AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮✮ Adam Brace's They Drink It In the Congo Almeida Theatre | London directed by Michael Longhurst How much do we know about the Congo, really? The title of the play mocks us – are we so ignorant that the first thing that comes to mind is the infamous advertising jingle of the 80s, something that has nothing whatsoever to do with the real Democratic Republic of the Congo and its problems? Probably. But if you’re struggling, fear not for Stef (Fiona Button) is more than happy

✮✮✮✮ Tim Minchin's Groundhog Day The Old Vic | London directed by Matthew Warchus A musical based on the cult film of the 1990s, Groundhog Day? Um… Yes please. Music and lyrics by Tim Minchin? Yes please. This production was a bit of a dream come true for theatregoers before it had even begun. Great story, great creative team – yes, yes, yes. And the real thing does not disappoint. The first twenty minutes or so, depicting the initial Groundhog Day, is a tightly choreographed

✮✮✮✮ James Fritz's The Fall Bola Agbaje's Bitches Fin borough Theatre | London directed by Matt Harrison | Valentina Ceschi To celebrate its 60th birthday, the National Youth Theatre is presenting three new plays at the Finborough. The first deals with old age; the second, racism in the internet age; and the third, which premieres on August 24, stages Mohsin Hamid's Booker-shortlisted novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist. In September, there's also a huge NYT gala performance,

✮✮✮✮✮ Simon Stone's Yerma Young Vic | London directed by Simon Stone Obsession is one of the inexplicable tics that make or mar our species. It builds pyramids, cracks mathematical problems, puts man on the moon. In modern times this obsession has contracted towards the self: self-actualisation, self-promotion, self-destruction. But the oldest obsession – and the most biologically sound – is the idea of reproduction. It's curious that in this age of science and common sense o

✮✮✮ Mark Healey's The Collector The Vaults | London directed by Joe Hufton The gloomy old vaults hidden down a dark alley behind Waterloo station are an apt setting for this whimsical and beguiling, but not especially gripping, kidnap thriller, directed by Joe Hufton and adapted from John Fowles' psychologically complex novel. While the game-playing and negotiating between the victim and her butterfly-collecting captor provide uncomfortable entertainment, the story's true hor

✮✮✮✮ Jesus Christ Superstar Regent's Park OpenAir Theatre | London music Andrew Lloyd Webber lyrics Tim Rice directed by Timothy Sheader "What's the buzz?" sing the apostles in this frisky al fresco staging of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's first major hit. "Tell me what's a-happening." Well, the buzz is that Timothy Sheader, Artistic Director of Regent's Park OpenAir Theatre for almost a decade, has given us a rip-roaring production whose enjoyment factor goes through th

✮✮✮✮ Markus Potter and David Hothouse's Stalking the Bogeyman Southwark Playhouse | London directed by Markus Potter This is a play that does not hold back. No sooner have the lights gone up than we are confronted with a harsh fact from the main character: he was violently raped by a family friend when he was just seven years old. This is a shocking statement to open a play with – partly because of the extremely upsetting nature of child abuse, and partly because it is a subj

✮✮✮✮ Robert Lepage's Needles and Opium Barbican Theatre | London directed by Robert Lepage Needles and Opium centres on three different men: Miles Davis, Jean Cocteau and ‘Robert’, an actor who has recently gone through a painful breakup – three artists who have lost a love. The men are significantly different, separated by time, place, background and so on. Yet they are united by love, addiction and creativity. The parallels between which are powerfully presented in three in

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Florian Zeller's The Truth Wyndham's Theatre | London directed by Lindsay Posner Florian Zeller is the golden boy of the British theatre scene at the moment, with the French playwright seeing three of his plays on London stages so far this year. The latest, The Truth, is a comedy with a simple premise: Michel is having an affair with Alice, the wife of his best friend, Paul. The dialogue is tight, but the plot seems slightly predictable. We think we know how this one

✮✮✮ 1/2 Arthur Miller's No Villain Trafalgar Studios | London directed by Sean Turner Staging early lost works by writers who found success later in their careers always seems like a bad idea to me. If they didn’t get staged at the time, there is usually a reason. So it was with some scepticism that I went to see Arthur Miller’s first ever play, No Villain, in its first production almost 80 years after it was written (first seen at the Old Red Lion theatre in December 2015).