Pix of the week: sneak preview of The Time Traveler’s Guide to British Theatre.

Text of the day: “That’s what politics is, Diana.”

Katherine Parkinson is a footsore Beckettian in a slender new monologue about struggling middle-class motherhood

Adaptation of Patrick Ness’s bestseller is coolly efficient, but rather unexciting and unimaginative

Thrillingly epic account of a defining American institution delights in three superb performances

We are living, I have frequently been told, through weird times.

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

Toff antics, nostalgic politics and troubled masculinity in Laura Wade’s exceptionally pertinent new play

Ace! Revival of Joe Penhall’s brilliantly written contemporary classic is superbly staged and brilliantly performed

Fierce new drama about slavery in 19th-century Barbados has some enjoyable singing, but the playwriting is uneven

Nina Raine’s new play performs a powerful autopsy on the bustle and emergency of hospital life

Amazing and ambitious epic from debbie tucker green compares the experience of black people in the US and the UK

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

New play about anti-semitism is viscerally powerful, and raises some troubling issues about insidious racism

Joe Penhall’s triumphant critique of the music biz explores psychology as well as beats — it really rocks

Promenade performance of a timely but unexciting new verbatim play about the NHS fails to thrive

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

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

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

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

Latest by the writer of The Iron Lady and The Hour is a ravishing study of love and death

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

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

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

The Critic releases a howl of anguish as he goes against the will of the people

Thrilling revival of Black Panther Danai Gurira's 2012 play about Christianity and imperialism is a heartfelt cry for justice

Waiting for Godot meets Exodus in powerfully antagonistic American drama which argues that Black Lives Matter

Alan Bennett’s latest black comedy, his darkest yet, is about the privatisation of social care, health and death

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

Julia Pascal’s retelling of the Medea myth situates the story in the contemporary struggle of the Kurdish people for their own homeland

Video recording of Graeae’s proud 2017 tribute to Ian Dury and the Blockheads brims with raunchy working-class nostalgia

Yippie! American play deconstructs Dion Boucicault’s 1859 melodrama, The Octoroon, and then some!

The problem with creating theatre in an era of lockdown is that the constraints of working online tend towards a uniformity of creativity.

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

Debut play about the parliamentary ruling class is timely, and amusingly perceptive, but ultimately unsatisfying

Theatre Uncut’s streamed film about social media and the woke generation is educational, but unexceptional

New short play about sex and shame is partly a campaign tool and partly a plea for openness and understanding

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

Out of Joint’s latest political play uses blatant agitprop to explore the current plight of the NHS

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

New adaptation of Albert Camus’s classic by Neil Bartlett is wonderfully restrained yet powerfully relevant

Miniature masterpiece by Duncan Macmillan is emotionally honest, and funny, but also sometimes a bit clichéd

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

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

Terence Rattigan’s best play stars Helen McCrory in an uncertain production that attempts an emotional update

Text of the day: “That little baby can’t be left alone in this country — this country full of people like Mr Blair.”

Very very very feeble: Martin McDonagh’s latest is poorly written, self-plagiarizing and lacks imagination

Some performances are legendary, and have a resonance whose ripples still affect us.

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

Quote of the day: “My heritage is Britain’s story too.”