Daniel’s Husband (Marylebone Theatre)

Posted: December 13, 2025 in Theatre
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Photo: Craig Fuller

Writer: Michael McKeever

Director: Alan Souza

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At a time when same sex couples have become able to get married in most Western territories, it seems that many others are losing interest in matrimony. This irony is not lost in American playwright Michael McKeever’s 2022 play, Daniel’s Husband, receiving its United Kingdom premiere here.

 The writer took a scalpel to the hypocrisy of Hollywood in The Code, seen in London earlier this year, and he now cuts just as deep to probe the institution of marriage, coming up with observations that should resonate regardless of gender or sexual orientation. 

Daniel (Joel Harper-Jackson) and Mitchell (Luke Fetherston) have been together for seven years, living in Daniel’s spacious city apartment. They are, effectively, a married couple, except that Mitchell, a successful writer who has sold his soul to the dollar to churn out romantic fiction (“a gay Barbara Cartland”), does not believe in marriage. Daniel argues that getting married would honour the long fight by the LGBT+ community for equality, but Mitchell counters that being allowed to marry is not sufficient reason for actually doing it; in his view, leaving aside legal and tax considerations, marriage is nothing more than a meaningless piece of paper. 

The play begins with the couple hosting a dinner party for Mitchell’s literary agent, Barry (David Bedella) and the latest in his long line of much younger boyfriends, Trip (Raiko Gohara). Later, we are introduced to Lydia, Daniel’s overbearing mother; in a splendidly judged performance, Liza Sadovy walks the line between stereotypical comic mother and arch villain, as Lydia champions modern liberal values while, when she is put to the test, suggesting that she still harbours old prejudices.

In early scenes, McKeever keeps the audience gripped with witty small talk while, almost imperceptibly, building the characters and moving the play forward. The writer’s skill is then matched by an effortless shift in mood from light comedy to intense drams, which is accelerated by a sudden plot development in the middle of the play.

Justin Williams’ imposing set design for Daniel’s loft apartment suggests a warm and comfortable lifestyle. When, occasionally, the writer lays on the emotional stuff too thickly, director Alan Souza needs to apply the brakes to prevent his production drifting towards risible melodrama. He succeeds in keeping the drama intense and authentic, largely thanks to superb, impassioned performances by Harper-Jackson and Fetherston.

Daniel’s Husband offers 90 minutes of quality, thought-provoking theatre and McKeever reaffirms his growing reputation as a writer of significance.

Performance date: 9 December 2025

Ballet Shoes (National Theatre, Olivier)

Posted: November 29, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Photo: Alastair Muir

Writer: Noel Streatfeild

New version: Kendall Feaver

Director: Katy Rudd

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At a time when theatres everywhere are filled by pantos, Scrooge, Petr Pan, etc, the National Theatre again chooses to take a different route for the festive season. Katy Rudd’s version of Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 novel, Ballet Shoes, adapted by Kendall Feaver, dances back into the Olivier Theatre for the second successive year,  hoping to charm and delight kids of all ages.

Streatfeild makes her story a celebration of English middle class values in the first half of the 20th Century, thereby establishing it in territory that is enduringly fertile for popular children’s fiction. Three orphaned baby girls – Pauline (Nina Cassells), Petrova (Sienna Arif-Knights) and Posy (Scarlett Monahan) – are taken in by Great Uncle Matthew (Justin Salinger), an absent-minded palaeontologist who quickly becomes simply absent, having installed them in his rambling South Kensington mansion, where they are surrounded by bones and fossils.  The three “sisters” are left in the care of teenage Sylvia (Anoushka Lucas) and her childhood nanny (Lesley Nicol).

Posy has inherited a pair of of ballet shoes from her birth mother and she develops a passion for dancing. Pauline aspires to become an actor at the dawn of the motion picture era, while Petrova becomes obsessed with aviation. The story follows the girls through their formative years and on towards achieving their aspirations, encountering many stumbling blocks and financial hardship en route. The mix of of cutesy kids and eccentric adults is fairly standard, but the messages are all positive, emphasising that anything is possible if you pursue your passions, particularly at a time when new opportunities are opening up for young women.

Frankie Bradshaw’s set design favours an open stage over recreating the creepy atmosphere of a house full of skeletons, but there is plenty of room for several appearances by a glorious vintage car, the property of lodger Jai (Rai Baiaj). Faced with a story that is largely grounded, Rudd is left with few opportunities to create the eye-popping spectacles that can draw youngsters in. There are several longish passages of just dialogue during which the attention of younger children could wander and the director attempts to counter this with dance routines, performed mainly to jazz age music and choreographed by Ellen Kane. There is even a flight scene, but these additions feel like diversions that do not connect fully with the main narrative.

Maybe Ballet Shoes is not destined to join the ranks of festive classics that will turn up year after year in the future, but this National Theatre production is staged handsomely and performed strongly by a company of 25, making it a cheery treat. 

Performance date: 25 November 2025

The Assembled Parties (Hampstead Theatre)

Posted: October 27, 2025 in Theatre
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Photo: Helen Murray

Writer: Richard Greenberg

Director: Blanche McIntyre

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They say that Christmas begins earlier every year and, as if to prove the point, it has already arrived at Hampstead Theatre. American writer Richard Greenberg’s comedy The Assembled Parties, which premiered on Broadway in 2013,  centres around a New York family gathered together on two Christmases, 20 years apart. Much of the play’s humour draws from the irony of members of the Jewish faith (albeit npn-practicinh) celebrating a Christian festival.

The play opens in 1980, when Ronald Reagan has just been elected to serve his first term as United States President. In their Manhattan apartment, Ben (Daniel Abelson) and his wife, former actress Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt) play hosts; their elder son Scotty (Alexander Marks) has just graduated from university and is seeking direction in his life; he brings along old school friend Jeff (Sam Marks). The assembled party is completed by the arrival of Ben’s sister Faye (Tracy-Ann Oberman), her husband Mort (David Kennedy) and their daughter Shelley (Julia Kass).

Family members meet in pairs or groups to discuss politics, careers, finances, relationships and so on. James Cotterill’s impressive set design is dominated by a huge, fully decorated Christmas tree and a revolving stage ushers us from room to room. Director Blanche McIntyre’s solid production moves along briskly; it is all mildly  amusing, but rather inconsequential.

Act two jumps forward to 2000, when Bill Clinton has just entered the final month of his eight-year Presidency. The family, numbers now depleted, gathers again at Julie’s rented home. The Christmas tree is smaller, but the apartment is more spacious, expanding to the full width od the Hampstead stage. The focus now falls on Julie’s younger son Tim (also played by Alexander Marks), a college drop-out who works as a waiter and is involved in a secret relationship with a gentile woman. Introducing themes of loss and regeneration, the later stages of the play have added poignancy.

Greenber’s flair for feeding his characters with acerbic one-liners shines throughout and, with the lines being delivered with precusion by this highly accomplished cast, they become the main joy of the evening. Otherwise, there is nothing to dislike about The Assembled Parties, but nor is there much to rave about and, on this evidence, it is not easy to understand why the play received three Tony Award nominations. This comedy is a Christmas trifle, like a light dessert served without a main course.

Performance date: 23 October 2025

The Maids (Donmar Warehouse)

Posted: October 26, 2025 in Theatre
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Photo: Marc Brenner

Writer: Jean Genet

Adaptor and director: Kip Williams

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“Everybody ought to have a maid” asserted Stephen Sondheim famously in song, but the great lyricist could well have had second thoughts after seeing French writer Jean Genet’s 1947 play The Maids, which is revived here. The tale of two mischievous, murderous chambermaids was originally seen as a parable about a crumbling class system, but adaptor and director Kip Williams packs it with up-to-date references and transforms it into a satire on the cult of celebrity worship.

When we first encounter the sisters Claire and Solange, they are stepping aside from their daily duties in the boudoir of their employer, “Madame”. They take turns to impersonate Madame, they wear her expensive clothes, they scheme to undermine her latest boyfriend, who  is facing trial on fraud charges, and they plot her murder. Madame is expected home soon and her fans are congregating on the street below; like them, the sisters adore Madame, but they also loathe her in equal measure.

Madame eventually arrives, frantically worried about the fate of her boyfriend, and she is every bit as ghastly as the sisters’ impersonations have warned us, cruelly taunting each of her maids in turn. The point is made that all three characters are essentially the same and confrontations continue in a similar vein, whichever two of the three are on stage. Herein lies the play’s chief problem – repetition. Almost every scene begins to feel like a re-run of the one that preceded it.

Williams never asks the audience to invest in the characters emotionally, sustaining a surreal feel to the drama throughout. Exceptionally forceful performances by Yerin Ha, Phia Shaban and Lydia Wilson energise the production and lift it out of the play’s most sticky patches. Together, the three young actors resemble a group of lovestruck schoolgirls forming a fan club for, say, a pop star, although it is always clear that evil lies on the horizon.

This is a very grand production of a very small play. one that, arguably, could have been staged just as effectively at a small fringe venue with no formal set. As it is, set designer Rosanna Vize pulls out all the stops with a stunning boudoir bedecked with all things beige. The opening scene is performed entirely behind net curtains, thereby mystifying (and irritating) the audience and giant mirrors double as video screens, playing their part in Williams’ assault on our senses. However, there are concerns that gimmicks are being used to divert attention from the play’s shortcomings and paper over obvious cracks.

There is much to enjoy in Williams’ radical re-working of Genet’s obscure classic, but 100 minutes of this weird and often anarchic spectacle is more than enough.  Nonetheless, the points that it makes about the dangers of modern celebrity culture hit home strongly.

Performance date: 22 October 2025

Blessings (Riverside Studios)

Posted: October 6, 2025 in Theatre
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Phoyp: Lidia Crisafulli

Writer and director: Sarah Shelton

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Rather surprisingly, Sarah Shelton’s Blessings is a new play. It is a family drama that takes place in 1969 and its style feels even more dated than its subject matter or its time setting. Seeing the play performed in the modern fringe venue that is Riverside Studios brings the anachronism into still sharper focus.

The voice of Tony Blackburn telling us to turn off our ‘phones informs us that we are being transported back to the 1960s and snippets from familiar songs scattered throughout the play remind us of the fact. The Deacons are a respectable lower middle class family, living in a small English town. Patriarch Frank (Gary Webster) is the breadwinner, but he faces regular complaints that he withdraws from involvement in family affairs  and he finds solace at the local pub. Matriarch Dorrie (Anna Acton), a staunch Roman Catholic, is, seemingly, the rock that supports the whole family. Her support comes from the parish priest, who is accused of prying too deeply into family business.

Son Martin (Freddie Webster) has already flown the nest for London, but he shows determination to maintain family unity and respectability, particularly when faced with the news that his unmarried teenage sister Frances (Hannah Traylen) is pregnant. Other sisters, Penny (Milly Roberts) and Sally (Emily Lane) face up to their own problems. There is enough meat here for the writer to bite on to extract either comedy or drama, but, by packing the play with sub-plots, she is only able to scratch at the surfaces of both characters and storylines, leaving the actors very little to work with.

In structure and in content the play resembles a very long episode of, say, Eastenders, with a succession of short scenes bringing together characters who then disappear behind the screens which feature in Alice Carroll’s curious set design. The 1960s saw a new age of realism in British drama, but this is rarely reflected in this production and many of the dramatic flashpoints feel lacking in authenticity.

The writer should question the wisdom of directing the play herself. Perhaps a fresh pair of eyes could have added valuable perspectives to the drama and injected life into many leaden scenes. As it is, Shelton seems content for the characters to wander on and off stage and merely speak the lines that she has written. At times, her production looks amateurish, doing little justice to the commitment of six accomplished actors.

Shelton lays to rest the theory that a night out at the theatre should provide a contrast to a night in watching television soaps. Blessings is a mix of tired old plot lines. stilted dialogue and clunky staging. The biggest blessing is the shortish running time, which is under 90 minutes without an interval.

Performance date: 2 October 2025

Titus Andronicus (Hampstead Theatre)

Posted: September 26, 2025 in Theatre
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Photo: Genevieve Girling

Writer: William Shakespeare

Director: Max Webster

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A tale of power struggles, treachery  and violent revenge, William Shakespeare’s “lamentable tragedy”, Titus Andronicus, offers little light relief as an alternative to the mighty news on television. Indeed, director Max Webster’s revival for the Royal Shakespeare Company, first seen at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, has a timeless feel that invites audiences to draw comparisons with modern-day events.

John Hodgkinson, a late replacement for Simon Russell Beale, is commanding and compelling as Titus Andronicus, an ageing Roman general who has ended a ten-year campaign with victory over the Goths, He returns to Rome with the Goth Queen, Tamara (Wendy Kweh) as his prisoner. He rejects advances to become Emperor, instead supporting the previous Emperor’s eldest son, the capricious Saturnius (Max Bennett). When Titus orders the death of Tamara’s eldest son as revenge for his own losses, he sets in motion a cycle of retribution that engulfs the characters and the choice of Tamara to become Saturnius’ wife places a viperous presence at the heart of the Court. Titus asserts : “Rome is but a wilderness of tigers” and he is not wrong.

Surrounded by his sister Marcia (a particularly impressive Emma Fielding), a senator,  his daughter Lavinia (Letty Thomas) and his surviving sons, Titus is effectively at war with Rome’s rulers and striking performances by Kweh and Ken Nwosu as Aaron, Tamara’s lover, define his enemies. Out of this gathering of conspirators, traitors and assassins, Webster crafts a taut and vivid political thriller that is spiced with subtle humour. The director goes easy on explicit blood shedding, preferring to suggest violence with choreographed movement by shadowy figures in half light and the the sudden appearance of a chainsaw is enough to tell us the uses to which it will be put.

Joanna Scotcher’s plain, monochrome set design and nondescript costumes ensure that the focus stays firmly on the actors and their characters’ dastardly deeds. Creative lighting effects, designed by Lee Curan enhance the production’s visual impact. A square thrust stage encases the action, giving a claustrophobic feel of caged animals fighting to the death. The climactic banquet is visually stunning, leaving haunting and grizzly images etched on the memory.

Titus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare’s less frequently performed plays, possibly because the squeamish fear it. Webster’s top class revival goes some way towards correcting perceptions mainly by ensuring that the quality of the acting is the glory amid the gore.

Performance date: 22 September 2025

The Land of the Living (National Theatre, Dorfman)

Posted: September 22, 2025 in Theatre
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Photo: Manuel Harlan

Writer: David Lan

Director: Stephen Daldry

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The alleged removal of children from their family homes in Ukraine to Russia has been one of the most horrific features of the current war in Eastern Europe and it gives topicality to The Land off the Living, David Lan’s new play which tells of events during and after World War II.

In 1945, Ruth is a 20-year-old United Nations aid worker in a devastated German city. Thomas, a 10-year-old  Polish boy, comes under her care. He is one of thousands of children who had been taken from their homes in German occupied territories to be tested for “pure blood” and, if deemed suitable, to be re-homed with Nazi supporters. Ruth leads Thomas on a perilous journey across Europe, avoiding the grasp of the Soviets, and eventually to a new home in the United States. Thomas finds safety and prosperity, but he loses his sense of belonging, his language, his culture and his heritage. The play asks where Ruth was right to consign Thomas to this fate rather than to help him in finding his own birth family.

Lan tells the story in flashback from the perspective of a reunion in 1990 between Ruth (Juliet Stevenson) and Thomas (Tom Wlaschiha). Events are acted out on Miriam Buether’s extraordinary set, which runs the entire length of the Dorfman Theatre’s auditorium. At one end there is a domestic living area and at the other there is a grand library, the two separated by a polished wood walkway which appears to be mounted on a multitude of filing cabinets. It may not be entirely clear how any of this connects to the play, but Buether gives director Stephen Daldry what he needs most – the space to stage a production on an epic scale – albeit at the expense of this theatre’s most precious asset, its intimacy.

Daldry’s staging is, at many times, thrilling. The chaos of post-war Germany and the race across a hostile continent are realised vividly and imaginatively with a company of 15 adults and children. However, there are moments when it feels as if the production is at odds with the play, overwhelming it. Lan has realised that events pf such magnitude can only be dramatised by condensing them into the lives of individuals, but Daldry chooses to paint the bigger picture. It is significant that the play’s most moving and memorable scenes come when fewer numbers occupy the stage. Specially, Stevenson and Wlaschiha give astonishingly powerful performances that shine through all the spectacle that surrounds them.

A fractured narrative structure does little to add clarity to the storytelling and the production could be viewed as overblown, but The Land of the Living deals with issues of profound importance, both historically and still today.

Performance date: 18 September 2025

The Code (Southwark Playhouse Elephant)

Posted: September 21, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Photo: Danny Kaan

Writer: Michael McKeever

Director: Christopher Renshaw

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Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock have established link between south-east London and Hollywood, so perhaps Elephant & Castle is as good a place as any to stage The Code, Michael McKeever’s new one-act play exposing the dark side of the American film industry. 

It is 1950. We are in what many describe as the “golden age“ of movies, during which the big studios and the executives who run them reign supreme. The “Hollywoodlamd” sign towers above Ethan Cheek’s smart set design, representing  a cocktail lounge where Tallulah Bankhead (Tracie Bennett) is already slightly tipsy. She had been one of the biggest names in the early days of movies, but her star is now fading rapidly. She still works both in Hollywood and on Broadway, but she is overlooked repeatedly for the plum roles and she remains bitter over having missed out on Scarlett O’Hara more than a decade earlier. The difficulty, she tells us, is that studio bosses regard her as too risky, because of her known promiscuity with both men and women and her willingness to talk openly about sex. The studios demand that their stars adhere to a strict moral “code” which dictates how they behave in private as well as in public.

Tallulah is joined by Billy Haines, possibly the biggest male movie star on the planet during the 1920s and early 1930s until his career had been wrecked by his refusal to comply with his studio boss’s demands for him to get married and end his long-term homosexual relationship. Billy had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of his film career to establish himself as a prominent interior designer with a long list of A-lust clients. He believes that he now stands as living proof that there are more important things in life than film stardom.

Happily, Bennett herself is nowhere near to becoming a fading star. She gives Tallulah similar swagger to that of her West End performance as Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow, inebriated and fragile, yet unashamedly flamboyant and gleefully vulgar. It is great credit to Partridge that he is never overshadowed by this tor de force; his proud, dignified Billy gives the play emotional depth and heart. Together, these actors make a glittering pair of code breakers.

In its opening stages, director Christopher Renshaw;s production feels sluggish in places; it is merely a conversation piece, all back stories and no front story. This all changes with the arrival of sleazy agent Henry Willson (Nick Blakeley) and his latest protege, naive young actor Chad Manford (Solomon Davy). Pressure is mounting on Chad to sacrifice his gay relationship in pursuit of fame and fortune, but will he succumb or will he follow Billy’s example and be true to himself? The play now finds the dramatic tension that it had needed from the beginning.

Written crisply and performed with flair, The Code trades heavily in showbiz gossip, most of which should by now be well known. However, there may be some who still buy into Hollywood myths and this is certainly a play to open their eyes.

Performance date: 17 September 2005

The Estate (National Theatre, Dorfman)

Posted: July 21, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Photo: Helen Murray

Writer: Shaan Sahota

Director: Daniel Raggett

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Shaan Sahota’s debut play, The Estate. a comedy, dips into dangerous waters as it centres around a Member of Parliament of Sikh heritage who is aspiring to climb to the top of the Westminster ladder. Added to politics, race, religion, gender inequality, cultural tradition and family loyalties are all thrown into the mix in a venture that, at first glance, looks foolhardy, But is it?

The play is marked by the freshness and fearlessness of a first time playwright. Sahota, a British Asian herself, has much to say about merging deeply contrasting cultures and she does so with great sensitivity and rich humour. The play begins as a political satire in the style of The Thick of It. It is one year before a General Election and the Leader of the Opposition has resigned. Angad Singh (Adeel Akhtar) sees himself as a contender for the vacancy, encouraged waveringly by his assistants, Petra (Helen Wilson) and Isaac (Fode Simbo), but discouraged by the pompous party whip, Ralph Hughes (Humphrey Ker).

The set, designed by Chloe Lanford, at first an austere Westminster office, opens out to begin a new story centring around Angad’s private life. He has a wife, Sangeeta (Dinita Gohil) and a baby daughter, but his father, who had arrived in Britain in the 1970s to work as a baggage handler, has just died. Angad’s older sisters. Malicka (Shelley Conn) and Gyan (Thusitha Jayasundera) arrive in town for the funeral and the reading of a will in which they find themselves cut out in favour of the only son, as would have been normal in the patriarchal society to which their father had belonged. The sisters are incensed and, unless Angad agrees to give them what they believe to be their fair shares, they threaten to sabotage his career with revelations of trivial misdeeds from the past.

There is enough material here to feed a meaty drama, so how does the play manage to fill the Dorfman Theatre with laughter throughout its 140-minute (including interval) running time? Aside from the writer’s wit, much credit goes to director Daniel Raggett’s beutifully balanced production and to Akhtar’s astonishing lead performance. His Angad is an underdog and a leader, surreal and human. Raggett gives free rein to Akhtar’s clowning and the introduction of physical comedy feels inspired, throwing a bright light on the lunacy of what is going on in Angel’s world.

The many serious themes are never totally overwhelmed by the production’s comic content and there is much to discuss afterwards. However, it is the lighter that will linger longest in the memory. The Estate is frantic and its focus sometimes gets fuzzy, but, when all its pieces fall into place, it is poignant and absolutely hilarious.

Performance date: 17 July 2025

The Bastard Puccini (Park Theatre)

Posted: July 19, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Photo contributed

Writer: James Inverne

Director: Daniel Slater

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Peter Shaffer’sAmadeus set a high bar for plays about rival composers and writer James Inverne enters similar territory with That Bastard Puccini, a drama about the competition between Giacomo Puccini and Ruggero Leoncavallo to produce the most successful version of La bohème. One of them would bask in the warmth of public acclaim while the other would feel more frozen than heroine Mimi’s tiny hand.

In Milan, 1893, Leoncavallo is being labelled a one hit wonder, seemingly incapable of following up the enormous success of his opera Pagliacci. He mentions to his friend Puccini that his next project will be to adap works by French writer Henri Murger, to which Puccini replies “me too”. Leoncavallo bursts into barely controlled rage, accusing his friend of stealing his idea and various other acts of plagiarism, while Puccini remains placid, seemingly not concerned that there will be two operas, both entitled La bohème, being staged concurrently and, eventually, both will appear at different theatres on the same street in Venice on the same night.

Sebastien  Torkia’s arrogant, sneering Puccini certainly merits the unflattering description of him in the play’s title, contrasting sharply with the frenzied rage of Alasdair Bucham’s Leoncavallo. Lisa-Anne Wood intervenes in the dispute as Berthe, Leoncavallo’s supportive wife and she also contributes impressively singing short extracts from the operas. The enthusiasm of this trio of actors gives director Daniel Slater’s production all its energy.

Lacking the scale and ambition of Amadeus, Inverne’s play takes a long time to develop a sense of direction. Foreknowledge of the outcome of the composers’ battle robs the drama of its tension and gaps are filled with hit-or-miss comedy, often involving the actors taking on subsidiary roles such as that of Gustav Mahler. 

A pedestrian first act meanders aimlessly, frequently laden with stilted scene-setting dialogue, but there is a distinct improvement after the interval when the writer finally reveals the play’s purpose, which is to discuss the processes for creating great art.

Overall, That Bastard Puccini is lightweight and patchy, mildly entertaining even though slightly off key. However, Puccini’s version of La bohème was itself received poorly by Italian critics when it premiered in Turin; taking this as a precedent, Inverne’s play could yet have a bright future.

Performance date:15 July 2025

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