

The Birth of a Genius
✮✮✮ 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).


The Curious Case of the Hunchback King
✮✮✮ 1/2 Shakespeare's Richard III Trafalgar Studios | London directed by Jamie Lloyd After a successful string of productions, Jamie Lloyd – a man with one heck of a résumé and the Artistic Director behind Trafalgar Transformed – opens his second season with a piece of casting that’s had not just theatre-goers but fans of The Hobbit and Sherlock titillated with anticipation. Martin Freeman, aka Bilbo Baggins and Dr Watson, is a BAFTA award winner, and here leads the cast as t


Ghosts of Memory
✮✮✮✮ Ibsen's Ghosts Trafalgar Studios | London directed by Richard Eyre Ibsen’s play was written to shock, and succeeded; at the time, the Daily Telegraph christened it “a loathsome sore unbandaged, a dirty act done publically... literary carrion.” The play’s carnal subversions and frenzies now sound muffled in a way that Nora’s final door slam of A Doll’s House isn’t, quite, but Richard Eyre’s harrowing staging means that these ghosts have lost none of their power to haunt.