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.
Far Away, Young Vic, SE1
reviewed for The Times, 18 November 2014 Caryl Churchill’s Far Away can be an opaque and difficult play. Over a short, sharp 40 minutes we’re treated to fragments of story from a world turned in upon itself, in which even the basic elements of nature have taken sides in a global war. The logic of this...
Read MoreWildefire, Hampstead Theatre, NW3
reviewed for The Times, 14 November 2014 Roy Williams’s much-vaunted new play Wildefire is a study of policing and an exercise in disappointment. From his first hit, Clubland, an all-too-honest comedy of black masculinity, to the more recent Sucker Punch, set in a boxing ring, it’s been clear...
Read MoreNot About Heroes, Trafalgar Studios, SW1
reviewed for The Times, 13 November 2014 Dead poets can get one down. Any play about the doomed Wilfred Owen, all too aware of the futility of a war in which he would die at 25, risks wallowing in the maudlin. However, the surprisingly compelling Not About Heroes, a gentle two-hander about the...
Read MoreCamera Lucida, Barbican Pit, EC2
reviewed for The Times, 31 October 2014 If you’ve already encountered Dickie Beau, it’s probably as a virtuoso cabaret performer. An accomplished drag artist, he has a knack for making us look askance at the way we conjure bodies into being — not just our own, with the usual array of...
Read MoreThe Rivals, Arcola Theatre, E8
reviewed for The Times, 23 October 2014 Penned by the consummate satirist of his day, Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals should be a natural fit for the feisty Arcola Theatre. Dalston’s alternative theatre space has always had a healthy disrespect for the stale and conventional. Now, wheeling out...
Read MoreRachel, Finborough Theatre, SW10
reviewed for The Times, 8 October 2014 Few health warnings are as ominous as the blurb “rarely performed play”. Usually, they’re rarely performed for good reason. The first professionally staged play by an African-American woman, Angelina Weld Grimké’s Rachel, was radical in 1916. As a...
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