AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮ 1/2 David Hare's Skylight Wyndham's Theatre | London directed by Stephen Daldry It’s been more than twenty years since David Hare’s Skylight premiered at the National Theatre. Now, in a post-Thatcher world, Stephen Daldry has brought this time capsule of a play back to the London stage. Tom Sergeant is a successful business man, a role originally created by Michael Gambon succeeded here by Bill Nighy in its first West End transfer – alongside him Carey Mulligan masterfull

✮✮✮ Tim Crouch's Adler & Gibb The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Tim Crouch For the conceptually-challenged – or just plain baffled – a recent interview from Tim Crouch might prove something of a Rosetta Stone for his productions. “If we work too hard at making everything look like the thing we say it is,” the writer and director says, “then we’re also removing any sense of the game of art.” In the case of Adler and Gibb, the game of art is a scavenger hunt for sens

✮✮✮✮ Anne Washburn's Mr Burns Almeida Theatre | London directed by Robert Icke Huddled round a campfire, post-apocalyptic refugees try to remember the words to a sacred text – it’s recited, puzzled over, and elaborated on. This safe spot in a poisoned America? Cape Feare: The Simpsons episode where Sideshow Bob’s quest to kill Bart reaches dramatic, gothic heights. It’s no coincidence that these reminiscers refer to its Second Act, or savour lines like sips of salvaged Diet C

✮✮ 1/2 Polly Stenham's Hotel National Theatre | London directed by Maria Aberg If the Telegraph travel supplement got into a fight with a Guardian exposé, the result might look a little like Hotel – fun enough to watch the ink fly, but ultimately an unwieldy encounter between mismatched type. The element of surprise is firmly on playwright Polly Stenham’s side as we settle in for what appears to be another barb-tongued bourgeois brouhaha in the vein of That Face. The nuclear

✮✮✮✮ Simon Gray's In the Vale of Health: Japes | Michael | Japes Too | Missing Dates Hampstead Theatre | London directed by Tamara Harvey In the wake of the late great Simon Gray, the Hampstead Theatre here pays tribute to the characters who constantly niggled away at his thoughts, right into his seventies. And where better to stage one revival and three unseen plays, all set in Hampstead, consecutively one after another. Two orphaned brothers: Michael the healthy elder and J

✮✮ David W. Lintels' Clarence Darrow The Old Vic | London directed by Thea Sharrock "I've always thought lawyers like to say more than is absolutely necessary." This show, Kevin Spacey's last at the Old Vic and first as solo performer, casts him as a garrolous attorney and folk hero of declining years, remembering a career of arguing of horse traders and social justice for thirty-odd years either side of 1900. Thoroughly argued, it's still a slender proposition to fill the ma

✮✮✮ Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra The Globe | London directed by Jonathan Munby Watching a favourite Shakespearean play again and again can be exponentially rewarding; seeing an unfamiliar work by the bard may be equivalently baffling. The Globe's Antony and Cleopatra begins with a vigorous dance number, full of raucous and bawdy revels, setting the scene for a saga of conflict and war. Following the death of Julius Caesar and the defeat of Brutus, the Roman Empire is ru