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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Link to a short review of the multi-authored Living Newspaper: A Counter Narrative at the Royal Court

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nick Payne’s new devised piece explores gender — but what does a man really know about being a woman?

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

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

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

Simon Stephens and Juliet Stevenson create a perfectly beautiful and haunting installation for our times

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

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

New monologue about one man’s mental breakdown and his obsession with foxes is strong but too long

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

Quote of the day: “‘So was it all for England, then?’”

New docudrama about the 1915 Armenian genocide is a powerful denunciation of Turkey’s denial of these events

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

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

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

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

Philip Ridley continues to surprise and delight with this brilliant new monologue — in the teeth of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown

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

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

Powerful revival of Jim Cartwright’s 1986 modern classic comes alive in all its noisy, vulgar and transcendent glory

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

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

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

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

Ten prompts for writing about the year 2020

New monologue about rage, racism and national identity is magnificent in its fury and perception: grreeaatt!

Feminist account of British imperialism is energetic and passionate, but rather slender — is it a play or a lecture?

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