"He thinks too much - such men are dangerous" Though it is billed as 'a promenade staging' and the website refers to 'mob tickets' and 'immersive ticket holders', make no mistake that if you're in the pit for Julius Caesar, you're standing. For two hours. There's a bit of movement, as in five paces that way or this when a new bit of the set has to wheeled into place but don't be distracted into thinking there's anything more on offer here than can be gotten further along the South Bank at the Globe (apart from a roof of course, which allows them to charge five times the price, or three times ..read more

"I've never had a lover die on me before" Chemsex is one of those subjects that always seems to pop up at festivals and sure enough, in week 1 of the VAULT we find a new play on the very subject by Christopher Adams. But with a sparkingly fresh and darkly witty take and some intelligent and imaginative direction from Matt Steinberg, Tumulus emerges as a cracking piece of theatre, a "chilling queer noir" that entertains as much as it elucidates. Anthony is well and truly addicted to the chemsex scene in London. He's holding down his job as an assistant curator at the British Museum just abou ..read more

"What kind of person isn't interested in politics" A black man, a woman and a young gay lad walk into an Ohio bar - it may sound like the set-up for a joke but as they start to talk about how much they like Trump, we realise it is a nifty little conceit at the heart of new musical Great Again. Sidestepping the predictable, writer Isla van Tricht uses this trio to spearhead her investigation into the ideology behind young conservatives and the ways in which they coalesced behind the unlikeliest of presidential candidates in 2016.  In their Midwestern home of Beavercreek, Ohio, Josh and ..read more

"He received them with a strange delight" As an intellectual exercise, Golem!'s Tomorrow Creeps is something of a delight - a new play by David Fairs stitched together from 16 works by Shakespeare and shot through with lyrical inspiration from Kate Bush. And in the dark and dank surroundings of the Cavern, with creepingly textured sound work from Odinn Hilmarsson and a powerfully atmospheric lighting design (uncredited), the potential of the piece is palpable. The reality is something a little more elusive though. In this shadowy world, strangeness abounds. The Hollow Hero has imprisoned Th ..read more

"If you knew everything about my life, you wouldn’t like me. 'I don’t think there’s a person in this world you could say any different about.'" Things worth beginning: - a nice run of plays transferring into the Ambassadors as it really is a nicely intimate theatre and obvs it has now been released from the long-running tyranny of Stomp - a playlist based on cheesy tunes in the style of Modjo's Lady (Hear Me Tonight), or maybe just find my copy of Now 47 - a reassessment of David Eldridge (on my part at least) as the troubled memory of The Knot of the Heart far outweighs the glories of In ..read more

The finalists of the The Offies 2018 have been announced and as ever, there's much of interest there, in the choices made and the breadth of Off West End theatre celebrated. Play-wise, I'm delighted at the love for The Revlon Girl and An Octoroon here, nice to see the Bunker's Eyes Closed Ears Covered rewarded too, plus Will Pinchin's work in Frankenstein. With the musicals, I'm not down with the love for Promises Promises, an ill-judged revival that added nothing to the conversation (and even less in these #MeToo times) and I'm disappointed that none of the boys of Yank! were recognised. Th ..read more

"Must you scribble all the time, Jane?" Making a visit to London in the midst of a UK-wide tour, Rob Winlow's Austen the Musical is a rather low-key affair but one which has moments of delicate beauty. It takes a biographical slant on the novelist's life, focusing on the apparent sparseness of her romantic affairs and how, if at all, this impacted on the richness of her writing, concerned as it was with love and romance and marriage. It's a slight concept to rest a show on, given the inherent nature of fiction writing, but one which grows in strength the more it relies on its central perfor ..read more

On the one hand, that the Vault Festival has expanded to over 300 shows running over 8 weeks is fantastic news for the emerging theatremakers that it supports. On the other, it means making the choice about what to see, even tackling the catalogue alone can feel somewhat daunting. It has taken me a wee while to get round to delving into it myself, but as the festival is set to open this week, here's some of my top tips for each week. Week 1 Tomorrow Creeps - repurposed Shakespeare via the medium of Kate Bush? Hell, yes. Tumulus - it's not a festival unless there's a chemsex show Gre ..read more

"Modern art is never an answer, it is a question" Woman Before A Glass may be a one-woman show but what a woman it reveals to us. Peggy Guggenheim was born into one of the wealthiest New York socialite families at the dawn of the twentieth century and during a most unconventional lifetime, became a mainstay of the modern art scene. The art, and artists, that she collected made her Venetian palazzo one of the hottest spots to be seen and it is there that we visit her for the three key scenes of this play by Lanie Robertson. The first is introduced with a wonderfully clever conceit - searchin ..read more

"We were both ordinary men, he and I." Though Rufus Norris' tenure hasn't managed to nail a new writing hit in the Olivier, it has had considerable success in finding revivals to fill this voluminous space. Follies was a standout from last year, particularly in how Vicki Mortimer's design swelled to magnificent heights and late in 2016, it was a glorious production of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus that rose to the occasion. So it is no real surprise to see that show return to the schedule, indeed the surprise was that it might even have gotten better. That this is Michael Longhurst's debut in thi ..read more