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.
Moonlight, Donmar Warehouse
reviewed for The Spectator, 15 April 2011 David Bradley in Harold Pinter’s Moonlight There’s a moment in Moonlight, Harold Pinter’s last full-length play, when Andy, a petty patriarch on a drab deathbed, accuses his wife of monopolising the love of his estranged sons. ‘They always loved their...
Read MoreTerminus, Young Vic
reviewed for The Spectator, 13 April 2011 No one can accurately imagine Hell. In Terminus, a magical paean to the art of storytelling, playwright Mark O’Rowe wisely does not try. The one soul in his universe who does manage to escape the place, finds himself, like Old Hamlet, unable to unfold its...
Read MoreThe Tempest, Cheek by Jowl at the Barbican Centre
reviewed for The Spectator, 11 April 2011 Rarely has a production of The Tempest been as bleak, powerful and urgent as this. The drama is often billed as Shakespeare’s last play, a retiree’s lyrical contemplation of the need for redemption and reconciliation in the later ages of man. The more we learn...
Read MoreIn A Forest, Dark and Deep, Vaudeville Theatre
reviewed for The Spectator, 8 April 2011 Neil LaBute is hard to like but easy to admire. So goes conventional wisdom on the subject of one of America’s most verbally violent playwrights. It’s a shame, therefore, that in this new tale of Hansel and Gretel grown up and gone wrong, there’s still plenty...
Read MoreCause Célèbre, Old Vic
reviewed for The Spectator, 15 February 2012 We theatre hacks are running out of superlatives to describe the current flowering of Terrence Rattigan revivals around the centenary of the writer’s birth. Notorious in his own day for his ability to dissect the morality of the midcentury Establishment,...
Read MoreA Magic Flute, Peter Brook
reviewed for The Spectator,30 March 2011 A new opera has breezed through London’s Barbican Centre. It’s a tale of arduous quests, initiation and male friendship, lyrical in its romantic sweetness, and vaguely reminiscent of the later Mozart. But Mozart’s The Magic Flute it most certainly is...
Read More