A string of seven awards for Sunset Boulevard was hardly radical, and many more daring theatrical successes went unrewarded The triumph of Jamie Lloyd’s reinvented Sunset Boulevard at this year’s Olivier awards seemed to send a positive signal to those who seek to show some daring in the West End. After scooping seven awards, the musical can certainly rest assured that it will make its transfer to Broadway on a high. Yet even with its technical dazzle and powerful performances, I’m not entirely convinced. Arising from the hugely commercial (and slightly cheesy?) Andrew Lloyd Webber stable with ..read more

Guardian photographer Christian Sinibaldi attended the annual theatre bash to catch Nicole Scherzinger, Sarah Snook and Cara Delevingne roaming around backstage at the Royal Albert Hall • News: Sunset Boulevard wins big at Oliviers ..read more

Theatr Clwyd, MoldLucie Lovatt’s elaborate comedy exploring the housing crisis in rural Wales is provocative and conceptually ambitious yet still pleasingly entertaining Caryl and Meirion seem to be the only ones left in the coastal Pembrokeshire village of Porth y Graith. All the other houses, still referred to by the surnames of departed families, have been sold as second homes and holiday lets and rumoured Senedd legislation might force the couple to also sell-up, allowing them the freedom to move closer to bus routes, hospitals and pubs that aren’t only open during the summer season. In s ..read more

Almeida, London Five American friends gather to catch up in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ new play. It’s a portrait of midlife malaise, but also a subtle meditation on post-Covid life A group of former high-schoolers meet, 20 years on, to reminisce and reconnect – or that’s the idea, anyway. Instead they end up drinking, fighting and ruing the disappointments of their middle-aged lives. What looks like a typical American reunion drama is – finally! – a thoughtful post-pandemic play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Big politics beyond the losses of Covid – America’s part in recent wars, 9/11, the storming ..read more

The Studio, Edinburgh, and touring The fifth of Rona Munro’s James plays fails to develop an interesting premise about a hidden romance A dark stage is lapped by flickering candles. Here, four actors present six characters and, briefly, a chorus that introduces the action: the date is 1528; Scotland is a country with “One god, one church, one pope… Until, one day, it isn’t.” James V: Katherine is the fifth of Rona Munro’s sequence of “James plays” set during the reigns of kings of Scotland. Her ambition is, the playwright says in a programme note, “to make invisible Scottish history visible ..read more

Gate Theatre, Dublin Set in a 1918 maternity ward, the play offers moments of tenderness amid its commentary on political and social upheaval A pandemic exposes deep social injustices in Emma Donoghue’s new play, set in Dublin during the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918. Over three tumultuous days in a maternity hospital, staff attempt to cope with emergency births. One teenager, Mary (Ciara Byrne), has no inkling of what childbirth involves; Honor (Úna Kavanagh), a destitute, unmarried woman, is delirious; and the complaints of the middle-class Della (India Mullen) provide much of the initi ..read more

Noël Coward; @sohoplace; Dorfman; London Ian McKellen reigns supreme in Robert Icke’s Henry IV mashup; Tyrell Williams’s coming-of-age football drama is bang on target; and the Brontë sisters are let loose – up to a point – at the National Go for the acting. To see a mighty actor at the peak of his power in his 80s, and a younger one beginning to soar. Robert Icke, the neon-intellect, rapid-action director who has scythed his way through Hamlet, Oresteia and 1984, has spliced together the two separate plays of Henry IV to make an epic portrait, Player Kings. The evening is powered by Falstaff ..read more

Sadler’s Wells, London The revered Malou Airaudo and Germaine Acogny kick off this year’s celebration of creative ageing, in a triple bill shared by Louise Lecavalier and Ben Duke Malou Airaudo celebrated her 76th birthday the other night. On stage. Dancing. The applause was led by her co-performer, Germaine Acogny, at the end of their duet common ground(s). Acogny is 79. Simply seeing these two great performers still making their moves feels like a validation of everything the Elixir festival is about. It’s a shame the piece is thin, relying on the women’s luminous presence for its effects. E ..read more

Hampstead theatre, London Richard’s Nelson’s elegiac monologue feels like Paul Jesson is live-reading a novel and results in a sense of stagnation Richard’s Nelson’s monologue, written for Paul Jesson to perform, is a meditation on life and death, the theatre and what it means to be an actor. Beginning at Waterloo train station, he takes us with him on a romantic train journey to the West Country to visit an old friend for the weekend, but also through his life’s memories. Alone onstage, the Actor (Jesson) shares his past with us, as if we were his old friends. He talks of his career, illness ..read more

The racist abuse directed at Francesca Amewudah-Rivers shows how casting decisions have been hijacked by the culture wars It’s a young actor’s worst nightmare: to land the role of a lifetime and then find yourself thrown into a media frenzy of vitriol. Over the past two weeks, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers has been the target of an intense and hateful backlash after she was cast in an upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet, opposite Tom Holland’s Romeo. The critical comments made about her casting are unquestionably racist, colourist and misogynistic, and they have highlighted how difficult it ca ..read more