I’m the last person on earth to utilise a football metaphor, but the recent Pinter at the Pinter press day (showcasing the first two of six productions of the prolific playwright’s one act plays) is very much a game of two halves. To the point it’s almost hard to accept they are the work of…

Chicago opened at the Phoenix Theatre in 2018, having run in London since 1997. The charming Duncan James brings a new maturity to a role he first played more than a decade ago. Here he is joined by X Factor star Alexandra Burke (who brings a shining charisma to her rather too hard-edged interpretation of…

Always Right There The all-female “Always Right There” (written by Natalia Rossetti and directed by Samara Gannon) combines two styles of theatre on a split stage: on the left, a pair of flatmates hang out chatting, eating hobnobs and watching dance movies over and over again. This naturalistic narrative is continually interrupted by a series…

I have always been a huge fan of Cicero, a humble lawyer whose extraordinary gift for rhetoric and oration saw him become one of Ancient Rome’s savviest political operator as Julius Caesar’s relentless march to power led to the death of the Republic and the birth of the Roman Empire. The life of an extraordinary…

When the programme notes reference “fake news” spread by “populist duplicitous politicians” you know you’re in for some contemporary political metaphor. Antic Disposition’s Richard III presents a modern dress version of Elizabethan play staged in a Medieval church, but the themes and bite are pure 21st Century. This mixture combines to create something timeless. Ben…

Three generations of women live out their lives simultaneously, in this devastating examination of inherited trauma, suicide, and motherhood. Two women kill themselves, slowly, for two hours. Time crashes into each other. Linear time ceases to exist. Past present and future elide. A triptych of female pain. Generations of hurt reach across the decades but…