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.



Pioneer, Shoreditch Town Hall, EC1

Posted on Apr 17, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 17 April 2015     It’s not hard to see why this ambitious tribute to space exploration won a Fringe First award at last year’s Edinburgh Festival. Confidently devised by the Norwich-based ensemble Curious Directive, it’s inventive and visually clever in all the ways...

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Lampedusa, Soho Theatre, W1

Posted on Apr 15, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 15 April 2015   Last year 170,000 migrants risked their lives to cross the Mediterranean into Europe and 5,000 died in its waters. This week hundreds more are feared dead. Yet Anders Lustgarten’s new play, named after Lampedusa, the Sicilian island that has become the...

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Cyrano de Bergerac, Royal Theatre, Northampton

Posted on Apr 10, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 10 April 2015   Forget swashbuckle. Forget, even, panache. True, Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, the tale of Louis XIII’s most dashing swordsman, is a celebration of the high style. When written in 1897, Rostand’s “heroic comedy in verse” was already a period...

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The Father, Trafalgar Studios, SW1

Posted on Mar 19, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 19 March 2015   If ever you’re feeling optimistic about marriage, you can rely on a Strindberg play to get you down. Notoriously his 1900 The Dance of Death, in which a withered couple tear at each other and toy with their guest, pre-empted Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by...

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Fat Man, The Vaults, SE1

Posted on Feb 4, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 4 February 2015   Everyone from Monteverdi to Margaret Atwood has tried their hand at transmuting the myth of Orpheus, said to be the greatest singer in Greece but more famous for failing to get his wife back from the underworld. Martin Bonger’s monologue gives us Orpheus as a...

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Upper Cut at Southwark Playhouse, SE1

Posted on Jan 20, 2015 | 0 comments

reviewed for The Times, 20 January 2015   From her small flat, littered with cardboard boxes, political activist Karen is packing up her career and shipping out to America. It’s the land of Obama, Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King, the place where black communities first got organised and serious...

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