Jeremy Malies on the South Bank 23 April 2024 “This is the story of a river / That springs from the mudbanks.” It is of course easy to point out one naff couplet over an evening; you could do it for anybody from Stephen Sondheim to Cole Porter. But it was the lyrics in this adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend by Ben Power that sat uneasily with me. The novel is presented as a play with music by Power who is jointly responsible for the lyrics with singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. Her sombre funereal music (she is known for wanting to make the listener feel uncomfortable) struck me as ..read more

Simon Jenner in north London 19 April 2024 A woman sits and plays the piano at St Pancras International Station in 2019. A man, James, catches his breath and someone’s clip goes viral. By April 2024 she’s playing in the Royal Albert Hall. But James’s gasp goes back to 1966 and for 20 years he has not spoken to her. Samuel Adamson’s The Ballad of Hattie and James opens at Kiln Theatre directed by Richard Twyman until 18 May.   Photo credit: Mark Senior.   Hattie’s a prodigy, at 63. It’s an interrupted prodigiousness. “Do you want to pay primo or secondo, James,” she asks him when the ..read more

Neil Dowden in north London April 17 2024 Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has established himself as one of the leading young American dramatists with a string of critically lauded plays satirizing issues around heritage, identity, and race – several of which have also been staged successfully in London. An Octoroon and Appropriate (which shared the 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play) have been seen at the Orange Tree/National Theatre and Donmar Warehouse, respectively, while Gloria (shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize) was produced at Hampstead Theatre. Now The Comeuppance, which premiered in N ..read more

Neil Dowden in the West End 15 April 2024 Robert Icke has made his name creating radical reinterpretations of classic drama, such as his multi-award-winning production of Oresteia, Andrew Scott’s Hamlet, and Oedipus (which finally arrives in London in the autumn, starring Mark Strong and Lesley Manville). His shows have become events. But for Player Kings (his adaptation of Henry IV Parts 1&2 into one play, directed by himself), the biggest draw is undoubtedly Sir Ian McKellen playing Sir John Falstaff for the first time as he approaches 85. And while this version is not as revelatory as s ..read more

Jeremy Malies in the West End 9 April 2024 As Mary, the morphine-addicted matriarch hurtling towards oblivion at the end of a needle here, Patricia Clarkson tells us that her first glimpse of dashing young actor James Tyrone (Brian Cox) put paid to any thoughts she had of being a musician or nun.   Brian Cox as James Tyrone. Photo credit: Johan Persson.   Well, even as we look back to their youth, that is difficult to credit on this showing in a version where Clarkson out-acts (though never upstages) the male lead. And it’s Clarkson who conjures up her character with the most invent ..read more

Mark Shenton in south London 8 April 2024 The late Kevin Elyot wrote only a handful of plays, but they blazed a trail for confident, complex, and moving portraits of gay life. His best known was My Night with Reg, a tender, surprising portrait of gay friendships over a number of years, and the shadows cast by HIV on all of them. It premiered at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs in 1994, and subsequently transferred to the West End – a route also followed by a 2014 revival at the Donmar Warehouse.   Alexander Hulme and Theo Walker. Photo credit: Mark Senior.   The Royal Court also p ..read more

Simon Jenner on the South Bank 8th April 2024 “This … is not about me,” Charlotte Brontë (Gemma Whelan) keeps asserting, after asking the audience what their favourite Brontë novel is. Then often qualifies it: “But Reader … I think you know who’s most quotable.” Sibling rivalry and support powers Sarah Gordon’s Underdog: The Other Other Brontë, which premieres at the National Theatre’s Dorfman before proceeding to Northern Stage in Newcastle upon Tyne. This comically irreverent take on the Brontë legend is given an almost vaudevillian production by Northern Stage’s artistic director Natalie Ib ..read more

Tom Bolton in north London8 April 2024 “Make Mine a Double”, the Park Theatre’s initiative to get more early career and fringe theatre-makers onto its stages, is back. Devised in 2022, it offers theatregoers more for their money with two shows in an evening in their smaller, Park90 space. It is an admirable initiative, expanding the Park’s repertoire and giving it a new and potentially important role in the fringe ecosystem, which needs all the help it can get. As a result, this month audiences have the chance to see two one-woman shows from up-and-coming writer/performers which otherwise migh ..read more

Jeremy Malies in south-east London 4 April 2024 “They wouldn’t have lasted a day in the Sixties!” For me, it’s the best line in Paul Grellong’s play (set in 2019) about fictitious events surrounding cancel culture, deplatforming, and student rioting at Harvard University. The play comes to London after a premiere in Greenville (South Carolina) in 2019 and a run in Los Angeles in 2022.   Julian Ovenden as Charles. Set by Paul Farnsworth. Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.   Charles, a faculty head played by Julian Ovenden, has what you might intuit would be normally good judgement swayed w ..read more

Simon Thomas in the South West 1 April 2024 Premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in 1962, The Collection is one of Harold Pinter’s funniest plays. It has all the Pinter hallmarks: a threatening intruder, exquisitely painful but doomed attempts to control, and a flow of urbane epigrams and non-sequiturs. The most mundane utterances – “Do you have any olives?”, “Did I?” “You’re a wag” – are filled with violently sexual impulses and desperate longings for assurance, both surprising and delighting with their unexpectedness.   Mathew Horne. Photo credit ..read more