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Kathryn the Defiant
I need to be careful about what I write. White Rabbit Red Rabbit is as live as theatre gets, and an important part of what it seeks to achieve is inviting each person in the audience to examine their willingness to participate in theatre’s make-believe. Knowing anything in advance could diminish that experience. Besides, if…
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Making a meal of it
The Young Vic is generally known as the edgier, younger sibling—home to innovative productions of both classics and new writing. It follows that anything staged in the smaller spaces (The Maria, 150 seats; The Clare, 70 seats) may err on the less polished side. But this felt like rough-around-the-edges taken to a new level. The…
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Expensive cosplay
Despite being an avid theatre-goer, I hadn’t really given much thought to the calibre of female roles until recently, when I attended an event with Harriet Walter. She was promoting She Speaks: What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said, in which she gives voice to a range of women in Shakespeare’s plays. As part of her…
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Greek passions
I chose to see this production of Equus for slightly odd reasons. Firstly, because I had never been to the Menier Chocolate Factory. Secondly, because I was curious about the kind of role Radcliffe had chosen in order to de‑Potterise himself. Before I get my ignorance off my chest, I would like to start by…
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Unamazing Grace
Most of the plays I see come with a story I already know. So when one comes along that I know nothing about, I try to keep it that way, I don’t look it up or read around it. I go in properly blind. That was the case with Grace Pervades. We booked for Ralph…
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Flat-line
I am a massive fan of Oscar Wilde’s wit, so imagine my excitement when I saw An Ideal Husband was being staged. A holier‑than‑thou politician linked to an insider‑trading scandal buried deep in the past, unearthed by a letter. And then there’s the infamous line, “Don’t use big words. They mean so little” — a…
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To‑Do or Not to Do
As part of its 70th‑anniversary season, the Royal Court—long the leading force in championing and cultivating new playwrights—has paired Krapp’s Last Tape, one of Beckett’s most frequently performed works, starring Gary Oldman, with Godot’s To‑Do List by Leo Simpe‑Asante, winner of the inaugural 2025 Royal Court Young Playwrights Award, performed by the relatively unknown Shakeel…
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You can die at twenty-six
When Victor sweeps his flashlight across the stage and into the audience, the slightly uncomfortable chairs of the tiny Marylebone theatre become additional items about to be sold to Gregory Solomon, and the packed audience an extension of the cluttered attic. Poor ventilation heightens the stifling atmosphere, and the musty smell quickly feels real. The…
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Toxic Femininity
I read the 1782 novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos in high school, relishing the story and its epistolary form. I was engrossed in the act of overhearing secrets and trying to piece together truth from conflicting, unreliable perspectives. I watched the 1988 film and, even though it had to cut out much of the…
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Certainly Uncertain
I am not entirely sure why Arcadia has acquired a reputation for being overly intellectual, whilst Copenhagen has not. The former gently ranges over a variety of broadly shared humanist reference points; the latter feels like being sat down for a lesson in nuclear physics, with a rather heavy‑handed allusion to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. At…
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