne Ward-Anderson's beaming grin very much defining him by his best song, "Schadenfreude." We got front row seats for this, which is always fun when possible because you get to see the details of Rick Lyon's puppet designs, and get the full blast of the as-cute-as-they-are-evil Bad Idea Bears (Carlton and understudy Jasmine Beel.)

A number of the original cast (notably Giles Terera, Jon Robyns, Julie Atherton and Simon Lipkin) have become award-winners and stage stalwarts, and it's easy to imagine the new batch of actors doing the same over the next couple of decades. Along with the updates to the script there's a couple of technical upgrades - playing for the first time on a stage with an orchestra pit means Anna Louizos' set no longer has to accommodate the musicians and can incorporate some slightly more elaborate changes, while I'm sure Lucy the Slut's introduction with "Special" has got a lot more... acrobatic. But upgrades are never introduced where they're not needed, and Nina Dunn's video designs retain a scrappy educational TV feel.

One of the posters outside the theatre has nailed the show's attraction: "The musical for everyone still figuring it out." It's still true for those of us now twenty years older, but if there's nostalgia in this revival it's a very Avenue Q brand of nostalgia which looks suspiciously like trolling its ageing audience. Most obviously in "Mix Tape," which in the original was about a literal tape, later becoming Princeton burning Kate a mix CD, and which by now is a playlist: The rewrite where Kate explains that making a mixtape is a form of flirting from the olden days gets one of the biggest and most knowing laughs of the night. So the existing fans come away satisfied, but I've no doubt this iteration of Avenue Q will also create a new generation of fans who'll be coming back in 2046.

Avenue Q by Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty is booking until the 29th of August at the Shaftesbury Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Matt Crockett.

Theatre review: Les Liaisons Dangereuses

2026-04-23T23:49:00.007+01:00

A new production of Christopher Hampton's best-known play, an adaptation of a novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos at the Lyttelton, marks Marianne Elliott's first time back at the National since Angels In America. Although this, and most other elements of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, seem to have been overshadowed by Lesley ~~Aisons~~ Manville, who's turned out to be surprisingly camera-shy for a film star. Manville plays the Marquise de Merteuil, the most in-demand guest of 18th Century Paris aristocracy's social life. Merteuil is a widow who, comfortable in her wealth and standing, entertains herself by taking numerous lovers, as well as orchestrating affairs and scandals for others. She's particularly fond of corrupting wide-eyed innocents, but has managed to keep her activities in the shadows, and her own reputation spotless.

The Vicomte de Valmont (Aidan Turner,) by contrast, maintains his position in society but his many sexual conquests are widely rumoured, and aristocratic ladies warn their daughters against him.

The pair often play their games of manipulation together, and the play begins with both of them wanting to take revenge against a rival, by corrupting a young woman close to them: Merteuil has been dumped, and wants Valmont to seduce the ex's virginal new fiancée Cécile (Hannah van der Westhuysen.) Valmont finds that far too easy a challenge, instead mentoring her music teacher Danceny (Darragh Hand) in how to do it himself - at least to start with.

He's set himself a greater challenge in Madame de Tourvel (Monica Barbaro,) the famously faithful wife to an often-absent husband. She becomes the subject of a bet between him and Merteuil, but her nature ends up making the notorious rake fall in love with her for real, with tragic consequences.

Elliott's production is characteristically stylish, with Natalie Roar's costumes a punky twist on period styles, Rosanna Vize's mirrored set dominated by a huge stylised chandelier that looks as dangerous as it does dramatic, and choreography from Tom Jackson Greaves that doesn't only provide spectacle but also tells a lot of the story beats energetically. Though full of exits the stage feels claustrophobic as behind every door is someone listening in, and the effect comes to a head in the climactic duel when the saucy paintings on the wall come down to trap Valmont with Danceny.

A lot of the evening plays out as a particularly sinister sex comedy and there are plenty of audience laughs at the vicious quips from the leads, but it's 2026 and the darker side couldn't go unexplored; Turner's Valmont may be charming and, on the surface, essentially affable, but when circumstances change so it does suit his interests to seduce Cécile himself, we're left uncomfortably aware of the coercion and grooming going on.

Manville and Turner live up to their billing, and spark off each other verbally and physically in a way that makes you forget the almost three-decade age difference. Turner also appears to have learned his lines, which is nice. Barbaro struggles a bit to make the terminally nice Tourvel interesting but the production does find an unexpected centre in van der Westhuysen, whose Cécile transforms from insipid little girl, through victim to something stronger, and eventually monster of Merteuil's own making. A long evening that doesn't feel as long as it actually is, there are still ways for Les Liaisons Dangereuses to scandalise. And Manville may have famously banned curtain call photos, but I guess it's fair to keep some surprises secret. Who knew she could do that with a ping-pong ball?

Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Christopher Hampton, based on the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, is booking until the 6th of June at the National Theatre's Lyttelton.

Running time: 3 hours including interval.

Photo credit: Sarah Lee.

Theatre review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

2026-04-21T23:19:37.276+01:00

Former Deputy Artistic Director of the National Theatre Clint Dyer moves down the road to the Old Vic to direct a somewhat reimagined look at One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dale Wasserman's play based on Ken Kesey's novel about order versus anarchy - where order comes across very much as the bad guy. In a 1960s New Orleans mental asylum, the patients appear to be steadily and quietly getting on with their treatment under Dr Spivey (Matthew Steer) and Nurse Ratched (Future Dame Olivia Williams.) But when R.P. McMurphy (Aaron Pierre) arrives on the ward, having accepted a diagnosis of psychopathy and committal instead of a five-month prison sentence, his rebellious attitude quickly reveals the real power dynamic in the asylum. He makes it his mission to bring some fun and unpredictability to the inmates, but has no idea the lengths Ratched is willing to go to to stop him.

FDOW was a late replacement in the role of Ratched, and Ian said later he'd been worried beforehand that she seems too nice to really do justice to the role. In a way this affable image is what sells the performance though.

So we meet a head nurse who appears to be strictly but gently looking out for the wellbeing of her patients, following a precise daily schedule of activities, therapy and chores to help calm them (as well, of course, as the constant dosing up with drugs, although that felt to me like a less foregrounded part of the story here than in the past.) So there's an insidious quality to the way she reveals her hold on power to be the only thing she cares about: The discredited treatments like electroshock and lobotomies she dishes out may have still been in use at the time, but not in the way she uses them as punishment, not cure.

Physically, Pierre is far from the scrappy little troublemaker usually cast as McMurphy - at a muscular 6ft 3, when he first arrives in the ward and asks to fight the top dog he seems like he'll be a credible threat to the other patients, before revealing the sense of humour that's more self-destructive than anything else. It's particularly notable in his scenes with the giant Chief Bromden - the 6ft 4 Arthur Boan seems positively twinky next to his scene partner, and his comments about being "little" don't seem as bitterly ironic when they can look each other in the eye.

It does lend McMurphy a different quality though, of someone whose physicality has made him sure he's in control at all times, and who learns the hard way that this isn't true. Probably the most interesting thing about Pierre's performance is the ambiguity he puts around the character's sanity: In the past I've felt the character has been played firmly as the con-man who's made a terrible mistake in his attempt to get out of jail, but here there's a jitteriness that suggests maybe the initial psychiatric assessment wasn't entirely wrong.

The third marquee name is Giles Terera as Dale Harding, the fussy inmate designated as president of the ward (yes, once again Terera plays a character with "president" somewhere in the job description) in an attempt to give the patients the misconception they have any control. He's an amiable, funny and gently sad presence that leads a supporting cast of patients including Kedar Williams-Stirling, who strongly suggests Billy Bibbit's stutter was the only issue he ever had until his mother and Ratched built up his numerous other insecurities.

Which does lead on to a couple of ways where the play hasn't aged well, and where the production could have acknowledged this more than it does. Dyer's production has a majority black cast, and though this extends to the orderlies it does give the added element of a group of black men being controlled and told their place by a carefully-designed system. There's also an idea of linking the story to the origins of the New Orleans Mardi Gras in black and Native American communities, and although I can see the link in carnival being a time for the kind of release and chaos that the inmates aren't permitted, the idea doesn't quite come together. And while Ben Stones' in-the-round design is great at making the front row look uncomfortably close and complicit, it remains a clinical space.

This high concept not quite clicking means some of the more dated themes that are in the original story stand out: Some of the mentally ill characters are treated as sideshows or comic relief by Kesey, even if the cast including Ene Frost, Jason Pennycooke, Javone Prince and Mo Sesay give them a bit more depth than that.

But even more so, between Harding's wife and Billy's mother being blamed for their conditions, and the main villain Nurse Ratched also puppeteering the nominally in-charge Spivey, there's definitely a strain of misogyny to the narrative, and a lot of references to emasculation and castration that could have come straight out of a manosphere influencer's mouth. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has uniformly strong performances and works very effectively as a dark thriller, but at a time when stories are being reframed around toxic masculinity whether the conceit works or not, it's ironic to see a high-profile one that could have done with more of that reframing.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Dale Wasserman, based on the novel by Ken Kesey, is booking until the 23rd of May at the Old Vic.

Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.

Theatre review: A Doll's House

2026-04-17T23:11:00.170+01:00

Anya Reiss' adaptation of A Doll's House is a faithful one in that it follows the story beats and motivations of Ibsen's original, but also a modern one in that it identifies an archetype we can all recognise and agree is the villain of the piece: Finance bros. At the beginning of Joe Hill-Gibbins' production Nora (Romola Garai) has prepared for Christmas by maxing out her husband's credit card on decorations and gifts for their family, to make up for a pretty miserable time the previous year. She's not worried about paying off the debt: Torvald (Tom Mothersdale) is selling his investment company and they'll be millionaires by January. Her excitement seems indistinguishable from anxiety though, as their successful year has come after Torvald's addiction issues almost brought their family down, and only very expensive rehab got him out of it.

She paid for this by asking the company's lawyer, Nils (James Corrigan,) who'd already been in prison for embezzlement, to help her "borrow" investors' funds, which she intends to pay back as soon as the sale goes through.

So when Torvald fires Nils a couple of days before Christmas, Nora's only way of paying the money back without her husband finding out is gone. Leaning for moral support on dying friend Petter (Olivier Huband,) a doctor who's long been in love with her, and Kristine (Thalissa Teixeira,) an old university friend she'd forgotten about until very recently, Nora tries to get Nils reinstated by Torvald, or find another way of getting out of a hole that could implicate her entire family.

Reiss and Hill-Gibbins lean heavily on the anti-capitalist elements of the story: Hyemi Shin's set design is stripped-back chic, leaving the vast pile of branded shopping bags to be the main visual focus. Garai and Mothersdale play the Helmers as a genuinely sexy couple with a very real connection, which leads some of the revelations towards the end of the play to hit particularly hard, but outside of the physical their love language is materialistic, which is ultimately their relationship's downfall.

So Garai's Nora feels like a harsher look at the character than I've seen before: The wife who's sacrificed a lot for her husband is still there, but though her love for him is genuine the fact that she's spent almost a million pounds on his rehab comes in part from a place of believing only the best is good enough for them, and a hurry to get back to the comfortable life they're used to. She's a character racked with anxiety (early on it's suggested this has manifested in an eating disorder but that's not followed up much as the evening goes on) but also a selfish one, who'll instantly lean heavily on her friend after years of cutting her out of her life because she didn't want to deal with Kristine's own time of need.

Courtesy of Alex Lowde's costume design, Garai is probably the first Nora to have to do all her most dramatic scenes in a naughty nurse's outfit, and yet she brings a lot of extra nuance and complexity to what's already one of the most famous and analysed roles in theatre. But Reiss doesn't let us forget the root of all this corruption, and Mothersdale's generally affable Torvald goes to extremely dark and cynical places as a solution to all their financial problems comes at the expense of global chaos and loss of lives.

This take on the final plot twist, which also takes us back to the idea of financiers being the true villains of the piece, is one of the very effective ways the production has found to bring the story into the present day. And either the adaptor, the director or both have also chosen to leave us on a question mark that Ibsen doesn't - between this and Romeo & Juliet, we could be looking at a 2026 meme of productions that leave some ambiguity over what are usually very well-known endings.

There's a couple of things that don't quite make sense: Having all the characters have met an university but not necessarily remember each other sort of holds up until we get to Kristine and Nils having had a past relationship, which feels like a much harder coincidence to swallow here than in a small Norwegian town in the 1870s. And the house has plenty of security on the front entrance but anyone can seemingly wander in through the basement whenever they feel like it. But otherwise this works very effectively as a financial thriller that increasingly dives into the lies the characters have been telling themselves and each other.

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen in a version by Anya Reiss is booking until the 23rd of May at the Almeida Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.

Theatre review: The Authenticator

2026-04-16T23:01:00.001+01:00

Crumbling country estates have in recent years been at the centre of controversy over the suggestion that maybe the visitors, whose tourist cash is pretty much keeping them standing, might want to know about the darker parts of the building's history, like how much its glory days were supported by the slave trade. They're also the setting for many a gothic mystery, and what Winsome Pinnock's new play The Authenticator does very effectively is bring those two elements together to touch on a hot-button topic in entertaining fashion. Eccentric aristocrat Fen (Sylvestra Le Touzel) is the last descendant of the Harford family, and the first woman to inherit the estate following centuries of male primogeniture. Digging through family history, she's unearthed the previously unseen diaries of 18th century ancestor Henry Harford, the founder of the family's wealth.

Although it was no great secret that he made his fortune in Jamaican plantations, he had later rather ostentatiously tried to distance himself from the slave trade, and allied himself with abolitionists. The diaries will need to be authenticated, and Fen is convinced to give the job to Abi (Rakie Ayola) in some part because of the enthusiasm of her protégée Marva (Cherrelle Skeete,) who remembers visiting the estate with her grandfather.

In fact Marva has a secret reason of her own for wanting to work in this house, and in among the dry lists in the documents the two academics are inspecting are little details that show Henry didn't leave his involvement in slavery as far behind him as he would have liked people to think. They also hint at a secret that changes everything about the Harford family and its history.

Pinnock's play is very nuanced and even-handed: Fen can be oblivious to quite how priviliged she's been and prone to cultural appropriation, but while she can be a comic foil at times she's never made a villain. Meanwhile there's a look at the fact that this kind of story doesn't come down to something as simple as black and white, and two modern black people's connection to the story can vary greatly: While Marva's family history is full of missing pieces and misfortune, Abi's own background includes Nigerian royalty who themselves facilitated the slave trade.

But all this is given in a play with a light touch and an admirable lack of overwriting (having seeded the idea that the twins who run through the Harford family are fraternal, there's questions to be asked about whether a pair of twins who were separated in the past were done so on the basis of skin colour; I could easily see some playwrights add an unnecessary half-hour of discussion here but Pinnock trusts the audience to go off and make connections ourselves.) It's also very funny, with its humour ranging from the clever to the silly, and some lines that are both (when the authenticators first arrive, the estate is being used to film a music video for a "grimy artist" called Phallus-E.)

Jon Bausor's set, meanwhile, is a big contributor to the way Miranda Cromwell's production adds in a touch of the gothic thriller - the various parts of the traverse set revolve and twist to create different parts of the old building the becomes the fourth character, with Aideen Malone's lighting giving us the requisite dark shadowy corners and Tingying Dong's sound design providing the creaks and cracks, and the sudden bursts of noise from forgotten ghost tours of the dungeon. The Authenticator knows when to be restrained and when to go all out, and as a result gets the balance just right between powerful drama and a lot of fun.

The Authenticator by Winsome Pinnock is booking until the 9th of May at the National Theatre's Dorfman.

Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.