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.
Deathtrap, Noel Coward Theatre
reviewed for The Spectator, 11 September 2010 When was the last time you shuddered in the stalls as a deathly thriller played out on stage? It’s a long time since the heyday of the West End whodunnit, when audiences piled tight into theatres only to better leap from their seats and squeal each time Death...
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How To Be An Other Woman, Gate Theatre
reviewed for The Spectator, 6 September 2010 There’s a moment in the Gate Theatre’s new devised play, How To Be An Other Woman, when an actress slowly mimes reaching for a book and ostentatiously flipping it open on a crowded bus. She tells her companion that she’s reading Madame Bovary. The...
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Music Review: Philip Glass in New Haven, Sprague Memorial Hall
reviewed for The Spectator, 30 June 2010 Philip Glass doesn’t approve of intervals. Last week, at Yale University’s Sprague Memorial Hall, the prolific composer gave a preview of what audiences in Dublin, Edinburgh and Cork could expect from his piano performances a few days later. He...
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Verse Makes A Comeback
written for Standpoint Magazine, August 2008 For the third time in a month I find myself invited to a play in verse. The renaissance of verse drama is an unexpected 21st-century phenomenon. Still common in the 19th century (think Ibsen and Oscar Wilde), verse drama became a rarity in the 20th century, with a...
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