Jekyll and Hyde review
The Guardian 17 July 2023 It is not quite a Dylan-goes-electric moment, but for the first time in two decades neither of the plays being staged by Bard in the…
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Guardian 8 June 2023 It must be tempting for an actor playing Blanche DuBois to be unhinged from the start. Once they know the emotional battering the character is…
Gypsy review
The Guardian 29 May 2013 There’s something of the Mother Courage about Mama Rose. Like Bertolt Brecht’s play, in which a woman trades her way through the 30 years’ war…
Dear Billy review
The Guardian 19 May 2023 There is an air of Nick Park’s Creature Comforts about Gary McNair’s “love letter” to Billy Connolly. The performer builds his joyful one-man show from interviews with…
Anna Karenina
The Guardian 18 May 2023 It must be Saturday because Anna Karenina and her husband, Alexei, are having sex. The act is passionless and mechanical. They are fully dressed, the…
Protest
The Guardian 3 May 2023 Hannah Lavery constructs her play from simple sentences. Her language is clear and direct. Each line builds on the last, with primary-school economy. At first,…
Stornoway, Quebec review
The Guardian 9 April 2023 On the back wall of Becky Minto’s bar-room set, a temporary looking collection of rough-hewn wooden planks, are two framed slogans. One of them reads…
Kidnapped
The Guardian 3 April 2023 With the long-running Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of), playwright Isobel McArthur lit upon a winning technique – one as exhilarating as it was counterintuitive. You…
Macbeth (An Undoing)
The Guardian 9 February 2023 To summon up witches is to play with fire. Could the same be true about summoning up a dead playwright? That is what writer/director Zinnie…
Moonset review
The Guardian 8 February 2023 When you see the gang of teenagers who form a midnight coven in Maryam Hamidi’s punchy and poetic new play, you think of Shakespeare’s Macbeth,…