Theatre review: This Bitter Earth

Harrison David Rivers' two-hander This Bitter Earth follows an interracial American gay couple whose relationship is punctuated by significant events in the country's ongoing violent race relations - mostly the high-profile killings of unarmed black people by the police. They meet at a protest when Neil (Alexander Lincoln,) who is white and from a wealthy family, recites a poem by the little-known black, queer poet Essex Hemphill. It just so happens that Hemphill is a specialist subject for Jesse (Omari Douglas,) a black writer from a less privileged background, who's writing a thesis about him at the time and can mouth the poem along by heart. The coincidence makes him seek out the other man and they begin a relationship that lasts several years and sees them move in together before eventually leaving New York for Minnesota, where Jesse has got a teaching job.

Theatre review: Miss Myrtle's Garden

Next Bush Artistic Director Taio Lawson directs the first in his predecessor's final season of shows, and Miss Myrtle's Garden suggests we might get a continuation of some of the themes Lynette Linton's established: Not just stories that foreground queer people of colour, but also ones that take quite a literal approach to the theatre's horticultural name. Danny James King's play takes place entirely in the titular South East London garden, the pride and joy of Jamaican-born Myrtle (Diveen Henry,) but one she can't look after on her own as she gets older, with husband Melrose (Mensah Bediako) and old friend Eddie (Gary Lilburn) tending to the plants under her watchful, and generally judgmental eye. When her grandson Rudy (Michael Ahomka-Lindsay) visits and mentions that his rent is being raised again, she invites him to move into the top floor she no longer uses.

Theatre review: In Praise of Love

1973's In Praise of Love is one of Terence Rattigan's last plays, a time when his star was in the descendant, and at times it does feel like we're going to be in for the work of a playwright whose best days are behind him. But like its characters, it's got hidden depths to take you by surprise. Sebastian Cruttwell (Dominic Rowan) is a literary critic for a Sunday paper, a vocal Marxist with undisguised contempt for anyone who doesn't share his belief in the theory, but not particularly keen on discussing how the USSR worked out in practice. After the end of WWII he met Estonian refugee Lydia (Claire Price) in Berlin's British quarter, and married her so she could come back to England, with the intention of divorcing once she got her citizenship. Decades on they're still married, and have a 20-year-old son, Joey (Joe Edgar,) who to his father's disgust campaigns for the Liberal Party.

Theatre review: The Frogs

Director Georgie Rankcom seems to have established a very specific niche: Revivals of Stephen Sondheim obscurities that I'd previously seen at Jermyn Street Theatre, given bigger, better productions at Southwark Playhouse that still aren't enough to rehabilitate them. After Anyone Can Whistle it's the turn of The Frogs, Sondheim (music and lyrics) and Burt Shevelove's (book) short 1974 adaptation of the Aristophanes satire, expanded to a full Broadway musical by the composer and Nathan Lane in 2004. In a setting that's simultaneously Ancient Greece and the present day, the god of wine and theatre Dionysos (Dan Buckley) enlists his slave Xanthias (Kevin McHale) to help him travel to the underworld to bring back the deceased playwright Bernard Shaw: He believes Shaw's no-nonsense brand of wisdom is the solution to a modern world he despairs at.

Theatre review: This Is My Family

First seen in Sheffield in 2013, Tim Firth's (book and music) This Is My Family has taken twelve years to make it to London, and after seeing Vicky Featherstone's production at Southwark Playhouse I have to wonder: Why the rush? Nicky (Nancy Allsop) is a 13-year-old girl who's entered a competition to explain why her family is perfect, and has told the truth, but left out a few salient details: Parents Steve (Michael Jibson) and Yvonne (Gemma Whelan) have been together since they were 16, but they're drifting apart and Steve is considering taking a job in Abu Dhabi. Older brother Matt (Luke Lambert) used to be very close to her but now he's having a teenage druid phase and obsessing over his girlfriend. And grandmother May (Gay Soper) has the mischievous side she describes, but she's now also got fast-encroaching dementia.

Theatre review: After the Act

Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation whose phrasing is so vague it seems to have been drafted by people who don't understand any of the words in it may be recent news in the UK, but unfortunately it's hardly without precedent: That sense of déjà vu comes from Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which passed on a wave of "won't somebody think of the children?" moral panic and ended up, in practice, banning teachers from acknowledging to their students that gay people existed, even when those students were clearly dealing with a crisis of their own sexuality. The latest of David Byrne's (not that one) transfers from the New Diorama to the Royal Court deals with Section 28's toxic legacy, but while it's a subject I think is always worth revisiting and educating people on, for me Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens' After the Act, a play with music composed and performed (with Calie Hough) onstage by Frew, feels the strain of expanding to a bigger stage.

Theatre review: Marriage Material

Split between the late 1960s and the present day in Wolverhampton, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's Marriage Material, based on Sathnam Sanghera's 2013 novel, makes a connection between the politics of the two times that's hard to miss: In the first act, Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" speech is still fresh in everyone's memories, both the white racists who felt emboldened by it, and the immigrant communities who had to deal with the consequences. In the second act there's no single obvious instigator mentioned, but disenfranchised young white men are once again being encouraged to blame their problems on anyone with a different skin colour. These scenes are hard to miss, and they provide an important background to everything that happens to the central characters. What's impressive though is how this comes across without ever becoming what the story is really about.

Theatre review: The Comedy About Spies

Mischief Theatre return to the London stage, and to their trademark incredibly literally-titled shows with The Comedy About Spies, a 1960s-set espionage spoof that sees Soviet spy Elena Popov (Charlie Russell) stake out a London hotel to meet a British double agent who's going to hand over state secrets. She prefers to work alone but she's been given a partner in Sergei (understudy Niall Ransome,) who's way too invested in his own cover story as a spleen doctor. Trying to stop them making the exchange are CIA agent Lance Buchanan (Dave Hearn,) who's accompanied by his mother Janet (Nancy Zamit,) who wants to ensure he doesn't get his cover blown again like in every other mission. Meanwhile hotel manager Albert (Greg Tannahill) thinks all the suspicious behaviour is because a mystery shopper is in the building to assess him.

Theatre review: Radiant Boy - A Haunting

Nancy Netherwood's Radiant Boy is subtitled "A Haunting," and is framed as the story of an exorcism. But horror fans will probably be disappointed as this is a gentler, more elusive kind of haunting, more Emily Brontë than William Peter Blatty. It's 1983 and Russell (Stuart Thompson) has returned from London, where he's been studying singing at a conservatoire, to the home where he grew up in a small town in the North-East of England. He and his mother Maud (Wendy Nottingham) are awkward and chilly around each other, and while Russell claims to be ill, he seems wary of whatever cure his mother might have in mind, to the point of making you wonder why he's come back in the first place. It transpires he's had a kind of fit that's affected him before, and this time it almost caused him to hurt someone he cares about.

Theatre review: Shucked

Shucked by the power

Shucked by the power of love

OK they don't actually do that one, but Robert Horn (book,) Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally's (music and lyrics) Shucked does provide some catchy tunes of its own once it gets going. Contrary to what I said last year, apparently this is actually the official first show in the Open Air Theatre's Drew McOnie era (given La Cage Aux Folles was much-trumpeted as Timothy Sheader's swansong I guess the whole 2024 season was an extended perineum period?) A piss-take of the stereotype of small American towns with no interest in the outside world, Cob County is literally cut off from everyone else by a dense circle of cornfields that surrounds it, but when the crop the entire town depends on starts to fail, plucky Maizy (Sophie McShera) goes against everyone's advice to find a solution outside: She finds a way out and seeks help in the big city (Tampa, FL.)

Theatre review: The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea isn't the easiest watch in the Terence Rattigan canon but it's considered among his great works; that, and Tamsin Greig in the lead role, were reasons enough to revisit a play steeped in despair and redemption in its first return to London since the late Helen McCrory led it at the National a decade ago. The play opens with a suicide attempt: Hester (Greig) is found on the floor of her room in a dilapidated boarding house, unconscious but still alive next to the hissing gas fire. In an early example of how the play juggles the banal with the profound, her life was saved when the gas ran out because she forgot to top up the meter. Landlady Mrs Elton (Selina Cadell) and neighbours Mr & Mrs Welch (Preston Nyman and Lisa Ambalavanar) will get her help, but their meddling will also bring everyone from Hester's complicated life right back to her.

Theatre review: Romeo and Juliet(Shakespeare's Globe)

After Hamlet on the Titanic and Much Ado About WAGs, this spring's trio of super-high concept Shakespeare productions concludes with Romeo and Juliet: The Western. Although out of these three, Sean Holmes' production at the Globe is the one that engages the least with its high concept, right from the start when it becomes apparent that the cast will be using their own accents instead of going all-in to match the Wild West imagery. Paul Wills' design does fill the stage with cowboys and cowgirls, against a backdrop of swinging saloon doors - though apart from one ominous splash of blood it does all look rather new and clean in the town of Verona, where two families' feud has been a headache for the Sheriff (Dharmesh Patel) for many years. He finally concedes that he can't stop them attacking each other in private, but doing so in public will be on pain of death.

Theatre review: The Fifth Step

Back to @sohoplace, the theatre with a name so current it thinks it's figured out what the "F" stands for in TFI Friday, for David Ireland's latest play. And while one of the characters is a lapsed Catholic and the other embraces Protestantism during the course of the story, this sees the playwright widen his scope from the legacy of the Troubles that has been the backdrop to his previous work. Not that Luka (Jack Lowden) and James (Martin Freeman) don't have their own troubled histories, but theirs are with alcohol. Luka has just joined Alcoholics Anonymous and in the opening scene, following a discussion about the importance of choosing the right sponsor in which James could be construed to be pitching for the job, he does indeed ask the older man to mentor him. The sometimes fractious and combative relationship that follows starts to get even more personal once they reach The Fifth Step of the programme.

Theatre review: 1536

Anne Boleyn looms large over Ava Pickett's 1536, although she never actually makes an appearance*: Instead we're in a field in Essex with three regular young women, who we catch up with over the course of a few weeks as gossip reaches them of the queen's arrest for treason, increasingly lurid accusations of sexual impropriety, and eventually her execution. In the process we see them deal with the slow, horrifying realisation of just how precarious their lives are as women in Tudor England. Central to the story is Anna (Siena Kelly,) whose outlook on her own body and sexuality is very modern - she enjoys her power over men as much if not more so than the actual sex, doesn't particularly care if she's got a reputation in the village, and is currently hooking up with Richard (Adam Hugill,) even when she discovers he's about to enter into an arranged marriage with her best friend Jane (Liv Hill.)

Theatre review: Here We Are

Stephen Sondheim's final completed musical makes its UK debut at the National with a transfer of Joe Mantello's original off-Broadway production, although "completed" might be a bit of a stretch: The composer had given permission for this version to be staged, but mainly because he was aware he was unlikely to live to write a final version. So we end up with a show whose music and lyrics are very recognisably Sondheim, but which doesn't actually have that many songs mixed into David Ives' book. Inspired by two films by the avant-garde filmmaker Luis Buñuel, Here We Are looks at first to be a fairly straightforward social satire of the criminally rich: Leo (Rory Kinnear) and Marianne Brink (Jane Krakowski) are surprised by a visit from Marianne's sister Fritz (Chumisa Dornford-May.)

Theatre review: Much Ado About Nothing (RSC / RST)

Theatrical 2025 looks set to be memorable in part for Shakespeare productions whose high concepts tip over from the eccentric to the downright daft, and following Hamlet on the Titanic onto the RSC's main stage is Much Ado About Nothing, with Michael Longhurst's debut for the company moving the play from the world of soldiers and orange groves to that of professional footballers and WAGs. FC Messina have just won a European championship and the celebrations will be held at the home of the team sponsor, Leonato (understudy Nick Cavaliere,) a media mogul whose sports channels show all their games, with his niece Beatrice (Freema Agyeman) as one of the post-match interviewers. This is how she knows one of the players, Benedick (Nick Blood,) and the two have a brief sexual history that makes their encounters spiky to this day.

Theatre review: My Master Builder

Henrik Ibsen seems to be the current favourite classic playwright for modern writers to rewrite, rework and reimagine, in plays billed as inspired by his work rather than straightforward adaptations. And I'm sure sooner or later we'll get something that genuinely feels like it's reinventing the wheel, but right now I'd settle for something I can see the point of: Lila Raicek's My Master Builder isn't that. Henry (Ewan McGregor) is a superstar architect (or "starchitect,") who has just completed work on a new chapel adjacent to his weekend home in the Hamptons. On the tenth anniversary of his son's death, the building is to be officially unveiled as a memorial to the child, and his publisher wife Elena (Kate Fleetwood) is organising a launch party. As she plans the evening with her assistant Kaia (Mirren Mack) she reveals a somewhat twisted sense of mischief in some of the invitations and seating arrangements, but one guest has been invited for an even darker purpose.

Theatre review: Cockfosters

Taking its title from the station tourists mistakenly think has the smuttiest-sounding name on the Tube (only because they don't know how Londoners pronounce "Hainault,") Hamish Clayton and Tom Woffenden's Cockfosters is a short, affable and affectionate comedy about the London Underground. Technically the genre is romantic comedy, as it follows a journey on the entire Piccadilly Line route from Heathrow Airport to Cockfosters as Tori (Beth Lilly) returns from a relaxing holiday to Mexico and James (Sam Rees-Baylis) tops off a much more disastrous trip to Venice with the airline losing his luggage. But while the journey serves as an extended meet-cute it's really a framework for a series of comic sketches in which they encounter the various characters and situations that regular commuters will recognise - and generally dread.

Theatre review: Titus Andronicus (RSC / Swan)

There's splashguards for the front row of the Swan and grates have been installed on the voms to drain off a variety of bodily fluids, it must mean Titus Andronicus is back at the theatre where I first saw it. This time, a few decades after Actor Brian Cox famously advised him to play the role, it's finally Simon Russell Beale's turn to take on the Roman General who finds out to his (and his family's) cost that the trouble with hanging out with mad emperors is that they're mad, and also they've got the power of emperors. Titus is given the casting vote on who should be the next autocrat of Rome, and chooses Saturninus (Joshua James,) who instantly decides to abuse his power by demanding the hand (in marriage) of Lavinia (Letty Thomas,) his own brother's (Ned Costello) fiancée. When she refuses, her whole family are considered to have offended his honour, and as he's her father that instantly takes Titus from kingmaker to pariah.

Theatre review: The Brightening Air

Playwright and director Conor McPherson recently received a massive tax bill - at least that's the most obvious explanation for the frantic flurry of activity he's got planned for this year, when he'll be writing new shows, directing some of his old ones and, to start with, doing both: His new play The Brightening Air gets its debut production at the Old Vic, with the playwright himself directing and, to be honest, not doing much to dissuade me from my general rule of thumb that this is A Bad Idea. With nods to Chekhov that are acknowledged when one character jokingly refers to another by a Russian patronymic, the play sees a family reunite a few times at a remote family home - in this case a dilapidated farmhouse in Ireland. Middle child Stephen (Brian Gleeson) lives there with his Nonspecifically Neurodivergent little sister Billie (Rosie Sheehy,) who finds as much comfort in the familiar place as she does in discussing her wide range of fixations.