The Country Wife, Southwark Playhouse review – knowing Restoration update

★★★ THE COUNTRY WIFE, SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE Knowing Restoration update

Wycherley’s sexy comedy transplanted to the Roaring Twenties

Even in its successful early days Wycherley’s 1675 comedy was notorious, but it was considered too lewd to be staged at all between the mid-Eighteenth Century and 1924. Although the play has found an affectionate place in the canon in more recent times, it makes a kind of sense to transpose the goings on of louche Restoration aristocrats to the era of the Bright Young Things, the time of its rediscovery.

Angry, Southwark Playhouse review – wondrously roaring Ridleyland

★★★★ ANGRY, SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE Six monologues about extreme emotions offer trips to outer space and dystopia

Six monologues about extreme emotions offer trips to outer space and dystopia

Monologues are very much the flavour of the start of this theatrical year. At the Royal Court, we have Carey Mulligan in Dennis Kelly’s brilliant Girls & Boys, coming hot on the tottering heels of Anoushka Warden’s My Mum’s a Twat, while at the Bush a season of solo plays is currently disturbing psyches with Monica Dolan’s B*easts.

Collective Rage, Southwark Playhouse review - a rollicking riot

★★★★ COLLECTIVE RAGE, SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE Absurd romp through love, lust, and friendship is a knock-out

Absurd romp through love, lust, and friendship is a knock-out

“Pussy is pussy” and “bitches are bitches” but Jen Silverman’s Collective Rage at Southwark Playhouse smashes tautologies with roguish comedy in a tight five-hander smartly directed by Charlie Parham.

Dear Brutus, Southwark Playhouse review - a judicious mix of comedy and sadness

★★★★ DEAR BRUTUS, SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE Barrie’s grown-up fantasy gets a welcome centenary revival

Barrie’s grown-up fantasy gets a welcome centenary revival

Confused people, some of whom may have made the wrong choices in life and love, find themselves in an enchanted wood at Midsummer. Dear Brutus has long been seen to echo Shakespeare’s comedy of metamorphosis, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A huge success in 1917, it is rarely performed now, and Barrie’s fantasy for grown-ups is probably more of a challenge to the modern director than its Elizabethan precursor.

Mother Courage, Southwark Playhouse review - this production is not one for our times

★★ MOTHER COURAGE, SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE A production not for our times

Uninspired treatment of Brecht's 1939 antiwar tract

One of the questions that can be asked of Brecht is whether for a modern audience his Verfremdungseffekt — or alienation effect — still works as intended, provoking genuine reflections on justice by distancing audiences from emotional entanglement with the characters. At a time when verbatim and community theatre is accomplishing just that with exactitude and force, it appears that inducing audiences to think morally is most effective when delivered in unexpected ways.

Dessert, Southwark Playhouse review - undercooked and overwrought

★★ DESSERT, SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE Oliver Cotton's new play is undercooked and overwrought

Oliver Cotton's new play, directed by Trevor Nunn, begins well before succumbing to absurdity and hysteria

"What is this, Saving Private Ryan?" a character randomly queries well into the actor Oliver Cotton's new play, Dessert. Well, more like a modern-day An Inspector Calls on steroids, with the volume turned up so high in Trevor Nunn's production that you don't half believe the questioner's wife when she talks about a state of affairs that could be heard all the way to France. After a promising and prickly start, Cotton's hectoring satire of our recklessly self-absorbed, increasingly divisive age devolves into implausibility and hysteria in equal measure.

The Cardinal, Southwark Playhouse review - 'rarely produced play has renewed punch'

Caroline-era play makes a compelling return to the stage

James Shirley is a rarely performed 17th-century playwright whose oeuvre has generally been consigned to theatrical study and research. Written for King Charles I at a time of great political upheaval and with the English Civil War looming, not to mention the shutdown of London theatres, his 1641 play The Cardinal represents Shirley's self-confessed masterpiece.

School Play, Southwark Playhouse

Debut play makes strong and worthwhile points but lacks depth

Hot on the heels of Katherine Soper's award-winning Wish List, about the UK benefits system in crisis, and John Godber's This Might Hurt, about an NHS in crisis, comes this play about our education system in crisis. One suspects there will be plenty more plays about comparable flashpoints to come, but the passionate arguments found within Alex MacKeith's somewhat over-zealous debut play definitely hit home. 

Dream On: Surprises in the Athenian Wood

SURPRISES IN THE ATHENIAN WOOD There are Dreams aplenty in Shakespeare's anniversary year. Southwark Playhouse will go for different, says director Simon Evans

There are Dreams aplenty in Shakespeare's anniversary year. Southwark Playhouse will go for different, says director Simon Evans

Doctor Peter Raby (Emeritus Fellow at Cambridge University) was quick to pull me up on my first stab at A Midsummer Night's Dream – an indulgence-of-a-production played out in a university park to the sound of cucumber flirting with Pimm's. His grounds were that I had failed to acknowledge the mortal danger facing those errant elopers, Hermia and Lysander. He had, he said, expected better of me.