Are ‘Black Out’ performances really the answer to British theatre’s race problem?

Can an audience change the meaning of a play? It’s a question US playwright Jeremy O Harris, lauded as “one of the most exciting new voices of…

Punchdrunk: The Burnt City, review: not quite a theatrical Trojan horse

The latest from immersive theatre pioneers Punchdrunk is their most ambitious to-date, which is saying something given that Faust, their 2006 break-through, occupied five floors of a…

Punchdrunk: The Burnt City, review

Whether you can identify those concerned is another matter. This alt-reality, with sci-fi and film noir elements, is mainly populated by the spectators; there are fleeting, cryptic…

Put your claws away, theatregoers – and give Jodie Comer a break

It sounds as though Comer was a “natural” from early youth, and judging by the social-media reaction to her Prima Facie performances so far, the fans are…

Bonnie & Clyde: they shoot, you snore

“London’s most wanted musical” runs the tagline to this West End premiere of a Broadway flop (it ran for 36 performances in 2011), nodding not so much…

Bonnie & Clyde: they shoot, you snore

“London’s most wanted musical” runs the tagline to this West End premiere of a Broadway flop (it ran for 36 performances in 2011), nodding not so much…

Jez Butterworth’s bold, brilliant Jerusalem wouldn’t be written today

Then there is Johnny himself. He is feckless, deceitful, deeply dodgy, but Christ, I rooted for him throughout: yearning for him to have a proper relationship with…

Jez Butterworth’s bold, brilliant Jerusalem wouldn’t be written today

Then there is Johnny himself. He is feckless, deceitful, deeply dodgy, but Christ, I rooted for him throughout: yearning for him to have a proper relationship with…

Cabaret makes most other theatre look 2-D – no wonder it stormed the Oliviers

Of course there are singular reasons why the form adopted here matches the “content” so well. It’s hard to see the joins between the bravura realisation of…

And the award for best supporting actor goes to… the rear end of a tiger?

But even so puppetry has an image problem. “The ‘p-word’ is difficult. When I hear the word ‘puppet’ I flinch – I assume people are making associations…

Spring 2022’s hottest 100 tickets, from theatre and films to art exhibitions

EXHIBITIONS Henry Moore: Sharing For Spanning six decades of the British sculptor’s work, this intimate survey has been produced in collaboration with his daughter, Mary, who has selected…

Aaron Sorkin’s revelatory adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird blazingly captures the zeitgeist

Put simply, we may be rooting for him, but, in fact, he too is in the dock. What value is a noble-minded faith in “the system”, if…

Ruth Wilson deserves better than this voyeuristic portrait of a woman on the verge

What, you can’t help but wonder about half way through what is an extremely slow 70 minutes, made Ruth Wilson agree to star in this oddly unpleasant…

Punchdrunk interview: ‘Audiences are human – they sometimes misbehave’

While the company has been busy establishing itself as a global brand, most notably with their acclaimed riff on Macbeth, Sleep No More, which opened in New…

Cock, review: Mike Bartlett’s sexuality-crisis drama still just about measures up

Some of the most heart-stopping moments in the Elton John biopic Rocketman, the stratospheric hit which made a Golden Globe-winning star of Welsh actor Taron Egerton (of…

David Hare: If Thatcher had been in charge during Covid, ‘I don’t think so many people would be dead’

Since his recovery he has “streamlined” his daily life to prioritise his writing – and discovered that “if you just write, you will write an awful lot.”…

West End star sues Disney over claims Aladdin role damaged vocal cords

According to court documents, Miss Ewen had been cast as Princess Jasmine in the popular musical at the Prince Edward Theatre, in Old Compton Street, from April…

Cyrano de Bergerac, Harold Pinter Theatre, review: prepare to be dazzled by James McAvoy’s powder-keg portrayal

Don’t mention the nose. That’s the warning offered to anyone in the vicinity of Cyrano de Bergerac, who, in James McAvoy’s fiercely charismatic portrayal, is a powder…

The Chairs, review: casually brilliant buffoonery and chilling existential emptiness

It’s 25 years since London was treated to a superlative account of Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist masterpiece of 1952 in which a nonagenarian couple, marooned on a water-logged…

Rule changes have created Covid chaos in our theatres

As for measures like Covid passes, some venues have been stringent in their requirements. Moulin Rouge! The Musical was at the forefront of shows wanting to see…

The Glow, review: confusing time-travelling drama tinkers with history

After his 2014 cult breakthrough, Pomona, spiriting up a sinister netherworld nestling in the heart of Manchester, and then X, outlandishly set on a research base on…

Moulin Rouge! Piccadilly theatre, review: the perfect way to celebrate our post-pandemic freedom

Magnifique timing: as the curtain rises on a more carefree, post-pandemic period, those restrictions lifted, a restorative big party has got started in high style in the…

‘Everyone hated Bat Out of Hell’: how Meat Loaf made a misunderstood masterpiece

The tour finished and the album kept selling. There was immediately record company pressure for a follow-up. But Loaf wasn’t in a position to record. So Steinman…

British theatre is out of love with comedy – but not for the reason you think

These are not plays preserved in aspic, but works that offer abstract depictions of humanity which speak to us all; the RSC production of Tartuffe, for instance,…

Why this is the worst time for touring theatre in generations

Indeed, a more highbrow offering with a star name attached can reap rewards (as the touring production of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets with Ralph Fiennes has proved)….