Monthly Archives: February 2016

August Wilson is one of the great American playwrights of the 20th century, up there with Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, set in the 1920’s, is part of his “Pittsburgh” cycle, consisting of ten … Continue reading →

Robert Icke’s ugly modern dress production doesn’t look like or sound like Chekhov. The slowly revolving set is not good for sightlines and three short intervals aren’t helpful for either the play or the audience. Icke is not the first … Continue reading →

Peter Brook has said that “in order to make good contemporary theatre, one must always look for a subject which concerns everybody.” Battlefields is a 65 minute extract from his legendary production of the Mahabarata and is about war and … Continue reading →

Matthew Perry, best known for his performance in the extremely popular NBC TV series, Friends, has written his first play which feels like a pilot for a TV series. Perry has loads of charm and knows how to deliver the … Continue reading →

The chief character in Robert Askins’s comedy is a foul-mouthed glove puppet who takes possession of a teenager. I recommend you give it a wide berth. It’s a really bad American play, puerile, blasphemous, crude and singularly unfunny.

Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder is open to many psychological interpretations and is not the easiest of plays. The critics at its British premiere in 1893 were quick to dismiss it as “three acts of gibberish… incoherent and absolutely silly… … Continue reading →

Peter Shafer, now 89, and probably best known today as the author of Amadeus and Equus, had his first big critical and commercial success in 1958 with Five Finger Exercise. Watching Jamie Glover’s excellently acted revival I wondered why it … Continue reading →

The horror of losing a child in an accident must be every parent’s worst fear and nightmare. American playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play examines the effects it has on a grief-stricken couple and their relationship and their relationship with … Continue reading →