Clever, genial and splendidly eccentric: Raising Martha reviewed
David Spicer’s farce Raising Martha opens with a skeleton being disinterred on a frog farm by animal-rights activists. They hope…
A hymn to a vanished era when immigration worked: The Kite Runner at Wyndham’s reviewed
The Kite Runner, a novel by Khaled Hosseini, has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. Now it arrives on…
A three-hour bum-number by a German gas bag: Schiller’s Mary Stuart at the Almeida reviewed
God, what a dusty old chatterbox Schiller is. Like Bernard Shaw, he can’t put a character on stage without churning…
Scarcely worth discussing this daft old muddle: Hedda Gabler at the Lyttelton reviewed
Hedda Gabler is one of the most influential plays ever written. It not merely illuminated an injustice, the enslavement of…
For those who want to gawp at the underclass from a safe distance: Buried Child reviewed
Buried Child is a typical Sam Shepard play. The main character, Dodge, is a brain-damaged alcoholic cripple stuck in a…
A convoluted tale of eco-angst and earth-mother cant: Royal Court's The Children reviewed
What if? is the engine of every great story. What if the toys came to life when their owner left…
An undemanding and underwritten frivolity: Nice Fish at the Harold Pinter Theatre reviewed
An ice floe. Two anglers. Months to kill. That’s the premise of Nice Fish by Mark Rylance and Louis Jenkins.…
I'm not sure I've seen a more powerful finale: School of Rock reviewed
Who could resist School of Rock? For me it was a chance to see a heavy-metal musical written by the…
A treat to hum along to but don't ask me what it's about: Bowie's Lazarus reviewed
One of David Bowie’s last works, Lazarus, is a musical based on Walter Tevis’s novel The Man Who Fell to…
Glenda Jackson’s King Lear shows that men play unhinged warlords better than women
Dynastic affairs and international relations were once a seamless continuum. Royal weddings accompanied peace treaties. An heirless realm was vulnerable…
Like a kids’ entertainer on crack: Amadeus reviewed
Amadeus by Peter Shaffer is haunted by its own antecedents. Viewers are apt to feel that a new production lacks…
One of the ugliest nights of my life: A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer reviewed
Great subject, terminal illness. Popular dramas like Love Story, Terms of Endearment and My Night With Reg handle the issue…
A ziggurat of bilge: Oil at the Almeida reviewed
Ella Hickson’s new play analyses our relationship with oil using the sketch format. First, there’s a candlelit soap opera set…
Dazzling intellectual panto – but read Ulysses first: Travesties at the Menier reviewed
Travesties is a multi-layered confection of art, song, literature and pastiche. Tiny snippets of it are true. In Zurich, in…
Little to relish in this bracing portrait of a vain, brilliant fool: The Libertine reviewed
Here are three roles all actors love to play. The drunk (no need to learn your lines), the dementia victim…
Kate Tempest's poetry is simply no good
Kate Tempest, a 30 year old dramatist and poet, has an appeal that’s hard to fathom. Is it all in…
Hilarious, puzzling, boring: No Man’s Land at the Wyndham’s reviewed
No Man’s Land isn’t quite as great as its classic status suggests. At first sight the script is a bit…
Crowd-bewitching magic from Kathryn Hunter: Young Vic’s The Emperor reviewed
The Emperor seems like a worthy lesson in Ethiopian history. Haile Selassie’s final days are recounted by a retinue of…
What RSC’s The Alchemist needs is a James Corden or Matt Lucas
Coleridge deemed the narrative structure of The Alchemist perfect. But, I wonder. A landowner quits plague-ridden London and his cunning…
John Osborne’s The Entertainer is a big, fat, boring slice of prime-time chitchat
Kenneth Branagh’s obsession with Larry Olivier’s career is becoming such a bizarre act of theatrical necromancy that it deserves to…
Almeida’s new play blames Britain for the ills of the Congo – when the problem is clearly aid
In the 1980s, supermarkets stocked a fruit juice named ‘Um Bongo’ with the strapline ‘They drink it in the Congo!’.…
Did Rodgers and Hammerstein intend Allegro for the theatre? Or for euthanasia treatment?
‘European premiere of classic American musical’ is a phrase that deeply alarms the experienced playgoer. As I tootled along to…
Luvvie anger over Brexit is palpable at Edinburgh – and it’s exposing their true colours
Luvvie anger over Brexit is palpable. Lloyd Evans ponders the tantrums of the arts crowd
Nietzsche, Lembit Opik, the NHS and taxes: Edinburgh Festival Fringe roundup
Dominic Frisby is an actor best known for voicing the booking.com adverts (‘Booking dot com, booking dot yeah’). Voiceover specialists…
A filthy Noël Coward, snotty Frog, mad Swede and Maggie: Edinburgh Festival Fringe roundup
Plus: Geoff Norcott, a refreshingly brilliant new comedic voice, whose ascent Beeb censorship will impede. See him live at the Underbelly
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