In Praise of Love, Orange Tree Theatre review - subdued production of Rattigan's study of loving concealment

Unspoken emotion flows through this late work

Terence Rattigan's rehabilitation – some might almost say deification – as a leading 20th century playwright is complete. As well as academic studies, biographies and numerous highly respected revivals of his work, there is a growing clamour to accord him the ultimate, deserved, honour: a theatre bearing his name.

This is My Family, Southwark Playhouse - London debut of 2013 Sheffield hit is feeling its age

★ THIS IS MY FAMILY, SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE Play with music engenders a familiar warmth

Relatable or stereotyped - that's for you to decide

MOR. Twee. Unashamedly crowdpleasing. Are such descriptors indicative of a tedious night in the stalls? For your reviewer, who has become jaded very quickly with a myriad of searing examinations of mental health crises and wake up calls about the forthcoming environmental collapse, I often find comfort in material more suited to the large print section of the library. But the show still has to be good and that’s a big challenge when dealing with "smaller" subject matter.

Ghosts, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre - turns out, they do fuck you up

★ GHOSTS, LYRIC HAMMERSMITH Ibsen screams into 2025 in this perfect reimagining

Ten years on, Gary Owen and Rachel O'Riordan top their triumphant Iphigenia in Splott

A single sofa is all we have on stage to attract our eye - the signifier of intimate family evenings, chummy breakfast TV and, more recently, Graham Norton’s bonhomie. Until you catch proper sight of the room’s walls that is, which are not, as you first thought, Duluxed in a bland magnolia shade, nor even panelled with upmarket modernist abstract paintings, befitting of the whiff of wealth that suffuses the space. It’s a man’s head, repeating and repeating and repeating, turned away, bull-necked, present but not present, intimidating from beyond the grave.

Midnight Cowboy, Southwark Playhouse - new musical cannot escape the movie's long shadow

★ MIDNIGHT COWBOY, SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE Ambitious project overwhelmed by challenges 

Two misfits misfire in misconceived show

It seems a bizarre idea. Take a pivotal film in American culture that reset the perception of The Great American Dream at this, obviously, pivotal moment in American culture in which The Great American Dream, for millions, is being literally swiped away at gunpoint, And… make it into a musical

Mickalene Thomas, All About Love, Hayward Gallery review - all that glitters

★★★★ MICKALENE THOMAS, ALL ABOUT LOVE, HAYWARD GALLERY The shock of the glue: rhinestones to the ready

The shock of the glue: rhinestones to the ready

On walking into Mikalene Thomas’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery my first reaction was “get me out of here”. To someone brought up on the paired down, less-is-more aesthetic of minimalism her giant, rhinestone-encrusted portraits are like a kick in the solar plexus – much too big and bright to stomach. Could I be expected to even consider accepting these gaudy monstrosities as art?

Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Theatre - Luke Thallon triumphs as the state succumbs to storms

★ HAMLET, RSC Rupert Goold's staging lends a gnawing, troubling, transatlantic relevance 

The iceberg cometh

The date, projected behind the stage before a word is spoken, is a clue - 14th April 1912. “Why so specific?” was my first thought. My second was, “Ah, yes”.

Twelfth Night, Royal Shakespeare Theatre review - comic energy dissipates in too large a space

★ TWELFTH NIGHT, RSC The winter comedy provides more chills than chuckles

Too much thinking; not enough laughing

It is not just Twelfth Night, it’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will in The Folio, a signpost of the choices the inhabitants, old and new, of Illyria must make. Perhaps it’s also an allusion to Will’s own choices as an actor/playwright in the all-male company who cross-dressed (and maybe more) as women and girls without batting an eyelid. As is so often the case with the comedies, the great entertainer doesn’t hesitate to smuggle in a soupçon of transgressive psychology under cover of farce.

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Donmar Warehouse review - a blazingly original musical flashes into the West End

 NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812, DONMAR WAREHOUSE Broadway show takes eight years to traverse the Atlantic, but proves worth the wait

War and Peace - but not as you know it

Broadway shows sometimes hit the West End like, well, like a comet, burning brightly but briefly (Spring Awakening, for example), while others settle into orbit illuminating Shaftesbury Avenue with a neon blaze every night for years.