Leo Butler’s wonderful new one is not a play, but a passionate book about a writer’s life and the craft of playwriting

Haunting blood relations: new play about love and loneliness in London has terrific gender and genre fluidity

Populist show is now on its sixth cast, but despite some noisy shocks it fails to chill the blood

Repeat, reboot, repeat: Sarah Kane’s exceptionally groundbreaking play gets a problematically nostalgic anniversary revival

Excellent revival of Mike Leigh’s masterpiece comedy of suburban manners stars Jill Halfpenny

The remarkable story of 1960s football great John White is told with great emotional and theatrical flair in this one-person show

Here is a sample from the introduction to my latest book about postwar British theatre — an alternative history

Playwright or director? Who is ultimately responsible for a piece of theatre? Our Critic attempts to find out

Joseph Fiennes is mesmerizing as Gareth Southgate in James Graham’s sport-of-the-nation docu-drama

The Raoul Moat case revisited (again) in Robert Icke’s terrifyingly powerful account of toxic masculinity

A jury of young people hold their elders to account for disastrous climate change — chillingly compelling

Favourite stage direction: “The funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth II goes past.”

The Angry Young Men of the 1950s were more of a media phenomenon than a coherent movement

Autobiographical show about the Middle East is a wry take on insoluble antagonisms, and prefers utopian longing to political engagement

Spirited revival of this 1990s popular classic is enjoyably entertaining, but lacks darker shadows

The death of David Bowie provokes the Critic to take a trip down the motorways and side alleys of memory

Favourite stage direction: “Jade steps forward, out of the ‘picture’ from behind the curtain, and puts on the record player.”

Bad stuff and change in a time of pandemic: a derivative lockdown poem

Star cast give energy to a superb, if old fashioned, play about the anti-Semitism of Roald Dahl

Take an imaginative ride through 400 years of British theatre with our fictional guides

Martin Crimp’s Not One of These People has been staged using help from AI — but what does AI think of the show?

Grace Barnes’s excellent new book is both provocative and illuminating

In the Brexit era, this site-specific revival of Agatha Christie’s 1953 courtroom drama works like a treat

Text of the day: “There are good days and bad days.”

Latest thriller from the Hampstead Theatre sees a reunion of two female childhood friends turn nasty, oh very nasty

News Flash: my latest book about contemporary British theatre, new writing and beyond, is now available

Can the stranglehold of naturalism and social realism in British theatre ever be broken?

Excellent revival of Ryan Craig’s 2011 play about an British-Jewish family in crisis — still timely and thought-provoking

The love affair between playwright and actor lasted far beyond their early divorce

Let us remember the radical acts of 50 years ago.

Ella Hickson’s new play about power, gender inequality and fiction is thrillingly meta-theatrical

Text of the day: “But it was no good.”

Censorship appears to be simple, but is actually quite complicated.

More overviews of British new writing from the In-Yer-Face Theatre archive.

Maxine Peake struggles to make the voice of reason heard in a rather reactionary feminist history play

The longest-running play in world history is in good shape, despite the lackluster and mechanical cast

Explore the work of a handful of British theatre’s brightest and most exciting writing talents

A few days ago, I watched the National Theatre At Home streamed recording of Michaela Coel’s award-winning Chewing Gum Dreams.

Nick Stafford’s sturdy beast rides again — and retains its colt-like freshness and wild beauty

As a new production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is about to open in London’s West End, I was lucky enough to get the chance to watch The Impossible Itself (2010), Jake Ad…

Can theatre habituate us to extreme violence? Blasted is both a denunciation of the horrors of war and maybe a domestication of them

New drama about generational tension and nuclear disaster is rather metaphor-heavy and lacks energy

Artificial Intelligence is much hyped — but can it review a theatre show?

Perfectly pitched adaptation by Simon Stephens of Mark Haddon’s classic tale is brilliantly staged

Tim Crouch’s latest is a masterly enquiry into the art of performance, and into the extremes of grief

Tom Stoppard’s 1993 masterpiece is revived in a highly enjoyable, often luminous, production by Carrie Cracknell

The Royal Court’s international season continues with a savage Ukrainian play about women and war

Exuberant comedy with a dark edge: Beth Steel’s new play about three sisters is full of energy, but also a bit too populist for me

One of the most important characteristics of contemporary British new plays is that they aim to provide a forum for the discussion of ideas.

Katie Mitchell’s revival of Sarah Kane’s 1998 play sees it as a ghastly nightmare, but overburdens the text with too many additions