Theatre


I currently write two regular monthly columns on theatre: one for Prospect Magazine as their theatre critic, and one for The Stage, drawing in part on my experience as Chair of the Drama Section of the UK Critics’ Circle.

Prior to the pandemic, I was the New York Review of Books‘ resident London theatre critic, and I had previously spent several years as the junior theatre critic at The Times, reviewing for that paper two or three times a week. I have also contributed theatre reviews to The Spectator, The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. As a theatre programme obsessive, I regularly contribute programme notes to theatre and opera venues, and welcome inquiries about potential work in this area.

As Critics’ Circle Chair, I organise our prestigious annual Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, the only awards made in British theatre purely on the basis of professional theatre critics’ votes, and without any input from vested interests within the industry. We successfully relaunched in April 2022 after the Covid-19 pandemic with a ceremony at London’s Ham Yard Hotel. I also maintain an active interest in arts philanthropy. I can date the moment I fell in love with theatre to a Joanna Laurens production at the Gate Theatre, W11. Consequently, I founded a Young Supporters’ Network at the Gate and have sat on their Development Working Group, which means that this is the only venue at which I now exclude myself from reviewing.



The Wasp at Trafalgar Studios, SW1

Posted on Dec 17, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 17 December 2015   At school, for just one year, Carla and Heather were friends. From year eight, however, Carla’s gang of fellow chavs made posh little Heather’s life hell. After school, it’s class, not cool, that counts, and when Heather seeks out her teenage tormenter...

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Around the World in 80 Days at St James Theatre, SW1

Posted on Dec 7, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 7th December 2015  Puck put a girdle round about the earth in 40 minutes. Phileas Fogg manage d it in 80 days, give or take the time difference. Fogg, of course, based his voyage on industrial age technology, not Shakespearean magic, and in Laura Eason’s adaptation of the...

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Dead Dog in a Suitcase (And Other Love Songs) at Shoreditch Town Hall, E1

Posted on Dec 4, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 4 December 2015 When the cult theatre company Kneehigh announced it was adapting The Beggar’s Opera, I expected a heterodox transformation. So, it seems, did the writer Carl Grose, who insisted on changing the title. As the programme intones: “it seemed an important statement...

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Desperate Measures at Jermyn Street Theatre, SW1

Posted on Nov 30, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 30 November 2015   What if the Sixties hadn’t kept swinging? Britain had a sexual revolution, but not everyone was ready for it. So the lyricist Robin Kingsland and the composer Chris Barton imagine an all-too-plausible reactionary coup in this musical take on Measure for...

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Portrait and Labels (RADAR Festival), Bush Theatre, W12

Posted on Nov 19, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 19 November 2015 Four years old, and the Bush Theatre’s RADAR is well established as London’s most inquisitive, unpredictable writing festival. Not everything is a world premiere: Chris Brett Bailey’s This Is How We Die, a viciously bleak state-of-the-nation monologue, has had...

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Pig Farm at St James Theatre, SW1

Posted on Oct 30, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 30 October 2015   In Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Stella tells her sister, of her earthy, abusive husband Stanley, “there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark that sort of make everything else seem — unimportant”. It’s the...

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