London

Writer: Peter Shaffer Director: Ned Bennett Reviewer: Maryam Philpott We hear a lot about the psychology of a play and the relative success of a particular staging based on how well the director and cast have constructed the emotional, physical and intellectual world in which the characters exist. Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play Equus is even more unusual dealing with the practice ...

Writer: Tennessee Williams Director: James Mcdonald Reviewer: Karl O'Doherty The thickness of the air around the clifftop veranda feels almost physical in James Mcdonald’s production of this hot, sticky, sometimes disturbing, always intriguing play. Trapped in a Mexican rainforest at a tin-roofed collection of shacks trying to be a hotel where people can run to when their problems get overwhelming, ...

Writer: Patrick Barlow Director: Joseph O’Malley Reviewer: Scott Matthewman The creative history of this comedic production of The 39 Stepsis an interesting one. This parody of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film – itself a loose adaptation of John Buchan’s novel, published some 20 years earlier – first saw fruit in a version by Simon Corbie and Nobby Dimon, who retold the ...

Book and Lyrics: Tim Rice Music:Andrew Lloyd Webber Director: Laurence Connor Reviewer: Maryam Philpott Way, way back many decades ago, not long after Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice began, a musical phenomenon was born in a school hall. More than 50 years later this gateway show to a lifelong love of theatre is back at the London Palladium for ...

Writer: Tegan McLeod Director: Jonathan Martin Reviewer: Maryam Philpott Immigration and deportation programmes are notoriously bleak and devoid of humanity or compassion for the perceived criminal, and in America these processes are even more complex as Bounty Hunters and other kinds of hired law enforcement professionals play a part. Tegan McLeod’s first full length play in the UK Lunatic 19s: ...

Lyrics: Tim Rice Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber Director: Timothy Sheader Reviewer: Maryam Philpott It’s a great summer to be an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan with three notable revivals opening within a month of each other. In August, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre have Evita directed, intriguingly, by Jamie Lloyd who will almost certainly bring the same vigour and innovation that he ...

Writer: Ben Weatherill Director: Tim Hoare Reviewer: Scott Matthewman While the Dorfman Theatre is much the smallest of the National’s three stages, it can still be a struggle to make it seem as intimate as some of London’s smaller theatres. For a story of deeply personal relationships as Ben Weatherill’s Jellyfish, it means the cast – and the rest of ...

Writer: David Hare (after Henrik Ibsen) Director: Jonathan Kent Reviewer: Maryam Philpott The search for self may seem like a post-1960s obsession as the rise of individualism dominates society in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, but Ibsen’s 1867 verse-play Peer Gynt was way ahead of the curve, creating a protagonist who wanders the earth living by his own rules. ...