Month: October 2023

Miriam Battye’s Strategic Love Play (a hit at 2023’s Edinburgh Fringe) is a cutting and clever look at the absurdities of dating apps and the awkwardness of navigating a first meeting with a complete stranger who might yet be a potential romantic partner. But it also seems to go beyond 21st century hang-ups and ends… Continue reading Strategic Love Play

As evenings get longer and nights get darker, theatres tend to look to ghost stories to give audiences a fright. The onstage equivalent of a white-knuckle ride which can keep theatregoers on the edge of their seats is always popular—and 2023 seems to be continuing the tradition. Take Nottingham’s Theatre Royal, for instance. This autumn… Continue reading The Signalman

I’d like to know what happened to Twyla Tharp’s Roy’s Joys. Billed with Ronald K Brown’s Dancing Spirit and Ailey’s Revelations in the Modern Masters programme, it was replaced on its first night, and on the second night I had hoped to see it. Excuse was the usual “due to ill health”. Looking at the… Continue reading 21st Century Creations / Modern Masters

So the New Wolsey Theatre’s autumn season opens with a multi-award-winning play by a writer whose credits include the films Closer and Notes on a Scandal—and starring an actor who played Lee Banks in BBC’s Line of Duty. If that’s not enough to draw you in, it also has two other terrific cast members and… Continue reading The Red Lion

So much of the dramatic and emotional impact of Matthew Seager’s In Other Words derives from its stark juxtapositions—mood and movement, structure and sound, light and language, past and present—that comfort, then disturb, with disorientating effect. First seen in 2017 and revived here at the Arcola (in partnership with The Utley Foundation’s Music For Dementia… Continue reading In Other Words

Thirty years ago, a young man with aspirations to being an architect was on a street in Eltham, southeast London, waiting for a bus to take him and his friend Duwayne home when he was attacked and killed. This isn’t a play about the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 but a positive response to… Continue reading The Architect

A brilliant revival by director Nicholai La Barrie—with a pertinent slow revolve set and design by Lily Arnold—milks God of Carnage more for comedy than tragedy though the play itself walks a fine Beckettian line. The press night audience take it for a sitcom slapstick farce, if my laughter monitor is correct. How you see… Continue reading God of Carnage

A hit on the West End for some time now, with productions on four continents and a wheelbarrow-load of awards, 2:22: A Ghost Story has enjoyed a hell of a post-pandemic run. Now Danny Robins’s take on the ghost story genre embarks on a nationwide tour in a bid for more jumps and scares. 2:22:… Continue reading 2:22: A Ghost Story

What goes on backstage doesn’t stay backstage in this most riotous—and most British—of stage comedies. Michael Frayn’s inside-out farce may be a little over 40 years old but shows no signs of slowing down in its ability to conjure up a compendium of British comedy. Frayn came up with the idea watching one of his… Continue reading Noises Off