Theatre

Dear Evan Hansen, by Steven Levenson, opens as a standard American teen-angst musical. Evan is a sweaty geek with a crush on Zoe Murphy whose rebellious brother, Connor, is so disturbed that he styles his hair to suggest ‘school-shooter chic’. Evan tries to befriend Connor but gets shoved to the ground. Then, a bombshell. Connor

When the RSC does modern drama it usually lays on an ultra-worthy yarn with a huge cast, dozens of fancy costumes and a three-hour running time. Miraculously, its new co-production with the Arcola avoids these faults and delivers a terse, gripping 75-minute documentary drama based on the prison diary of Turkish journalist, Can Dundar. In

The Antipodes, by the acclaimed dramatist Annie Baker, is set in a Hollywood writers’ room. Seven hired scribblers are brainstorming a new animated feature under the direction of a mysterious, bearded multimillionaire, Sandy, who seems thoroughly bored with the movie-making process. The script is in its early stages and Sandy decrees that the central character

The Royal Court is the theatre’s answer to Islamic State, a conspiracy of nihilists fascinated with death, supported by groups of self-flagellating puritans, and committed to inflicting pain on all who stray into its orbit. The latest fatwa from Sloane Square concerns the imminent demise of the Welsh language — an emergency for which there

No power on earth can stop Lungs from becoming an international hit. Duncan Macmillan’s slick two-handed comedy reunites Matt Smith and Claire Foy from The Crown. It’s short (90 mins), it has a minimalist set (‘arty’), and it makes no intellectual demands on the crowd (phew!). Best of all, it parrots all the ecological prejudices

Athol Fugard likes to dump his characters in settings with no dramatic thrust or tension. A prison yard is a favourite. He specialises in bored, talkative characters who squirt the time away swapping memories and indulging in bursts of creative play-acting. It’s dull to watch but good fun to perform. Thesps love to step out

The Man in the White Suit, famously, is a yarn about yarn. A brilliant young boffin stumbles across an everlasting polymer thread but when he tries to profit from his discovery he faces unexpected ruin. There are only three beats in the story — breakthrough, triumph, disaster — so it needs to be elaborated with

Michael Frayn’s backstage comedy, Noises Off, is the theatre’s answer to Trooping the Colour. Everyone agrees that it’s an amazing display of synchronised choreography but does anyone actually want to see it? Yes, to judge by the press-night crowd at the Garrick. The joint was packed. The show opens at the dress rehearsal of a

Caryl Churchill is back at the Royal Court with a weird collection of sketches. The first is set on a mantelpiece where a clock, a vase, a statuette and a plastic dog discuss their lives. These ornaments morph into human teenagers. One is a lad who wants to die after being raped by his father.

Tony Hawks’s musical, Midlife Cowboy, has transferred from Edinburgh to the Pleasance, Islington. At press night, the comedy elite showed up (Andy Hamilton, Angus Deayton, Caroline Quentin, Alistair McGowan) to see Hawks playing a songwriter, Stuart, whose marriage is on the rocks. To revive his love life, Stuart puts his wife in charge of the

Pub quiz question: what do John Osborne, Brian Friel and Patrick Marber have in common? The answer is they’ve all written their own versions of Hedda Gabler. Although none of them, it should be noted, to any particular critical acclaim. Is it time to give up on the Hedda adaptations altogether and just stick to

Hansard is the debut play by actor Simon Woods, who enjoys a deep knowledge of his subject. The characters are a middle-aged couple, the Heskeths, who occupy ‘a country house in Oxfordshire. Georgian. Good bones. Not large’. The year is 1988 and Robin is a busy Tory MP whose wife Diana has realised that she

The Secret River opens in a fertile corner of New South Wales in the early 1800s. William, a cockney pauper transported to Australia for theft, receives a pardon from the governor and decides to plant a crop on 100 acres of Aboriginal land. His doting wife, Sal, begs him to take her and their young

Stephen Fry lies prone on an empty stage. A red ball rolls in from the wings and bashes him in the face. He stands up and introduces himself as Odysseus, stranded on an island-kingdom as he makes his way home after the Trojan War. The ball had escaped from the hands of a clumsy maidservant

Some of the marketing efforts by amateur impresarios up in Edinburgh are extraordinary. I was handed a leaflet for a poetry show called Don’t Bother. I didn’t. Tony Slattery appears in Slattery Will Get You Nowhere (a good pun that advertises the content), in which the ageing comic takes the audience back to the 1990s.