This time, I have time travelled with my companion Lia Ghilardi, crossing four hundred years of British theatre history.

Playwright or director? Who is ultimately responsible for a piece of theatre? Our Critic attempts to find out

New blood courses through the veins of the West End’s longest-running musical

Triumphant, if crude, West End transfer of a heartfelt account of a Renaissance woman who has been hidden from history

A festival of monologue responses to the Black Lives Matter campaign is personal, political and so powerful

Calling all drama teachers and students: let’s bring theatre history alive!

Fear, fury and fun in a new monologue that is a shout out for trans and non-gender-conforming rights

Roy Williams and Clint Dyer bring their monologue sequence to a triumphant conclusion — terrific!

New touring play from Eclipse is a wonderfully complex and emotionally powerful account of race and Empire

More overviews of British new writing from the In-Yer-Face Theatre archive.

The death of David Bowie provokes the Critic to take a trip down the motorways and side alleys of memory

One woman’s journey to explore the legacy of the slave trade is brilliantly personal and provocative

From the archives: the Critic takes an angry look at London’s West End theatre

In the Brexit era, this site-specific revival of Agatha Christie’s 1953 courtroom drama works like a treat

Moira Buffini’s ambitious state-of-the-nation, climate-change play runs straight into the doldrums

Yesterday I watched the streamed version of December, written and directed by Alexander Knott, and performed in the Old Red Lion theatre and pub.

In their companion play to Death of England, Roy Williams and Clint Dyer explore the world of Michael’s best mate — and how

Can the stranglehold of naturalism and social realism in British theatre ever be broken?

Sample a couple of paragraphs from the introduction to my latest book on postwar British theatre history

Powerful, poetic and profound: new play about love during the Bosnian war is beautifully written and compelling

Explore the work of a handful of British theatre’s brightest and most exciting writing talents

This time, I have taken a critical look at about 75 years of British theatre history.

Ten prompts for writing about the year 2020

The poet laureate’s verbatim play about Brexit sinks into journalistic and untheatrical banality

Bad stuff and change in a time of pandemic: a derivative lockdown poem

How can theatre respond to the racist shit that’s going down?

Gloriously surreal monologue about everyday anxieties in extraordinary circumstances: welcome back the glittering dark!

Censorship appears to be simple, but is actually quite complicated.

The longest-running play in world history is in good shape, despite the lackluster and mechanical cast

Super-star James McAvoy triumphs in Martin Crimp’s magnificent makeover of the French classic: a jaw-dropping success!

New debut play is a heartfelt account of the black lesbian experience — party on!

One from the archives: theatre criticism in an age of marketing

In the absence of live theatre during lockdown the Critic is obliged to review his own domestic daily life — with puzzling results

Al Smith’s new play was jinxed before it started — and, bogged down in cartoonish detail, it never really recovers

Mike Bartlett explores Englishness with enormous metaphoric zeal — and only a touch of preposterousness