On theatre.

Nina Conti is on the road this autumn and the sell-out show is really marvellous. It is clever, sharp and charming - rather as the on-stage presence of its star. Read more...

This is quite the show Billington, Purves, Letts and several others have noted. I only note that the musicals (both the Cole Porter show and the cod Broadway show he invents and parodies) are all the more beautiful because they take us closer to the sexual politics which Shakespeare's Shrew look at. Read more...

Terence Davies is said to be a sensitive chronicler of post-war Britain, but he sure mauled Terence Rattigan's Deep Blue Sea which really was a wonderful piece of post-war chronicle. (The CFT version was far better.)   Read more...

This was a superb The Browning Version with every nuance of the main characters richly and neatly done. Perhaps the headmaster was an ounce too bouncily nasty. Naturally enough. it's the Hare homage, votive offering, re-calibration (or whatever) of Rattigan which had even more of one's attention. Here's a first bash at an appreciation.... Read more...

The reviewers mostly got this right, as to the production. But several missed the main point about the nature of Rattigan's themes, and especially as we see them at work in this play. Read more...

This is a wonderful show, and Dominic Maxwell in The Times gets it more right, I think, than Michael Billington in the Guardian. But I would briefly add... Read more...

It's bad form to write crits of shows before Press Night, and this note isn't going to do that... Read more...

A slowish beginning and only one sure-fire hit song in the whole show. But The Times and Telegraph are right to rave and I add only a couple of things about this intense piece of magic.... Read more...

There are two powerful central performances in the Minerva's The Master Builder. Everyone else is strong. The set's lovely. So why doesn't this show quite work? Read more...