The Royal Court’s international season continues with savage Ukrainian play about women and war

New comedy about race and housing is brilliantly written and its humour is a subversive joy

Stage version of Andrea Levy’s classic Windrush story is a fun epic that takes ages and ages to warm up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ten prompts for writing about the year 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bizarre, beautiful and breathtaking — time-travelling fantasia boasts a brilliant staging and a spoof playtext essay

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

Misogynoir gets the song and satire treatment in a show which is full of energy, entertainment and rage

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

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

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

Triumphant transfer of Jez Butterworth’s smash hit pastoral play lights up the West End

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

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

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

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

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

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

Link to a short review of Steven Berkoff’s Dog/Actor at the Etcetera Theatre

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

Uncertainty can sometimes provoke creativity.

Last night, at the opening of Mike Bartlett’s new play at the Royal Court, there were plenty of opportunities for ribald jokes about the play’s title, Cock.

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