Arriving at the Trafalgar Studios after a wave of critical acclaim at its National Theatre run earlier this year, Nine Night already bears the acclaim and intense scrutiny that comes with being the first ever West End play written by a black woman. Fortunately, it is more than well-equipped to handle the unfair burden that…

Since opening its doors in 2016, Southwark’s Cervantes Theatre has quietly become a force to be reckoned with, with intimate bilingual stagings of classic Spanish works, counterpointed with new writing. In their current production of Yerma, Lorca’s enduring “tragic poem”, director Jorge de Juan has seamlessly transposed the action to an Afro-Cuban setting, where the…

Off the back of a two-year Edinburgh Fringe tenure and a tidal wave of rapturous reviews, Hull playwright Luke Barnes’ gig theatre opus All We Ever Wanted Was Everything arrives at Shepherds Bush. Spanning a 30-year timeline from 1987 to 2017, the play drops in on our everyman heroes, Leah and Chris, at ten-year intervals…

Set backstage at a ropey production of a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Kiss Me Kate has endured now for 70 years since its Broadway debut to become arguably the most famous backstage musical in history, and Cole Porter’s most fondly remembered work. Opera North’s revival of their 2015 production, which…

Under the tenure of Paul Miller, the Orange Tree Theatre has shown a fierce commitment to new writing, but Joe White’s Mayfly is the first debut play to be staged there since Miller’s ascendancy, and it’s easy to see why it made the cut. Set in a remote village in Shropshire, Mayfly takes place over…

Following a well-received run at the Edinburgh Fringe, actor Monica Dolan’s writing debut arrives at the Bush Theatre. A provocative monologue performed by Dolan herself, The B*easts tackles the sexualisation of children, and nudges us into a hypothetical future that feels all too possible. The central premise of the show, while a surprise, is not…

Following the success of their immersive Gatsby musical last year, The Guild of Misrule have once again taken up residence in the Waterloo Vaults with another immersive musical tale. This time the source material is JM Barrie’s enduring classic, Peter Pan, although this adaptation is definitely not intended for children. Rather than a straight adaptation…

What makes a man a monster? It’s no small question, and the one raised by Joe Sellman-Leava in his new work Monster, that attempts to deconstruct a facet of monstrousness – specifically, toxic masculinity. Originally debuted at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, author and performer Sellman-Leava had no way of knowing his piece would be…

Over the last few years, the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond has put itself back on the map for a younger generation of theatregoer, with an eclectic and unpredictable programme of events that sees challenging new work aired as frequently as lost classics, and it’s in the vein of the latter that Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance…