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Pros: This never-before-seen play has funny moments and quirky characters. Cons: The meandering writing and cramped staging let it down. The Finborough, the dinky pub theatre above the plain but cosy Finborough Arms, is fond of rediscovering forgotten twentieth century plays. Sometimes, as with The Passing of the Third Floor Back last year, the attempts are charming and reasonably successful. This time, however, with war poet Robert Graves’ never-performed late-1929 play But It Still Goes On, the play feels as ...

Pros: The obviously enthusiastic cast make a decent attempt at Chekhovian drama. Cons: An awkward adaptation, misguided direction and a lack of depth let this production down. Why do we still love and perform Chekhov? Over a hundred years since the great Russian playwright’s death, this is a valid question, and one that director Phil Willmott tries to answer in his programme notes for Cherry Orchard (theThe has mysteriously vanished) at the Union Theatre. He wants to make the play ...

Pros: Everything about this production, from the performances and the writing to the music and the design, is fascinating to watch and touching to experience. Cons: It is hard to say anything bad about this deeply felt love story and the dedication of the team behind it. After captivating audiences at The Globe in 2016, Kneehigh’s play about Marc and Bella Chagall, art and love begins its 2018 tour with a four-week stop at Wilton’s Music Hall. Fitting the magical surroundings of Wilton’s like ...

This show constitutes an intriguing and enjoyable evening that entertains in the present but also raises interesting questions about the past.

This misguided attempt to write ‘the second-best historical musical in the West End’ falls flat overall.

Pros: This is a well-constructed production, at times charming, at times heart-breaking. Cons: Both acting and story become increasingly repetitive, interfering with the play’s ability to be at all memorable. We are in a flat in Belsize Park in 1991. Books, art prints, classical sheet music, old-fashioned furniture and other bric-a-brac are scattered about, whilst Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor Opus 25 plays. Otto Huberman, a dotty old man who is obviously the flat’s sole inhabitant, listens ...

Pros: Thought-provoking questions are raised in this well-staged drama. Cons: Unnatural performances, an attempt to explore far too much and an unconvincing sci-fi story let this play down. In Ian Dixon Potter’s play The Test, computer scientist Dora may be about to succeed in one of the great technological endeavours of our time – creating an artificially intelligent consciousness that can pass the Turing Test by being distinguishable from, and more like a human than, a computer. Though her colleague ‘The Professor’ is sceptical ...