Plays on in London

In a wedge shaped set, bright yellow as bile, a machine does its work.  In Richard Jones’s staggering revival of Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 expressionist classic, our first glimpse of Rosie Sheehy’s Young Woman is the sight of her freaking out in a press of black-clad ’20s New Yorkers, her blue patterned dress frumpy next to their sharp, dark angles. The story cuts to her office. To the strains of what sounds like a demonic metronome, her colleagues gossip about her, repetitive gibberish underscored by their bafflement that the Young Woman is late – why would anyone would want to miss any of this?  Sheehy arrives and she’s not a timid wallflower, but earthy, speaking with a mile-wide Brooklyn accent. She lives with her elderly Irish mother, who is later delighted when her daughter reveals she has had a marriage proposal from her boring, unattractive, much older boss (Tim Frances). Her mum says she should marry him; an upset Young Woman screams like a wild animal; she marries him anyway. Jones’s production is a sort of infernal anxiety machine, percussive and remorseless, each hallucinatory scene immaculately crafted with its own distinct mood. Although the tone of the story changes repeatedly, catharsis is banned here. Hyemi Shin’s retina-searing set is unforgettable, Benjamin Grant’s sound design skin-crawling unnerving, Adam Silverman’s lighting exquisitely unsettling, Sarah Fahie’s movement ravishingly creepy.  Jones’s production is an infernal anxiety machine As much install

‘Nye’ will stream in cinemas as part of NT Live from April 23. The British, in case you hadn’t noticed, tend to get a little sentimental about the NHS.  So it’s understandable that playwright Tim Price and director Rufus Norris are wary of dewy-eyed hagiography when approaching ‘Nye’, a new biographical drama about Aneurin Bevan, the firebrand Labour health minister who founded the service. With the title role played by the great Michael Sheen, there is a danger of going OTT in having the nation’s favourite current Welshman star as the nation’s favourite historical Welshman. And so Norris’s production has a determinedly trippy quality intended to counter the cliches. Billed as an ‘epic Welsh fantasia’, ‘Nye’ is largely presented as the stream-of-consciousness of an older Bevan, who is a patient in one of his own hospitals. There for an ulcer operation, he drifts in and out of the present and into recollections of his past, unaware he is dying of stomach cancer – something his MP wife Jennie Lee (Sharon Small) has determinedly kept from him. Crowned by a truly uncanny wig, Sheen is a delight as the fiery but unassuming Bevan. He never at any point changes out of his red striped pyjamas, a pleasingly absurdist touch at the heart of Norris’s stylish production, in which the green hospital ward repeatedly dissolves into the past to the sound of wheezing lungs.  It’s otherworldly in places, especially the scene where Tony Jayawardena’s overbearing Churchill collars Bevan in the Co

This one-woman stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s short horror is a dizzying technical masterpiece, boasting a tour-de-force performance from Sarah ‘Shiv Roy’ Snook in a multitude of roles. It is also incredibly camp. As in literally one of the campest things I’ve ever seen, a show that makes ‘Mamma Mia!’ look like a monster truck rally. Wilde was of course, famously both gay and a waspish wit, and ‘Dorian Gray’ contains some of his most famous aphorisms (‘conscience and cowardice and the same things’, ‘the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it’ etc). But there is something particularly revelatory about adaptor-director Kip Williams staging it as pretty much a celebrity drag king show. Snook plays every single character; many minor roles are pre-recorded and consequently, she is able to be lavishly costumed in parts that range from elderly pink-haired gentlewomen to rough, bearded scoundrels.  On the whole, these bits are less kitschy than her actual live performance: surrounded by a battalion of camera operators, Snook is constantly giving knowing, eyebrow-raising close-ups as she flits between characters, each camera angle typically representing a different speaker.  Early on, Aussie Snook does little more than a quick expression change and tweak of her English accent when leaping between parts: when she initially walks on there’s virtually nothing on stage bar a large video screen. Things get fancier when she claps on blonde curls and mutton chops to play the

Jez Butterworth’s first play in seven years unfurls with the richness and depth of a well-crafted novel. Backed by West End super producer Sonia Friedman, ‘The Hills of California’ has a level of resource behind it that would probably fund whole seasons at his alma mater the Royal Court, where his previous works have premiered. But by heck the ‘Jerusalem’ playwright – and his big-name director Sam Mendes – know how to put those resources to work. Initially it’s pretty much a kitchen sink drama, following a fractious group of sisters: the Webbs. In the sweltering summer of ’76, they have reunited at their childhood home: a Blackpool guest house somewhat ambitiously called Seaview (it doesn’t have a sea view). The occasion is the imminent death of their mother Veronica, unheard and unseen upstairs, rotting away in the final stages of stomach cancer. It begins with a conversation between square, stay-at-home daughter Jill (Helena Wilson) and Penny (Natasha Magigi), a nurse who offers to put the family in touch with a doctor willing to end Veronica's pain. Jill is interested, but won’t do it until her sisters arrive, two of whom duly do: blunt, pragmatic Gloria (Leanne Best) and fiercely witty Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond). The final sister is Joan: we don’t know anything about her, except she apparently lives in America now. Her plane is delayed, and Jill is adamant they put any mercy killings on ice until her arrival. Unexpectedly, the second scene sees ‘The Hills of California’ shif

There’s been a frenzy of hype around Sam Grabiner’s debut play ‘Boys on the Verge of Tears’. It was the recipient of the prestigious Verity Bargate Award last year, and has found vocal support from big name playwrights Lucy Kirkwood and April de Angelis. But, the real attraction comes in the form of the director James Macdonald: a real industry legend, known for his work with the likes of Sarah Kane and Annie Baker. It is pretty remarkable that he’s take on what is in effect a fringe play – everything seems set for Grabiner to be something special. Short answer – he is. Set exclusively in a public toilet, with five main actors and over 50 characters, Grabiner has created an intimate study of men and boys, their potential for violence and pain. Following a rough chronology from boyhood to old age, with no break between the changing scenes, men from all walks of life flow in and out of the cubicles – sometimes pausing for conversation, to assess their appearance or for a second of solitude to take a breath. Although open to the world, the toilets feel like a place of private sanctuary: a home for lost, lonely children at birthday parties or a place for teenagers to get ready for the school disco. The door to the outside has the potential to swing open in an instant, but inside there is the sense of everything stopping. This is a space of confession, connection and frustration, somehow cut off from the rest of life. Yet, the potential for danger and cruelty is ever present. Fig

A ballad tells a story and writer Samuel Adamson starts his with a narrative misdirection: a woman is filmed playing a piano at St Pancras International and the footage goes viral, reuniting her with a man who professes still to love her. This looks like it’s going to be that story. But it’s not. And that’s precisely the point. As the play zips between the 1970s, 1990s and pre- and post-COVID-19, nonconformist Hattie (Sophie Thompson) and uptight James (Charles Edwards) meet as very different, talented teenage pianists at a cross-school production of Benjamin Britten’s one-act opera ‘Noye’s Fludde’. They rub each other up the wrong way, but like Velcro – forging a friendship that flies catastrophically apart after a tragedy. Like his previous play at Kiln Theatre, ‘Wife’, Adamson plays deftly with gender and expectation. The script wheels around and upends what we think we know about Hattie’s decline into self-destructive alcoholism and James’s success as a composer for an anodyne, oh-so-’90s Richard Curtis-style film about a cutout of a female character whose cancer teaches all the other male characters something. Richard Twyman's assured production doesn’t stint on showing the pain of the betrayal at the heart of the story, but also doesn’t neglect the beauty of the music. This is embodied by pianist Berrak Dyer, whose on-stage presence is far more effective than Edwards and Thompson pretending to play. She’s like a witness – providing fleeting moments of grace as they rest

Having signed his life over to a little show called ‘Succession’ for six years, Brian Cox is both making up for lost time and gleefully cashing in his move from ‘well-respected actor’ to ‘bona fide superstar’.  Last autumn he warmed up by starring as JS Bach in new play ‘The Score’ at Theatre Royal Bath. And now he returns to the West End for the first time in a decade to headline Eugene O’Neill’s masterwork ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’.  Hopefully he’s got a bit more in the tank after this, as despite a superb supporting cast, I’d say Cox doesn’t quite nail the role of James Tyrone, the patriarch of a disintegrating family, heavily based on O’Neill’s own dad (the playwright famously refused to allow the play be staged until after his death). Cox is decent, but I found his performance diffused by the production: director Jeremy Herrin takes a typically forgiving view of the Tyrones, which pays off elsewhere, but I think blunts Cox’s James; a successful actor embittered by creative failure and his failure as a father and husband. There‘s also another issue: fair or not, it’s hard to shake comparisons to Logan Roy - speaking in the same fruity brogue and in a role that’s very much about a father attempting to relate to his troubled sons who he himself has fucked up, there’s just something a bit… unhelpful about the resonance. The men are not the same: James is a frailer figure than the monstrous Logan (he certainly swears a lot less). But aspects of his Logan blur into his J

This 2019 drama about a Harvard professor who gets cancelled after he platforms a racist is never the play you think it’s going to be, and it’s all the better for it. Some LA critics were a little snooty about Paul Grellong’s play when it premiered there with Bryan Cranston starring. They’re wrong, it’s terrific. It has a genuinely exciting plot and a full-spectrum moral awareness of the murky motives and pitiless passions of identity politics; either of these qualities are a rare delight in new writing, and both together are an absolute treat. The weird and unmemorable title is the only piece of writerly fat in this lean and thrilling drama which peels the onion in six tense scenes, starting with a shocking and tragic event and then flipping back through the previous day’s events to reveal not so much whodunnit – because all are guilty – but when, how, and above all why. The professor who jump-starts the scandal, Charles Nichols, is not without good qualities: Julian Ovenden suffuses him with charm and kindness to leaven the flaws that will bring him down, mainly vanity and middle-aged white guy heebie-jeebies about his dwindling relevance. What’s horribly enjoyable and illuminating is the way the plot remorselessly strips the layers of camouflage off not just Charles but the four colleagues whose backstories, personal and cultural, are the long fuses to this moral conflagration. There’s Black TV star Baxter Forrest, played by the excellent Giles Terera, who conveys slick

Stage-loving Studio Ghibli fans are being treated like never before at the moment: hot on the heels of the RSC’s hugely acclaimed ‘My Neighbour Totoro’, here comes this spectacular Japanese production of Hayao Miyazaki 2001 masterpiece ‘Spirited Away’.  Adapted for the stage by John Caird – perhaps best known as co-director of ‘Les Miserables’ – with puppets by Toby Olié, there’s so much Brit talent at the heart of the production that a transfer always seemed pretty much bolted on, and it’ll play a limited run at the vast London Coliseum as part of a wider international tour.  If none of the above makes any sense to you, Ghibli is a legendary Japanese animation studio that has produced a string of much-loved, generally fantasy-tinged features over the last several decades. ‘Spirited Away’ is perhaps the quintessential work by Ghibli head honcho Miyazaki, concerning Chihiro, a young girl who inadvertently crosses over into a world filled with strange spirits of varying friendliness. Presented in Japanese with English surtitles, Kanna Hashimoto and Mone Kamishiraishi will reprise their role as Chihiro, and the large cast will be accompanied by a live orchestra playing Joe Hisaishi’s score.

Tyrell Williams’s debut ‘Red Pitch’ – transferring to the West End from the Bush with a million ‘best play’ awards in its wake – is so good that it might make you like football. It’ll certainly make you like the three boys who spend their days kicking ball on their south London estate’s concrete pitch, dreaming of playing for a big team, and gassing about the big things in a 16-year-old’s life (football). There’s lots to say about how the dialogue is like the game itself, lines set up and built on and passed to the next player, and how director Daniel Bailey brings a manager’s eye to the production, turning the actors into a tight, three-strong team, who move around each other like players on a pitch, all support and trust. But the point really is that it’s a brilliant bit of writing about gentrification, friendship, masculinity and aspiration, without ever being heavy-handed.As Omz, Bilal and Joey meet up on Red Pitch, holding onto the certainty of playground rules – last to touch the ball goes to get it etc – they charge towards a future that seems very uncertain. In the background is the regeneration of the estate: some families are moving but, some are staying with the hope that it’ll make ends better.For Francis Lovehall’s Omz the regeneration might mean the lift starts working again so his 81-year-old grandad doesn’t have to climb five flights of stairs. For Bilal (Kedar Williams-Stirling) and goalie Joey (Emeka Sesay) it’s a new start somewhere nicer, maybe with a gard