Pros: Outstanding performances bring passion to an effervescent script. Cons: Written 15 years ago, some of the sexual mores can seem outdated. An older man leaves his wife for a younger woman. It’s a story we’ve seen dozens of times before – but in Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith’s hands this age-old tale becomes something entirely new, through well-rounded characters and thought-provoking dialogue. George, in a compelling performance by Henry Goodman, is a celebrity intellectual, who dispenses his wisdom through TV ...

Pros: A wonderfully evocative script that allows an excellent cast to explore the humour, pathos and downright brutality of war. Cons: Some time might have been shaved off the 2 hours 10 minute duration for a more streamlined production. Sunday 11 November 2018 marks a significant centenary in the annuls of human conflict. One hundred years have now passed since the Armistice was signed formally ending World War I. The Great War was one of the bloodiest, claiming 17 million ...

Pros: The Wild Duck is a witty and inventive adaptation of Ibsen’s masterpiece. Cons: The play lacks in subtext and can sometimes feel more intellectual than emotional. Henrik Ibsen wrote The Wild Duck in 1884. He was white, Norwegian, and fifty-six. He had fathered an illegitimate child. His father was declared bankrupt. This is the truth, we are told, but from the very moment this word is uttered, at the beginning of the play, we are invited to question everything. What ...

Pros: An original play with a largely female cast. Good use of props and set pieces to create the multiple locations of the play as well as nice use of puppetry. Cons: The issue of feminism wasn’t really explored despite the gender swap of the lead characters. It felt like the script could have done with an edit to make it more succinct as was a little meandering in places. Burn-Bright’s production of Frankenstein replaces the male scientist from Mary ...

Pros: A sparky performance from the cast using physicality to strengthen a weak script. Cons: Disappointingly weak plotting, and a complete lack of suspense in a play that pitches horror as its central theme. Presented as part of the London Horror Festival, The Wolves of Erin tells a folk horror story in the vein of classic movies like Witchfinder General and The Wicker Man, two brilliant examples of the genre that naturally sets the bar very high. Curiously, the story begins in Northern ...

Pros: An exciting and unexpected take on the race debate. Cons: A good story, let down by the acting. The Incident, written by Swedish playwright Joakim Daun is a new and exciting piece of theatre that brings a fresh perspective to the international conversation about race, prejudice and otherness. It is a deeply worthy piece that brings some very interesting and unexpected nuances to a familiar debate. It’s a story of cross continental love between a Swedish teacher and a bright ...

A quirky interpretation of a classic, with curiously comedic nuances and gory details aplenty.

POT is Heaven Can Wait set on an inner city council estate. It’s bleak, desolate, and full of abject hopelessness. It’s also essential viewing for anyone who cares.

Pros: A potted history of artistic life in early 20th century Vienna, seen through the eyes of a 21st century writer. Music, architecture, art and psychoanalysis. From Freud to Jung, Klimt to Kokoschka, they all get a look in. Cons: Words get the better of everyone, on and off Sigmund’s couch. If music is the food of love, here both are thwarted in this tale of two composers, one triumphant, the other downtrodden. Gustav Mahler and Sigmund Freud meet in Leiden and ...

Pros:  The lighting director, Simeon Miller, should stand up and take a bow. The same goes for newcomer Alice Dillon. Cons:  The writing lets everything else down. Gaman translates as “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity”. Watching The Art of Gaman at Theatre503 certainly felt like an act of endurance at times, but like a good audience member I endured, politely watching as my confusion grew and my patience was severely tested. The Art of Gaman isn’t a ...