AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮✮ Simon McBurney's The Kid Stays in the Picture The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Simon McBurney Is it a play? Sort of. Is it a movie? Again, sort of. The English language needs a new word to describe Complicite's rip-roaring, multi-sensory staging of movie mogul Robert Evans' bestselling 1994 autobiography, which was also once made into a film. With up to four screens on stage projecting clips from classic movies as well as live camera shots, plus a pulse-racin

✮✮✮✮ Lucy Kirkwood's The Children The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by James Macdonald The first line of award-winning playwright Lucy Kirkwood’s new play sets the tone for what is to come: slightly ominous, slightly accusatory, tension hidden under a blanket of small talk. The question is for Hazel (Deborah Findlay), a fussy, yoga-practising retired nuclear scientist who lives in an isolated cottage on the coast with her husband (Ron Cook) in the aftermath of a power

✮✮✮✮ Suzan-Lori Parks' Father Comes Home From the Wars The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Jo Bonney In the week the National Museum of African American History & Culture finally opened its doors in Washington, DC, Suzan-Lori Parks' monumental trilogy about black freedom in the American Civil War is playing to British audiences for the first time. Epic in every sense including length, the three-plays-in-one combine grandiose, almost Homeric poetry with domestic comed

✮✮✮ 1/2 Nathaniel Martello-White's Torn The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Richard Twyman The Royal Court Upstairs is completely stripped down for Nathaniel Martello-White’s new play. Instead of a traditional theatre space, it now resembles a community centre hall. The walls are white and empty; tea and coffee facilities stand to one side. The audience wander in and sit down on the plastic-backed chairs, while Angel (Adelle Leonce) paces alone, fusses with the layou

✮✮✮ Tim Crouch's Adler & Gibb Edinburgh Festival Fringe | Edinburgh directed by Tim Crouch Student Louise Mane (Jillian Pullara) is presenting her thesis in the year 2004, speaking of her admiration for the fictive conceptual artist Janet Adler. She describes Adler’s life and her relationship with her long-term partner Margaret Gibb, occasionally calling for a slide. When she does this, we switch to a scene ten years later, where a woman actor (Cath Whitefield) is in the fore

✮✮ Jack Thorne's Hope The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by John Tiffany “We live in the age of cutting cunts,” deputy Council leader Mark (Paul Higgins) announces near the start of Jack Thorne's new, highly topical comedy about the swingeing public sector spending cuts this country has suffered since the Tories – sorry, the Coalition government – came to power in 2010. Mark's X-rated language is worthy of that most memorable satirical political character of recent yea

✮ 1/2 Duncan Macmillan & Chris Rapley's 2071 The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Katie Mitchell Artistic director Vicky Featherstone's Royal Court season is themed around “revolutions: big and small acts of resistance.” After two rumbunctious plays up and downstairs at the venue, this sombrely-served climate change lecture is more of a cold white wine than a molotov cocktail. It’s marketed as a play, and has a director, lighting designer and set designer as you mi

✮✮✮ 1/2 Tim Price's Teh Internet is Serious Business The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Hamish Pirie A socially awkward penguin reclines in an Olympic-sized ball-pit with Willy Wonka, a Storm Trooper and the affectionately titled Pedo-Bear. Above the stage hang the logos of Twitter, Facebook, and the hundred-million-view-grossing, rainbow-pooping Nyan Cat. Just your average night at the Royal Court. God knows what Olivier would make of this. The opening of Tim Price

✮✮✮ Jennifer Haley's The Nether The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Jeremy Herrin In one of Isaac Asimov’s usually prescient imaginings he envisions spaceships designed to dart through the stars – for the sole purpose of delivering letters. So explosive has been the advent of the internet that not even our greatest speculative genius seemed able to foresee it. It’s near impossible to guess what the World Wide Web will throw at us next, but boy is it fun to try. “Don’

✮✮✮ 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