theatre reviews
aleks.sierz

If British theatre often seems to lack ambition, the same cannot be said of The Half God of Rainfall, a galaxy-hopping mythological mash-up. Written by Inua Ellams, whose Barber Shop Chronicles was a big foot-stomping hit for the National in 2017, this epic story trips across the globe and the sphere of myth, combining Yoruba gods with ancient Greek deities.

Marianka Swain

The joint is jumpin’ at Southwark Playhouse, now hosting an irresistible Fats Waller-inspired, Manhattan-set musical revue (a co-production with Colchester’s Mercury Theatre, where it opened last month).

aleks.sierz

Superstar Sally Field has come to town. With two academy awards and countless other accolades, the actor who played Forrest Gump's mother and dozens of other roles, from Frog to Mrs Lincoln, in Hollywood blockbusters and on television now returns to the stage to play a delusional and deceitful matriarch in Arthur Miller's All My Sons, part of the Old Vic's continuing tribute to the American playwright.

David Nice

While Bach's and Handel's Passions have been driving thousands to contemplate suffering, mortality and grace, this elegy for black lives lost over a century ago also chimes movingly with pre-Easter offerings.

Marianka Swain

For her swansong, departing Donmar Artistic Director Josie Rourke goes Swinging Sixties in this stylish but flawed revival of the Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields and Neil Simon musical.

aleks.sierz

About a year ago, director Rebecca Frecknall electrified this venue with an award-winning revival of Tennessee Williams's Summer and Smoke, rescuing the play from obscurity and showcasing the star qualities of actor Patsy Ferran.

aleks.sierz

Maggie Smith is not only a national treasure, but every casting director's go-to old bat. Now 84 years young, she is our favourite grande dame, or fantasy grandma.

aleks.sierz

Theatre can give a voice to the voiceless – but at what cost? Abhishek Majumdar, who debuted at the Royal Court in 2013 with The Djinns of Eidgah – about the situation in Kashmir – returns with his latest play, Pah-La.

Rachel Halliburton

A loo with fuschia-pink carpet to catch splashback; an Archbishop of Canterbury who’s in it for the skirts; a gobbing Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. A Jacobean theatre like the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse will have witnessed most extremes of human behaviour, but this soaringly irreverent, camper than tinsel, and – let’s face it - outrageously Eighties evening, takes it down alleys it’s never ventured before.

Laura de Lisle

“We don’t love you any less.” A natural sentiment to express to your child when you’re separating from your partner, but the very fact of saying it plants doubts in the child’s mind as to whether you really mean it. As the audience of Wilderness at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, a new play written by Kellie Smith and directed by Hampstead regular Anna Ledwich, we feel Alistair’s doubts and fears keenly – mostly because we are him.