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RAGTIME

Book by Terrence McNally

Music by Stephen Flaherty

Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens

based on the novel by E L Doctorow

directed by Lear DeBessonet

Lincoln Center Theater at the Vivian Beaumont, New York City – until 14 June 2026

running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval 

https://www.lct.org/shows/ragtime/

“And the people called it Ragtime…”

Ask any musical theatre aficionado for their top ten modern scores, chances are this tuneful epic will be on most lists. In adapting E L Doctorow’s sprawling tale of social consciousnesses awakening and the necessity but challenges of immigration as America takes shape at the dawn of the twentieth century, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty created something operatic in ambition and scope, aided by the late Terrence McNally’s sweeping, fleet but emotionally alive book. 

A masterpiece has been reminted by a bunch of creatives and craftspeople at the top of their games at Lincoln Center and this Ragtime will restore your faith in the power of the arts to speak urgently to issues that are happening right now, and bathe you in the warm, golden light of musical theatre at its most enthralling. It is specifically about the birth of America, or at least America as it could and should be rather than the way it is for many people at the present time, but the messages of tolerance, hope and legacy are resonant and necessary for the world at large.

This makes it sound a bit worthy but the joy and exhilaration of Lear DeBessonet’s roof-raising production – her first as new artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater – is that it’s not only a brilliant example of illuminating the relevances of a modern masterpiece, it’s also wondrously fresh and vital, and an altogether glorious three hours in the theatre. Take hankies, you’ll need them.

It’s hard to fathom a better cast than the one assembled here. Joshua Henry’s womanising rebel Coalhouse Walker Jr perfectly balances the moments of light-on-his-feet charm with something brooding and darker; he’s a complete, flawed but admirable human being, and when he sings it’s the kind of deep, rich clarion call that makes you hold onto your seat and gasp. Brandon Uranowitz as Tateh, the Eastern European Jewish immigrant who will do whatever it takes to give his daughter (Tabitha Lawing, heartcatching) a comfortable life in the New World, is equally fine, with a wiry energy and an edge of manic desperation borne of genuine hardship. It’s a wonderfully detailed portrayal, funnier but also grittier than anyone else I’ve seen in the role.

Few singing actresses can make good and nice so utterly riveting as Caissie Levy does and this unique ability, first seen in her luminescent Sheila in the last Broadway and West End Hair revivals and superbly honed across multiple roles since, works a treat for Mother. Levy charts her spiritual and social awakening with precision and extraordinary emotional intelligence. Watch her as she waits for traumatised shut-in Sarah to decide whether to meet with Coalhouse, or her reaction to Father’s bigoted response to the fact that a Black baby is being raised in his house….this is magnificent acting, potent and true. Vocally she brings power and sweetness that culminates in a rapturous but rueful ‘Back To Before’ that stands equally alongside the late, great Marin Mazzie’s more operatic original version, that sends the audience into ecstatic overdrive.

Nichelle Lewis reconfirms the promise she showed last year in her professional debut as The Wiz’s Dorothy, and gives us a Sarah of devastating emotional intensity. She doesn’t have the classical sound of the role’s originator Audra McDonald but instead produces a voice that seems to be ripped from the guts. She’s sensational. Colin Donnell impresses as Father, giving him an air of troubled reflection more complex than anybody else I’ve seen in a role that can often seem a bit one-note.

In another quiet revelation typical of this production, Anna Grace Barlow makes something tangier, more interesting out of scandalous soubrette Evelyn Nesbitt, while Shaina Taub as rabble rousing Emma Goldman, Nicholas Barrón (understudying Ben Levi Ross) as Mother’s politically rebellious Younger Brother and Nick Barrington as the little boy who predicts the onset of World War One to Rodd Cyrus’ captivating Houdini, are all impeccable. The ensemble singing and the playing of James Moore’s satisfyingly huge orchestra thrills the blood and makes the hairs on the back of your neck stands out.

DeBessonet and her choreographer Ellenore Scott, not to mention the exemplary central design team of David Korins (set), Linda Cho (costumes) and Adam Honorë (lighting), completely master the Beaumont’s vast space. Moment after moment lingers in the memory (the entire company rising through the floor at the beginning, the staircases floating in the darkness to represent ships, the way an entire factory floor materialises in seconds), and the rapid changes of focus from epic to intimate are achieved with assured sleight of hand. The visual storytelling in the lengthy opening section – splitting the company into three discrete groups: the affluent whites, the Black community, and the immigrants – takes the breath away.

Kai Harada’s sound design is crystal clear so we get every word and nuance, and the music – an unsurpassed mixture of jazz syncopation, good old fashioned showtune, bombastic neo-classical intensity and of course ragtime – utterly transports and thrills. William David Brohn’s original orchestrations remain stunning. 

This Ragtime comes at us like a roar and a hug, and a wake-up call. It’s the most politically relevant show on Broadway, except perhaps for Liberation, but also one of the most richly enjoyable. This is theatre that nourishes you, it grips and it soars: go see, wallow and weep. They may as well start engraving those Tonys now. Essential.

LIBERATION

by Bess Wohl 

directed by Whitney White 

James Earl Jones Theatre, New York City – until 11 January 2026

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval

https://liberationbway.com

Understandably acclaimed by critics and audiences alike on its off-Broadway premiere earlier this year for Roundabout Theatre, Bess Wohl’s Liberation has now arrived on the Main Stem and is a significant enrichment to this Broadway season. It’s that rare and wonderful thing, an intelligent, politically and emotionally charged play about an important and essential subject, that is also terrific entertainment. 

Inspired by her own mother’s involvement in the Women’s Liberation movement in the 1970s, Wohl filters her feminist agenda through a set of relatable but never stereotypical characters, spiky and gloriously quirky, placing them in a situation (regular Consciousness Raising meetings in an Ohio school gym) where the verbal and emotional fireworks are primed to explode. It’s infused with love, some anger and a degree of  theatrical invention and fourth wall breaking that sets it apart from some other plays where people come together for discussion and reflection.

Whitney White’s almost note-perfect staging has transferred with its entire original cast intact and it’s impossible to imagine another team of women inhabiting these roles so fully and vividly. That said, the writing is so nuanced and rich in humour and the eccentricities and attitudes that make humans human, that there are probably several ways to portray these characters. No doubt other actors will get pleasure and praise from mining them in due course, as this feels like a play that will receive a multitude of productions in years to come. A modern American classic? It just might be.

A warm, luminous Susannah Flood plays journalist Lizzie deep-diving into her mothers past (“My devoted, dutiful mom who sewed the costumes for every school play and cooked every family dinner and did all the dishes and took me to every piano lesson… she was actually… a radical?”) and specifically the Women’s Group she founded in 1970.  She also doubles as her Mum and out of her memory come the women who became such friends, allies and, occasionally, antagonists. 

And what a bunch they are: there’s garrulous, boisterously self-aware aspiring film-maker Isidora (Irene Sofia Lucio, outrageous and irresistible) from Italy (“I have the husband but really only for the Green card”), and vinegary, older housewife Margie (Betsy Aidem) who claims to be in attendance so as to avoid stabbing her husband (“I realize that sounds like a joke. It’s not a joke”). Then there’s nomadic, rebellious lesbian Susan (Adina Verson, ultimately as touching as she’s hilarious) who’s currently living in her car, Kristolyn Lloyd’s elegantly fierce Celeste, a Black book editor temporarily back from New York to look after her ailing mother, and Dora, a people-pleasing fugitive from the epically sexist corporate world who has wandered in thinking it’s the knitting circle (lovely Broadway debut by Audrey Corsa). Costume designer Qween Jean dresses them in attire that looks authentically 1970s but also gives valuable clues as to who these women are, aided by Nikita Mathis’ eye-catching, slightly heightened wigs and hair designs.

Lizzie’s opening speech directly addresses that we’re watching a play as she welcomes and reassures the audience (“surely you’ve noticed all of those six hour, eight hour, ten hour plays are by men with no children? A woman with children would never. Could never”) and Flood’s delivery of it is so chummy and lowkey that some of the other performances feel comparatively over-emphatic, but only at first. What’s refreshing though is that Wohl, White and team give these women so much detail and definition that, as in real life, they constantly surprise but never at the expense of credibility.

They evolve too. Three years elapsed between acts one and two, and the way their relationships with each other and with themselves change is beautifully done, quietly fascinating in a show that is frequently anything but quiet. Corsa’s initially delicate Audrey transforms the most perhaps but it’s done with subtlety and precision. There’s a lot to love in all the performances but what Aidem is doing as wise-cracking but decent Margie is remarkable and has the audience eating out of the palm of her hand: her comic timing is stellar but the moments where she digs deep, bemoaning the speed of times passage and suggesting resigned amazement that all her significant life moments featured her husband or her kids and grandkids, pierces the heart. Even more astonishingly, there is a brief, deeply moving, scene where she has to portray Lizzie’s mother so that Flood’s character can have a conversation with her, and it’s done with little more than a change in posture and vocal timbre plus the removal of a pair of spectacles, but it’s a transformation. This is acting of the very highest order, and there was barely a dry eye in the house.

With Liberation, Wohl celebrates the Women’s Lib movement and the pioneers who went on strike and protested but also interrogates if they went far enough, given how much work there still is to do. It examines through these relatable, lovable women where the wheels sometimes came off. It’s intelligently but playfully critical: “no normal woman with school-age children can join a group that meets consistently at six p.m. on a school night” observes Joanne (played wonderfully on the night I attended by understudy Kedren Spencer), a local woman who popped by to retrieve her son’s sports bag and ends up arguing with Celeste, “you make a women’s group that women can’t come to…..this is exactly the kind of liberal bullshit that drives me bananas.”

Although written with spice and passion, that contretemps is one of a few moments where the play strays into contrivance. The sole male character, Lizzie’s Dad as a young man, feels necessarily like an intrusion into David Zinn’s hyper-realistic yet oddly dreamlike setting, nicely lit by Cha See, but probably gets a little too much stage time, though touchingly played by Charlie Thurston.

Ultimately, Liberation is a grand achievement, a play to be embraced and cherished by women but that also educates the men that love them, while also giving everyone a rollicking good time in the theatre. It celebrates the extraordinary resilience of women but it’s also about healing and giving ourselves and other people a second chance. Very special indeed. 

 

CHESS

Music and lyrics by Benny Andersson, Tim Rice and Björn Ulvaeus

based on an idea by Tim Rice

New book by Danny Strong

directed by Michael Mayer

Imperial Theatre, New York City – open ended run

running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval 

https://chessbroadway.com

Your perception of Chess probably depends which side of the Atlantic you’re from. The first Broadway version was a notorious flop garnering rotten reviews, but the London premiere, which had opened five months ahead of the original Phantom in 1986, was much more successful, filling the sizeable Prince Edward for over three years. Both productions were helmed by Trevor Nunn but were very different in look, feel and even script, the New York iteration having a completely new book by acclaimed American playwright Richard Nelson. The overall impression was that the score by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus with lyrics by Tim Rice in his first large scale departure from working with Andrew Lloyd Webber, was magnificent but the story and script, not so much.

By the time Chess hit Broadway in 1988, out was Elaine Paige plus the gigantic electronic chessboard stage that elevated and rotated, and the banks of TV screens showing Cold War news events and the moves in the all-important chess games, all inherited by Nunn from the original concept of Michael (A Chorus Line, Dreamgirls) Bennett who had become too sick from AIDS to continue working. In instead was Judy Kuhn and a less spectacular but still complicated staging featuring a series of beige towers that moved about to suggest multiple locations. The general consensus among New York theatre folk was that the “British Invasion” started by Cats and Les Mis had come to a shuddering halt with this tale of romance and betrayal amongst fractious East-West relations, and Chess Broadway shuttered after a mere two months. 

But now it’s back, in an eagerly awaited revisal led by Tony-winning director Michael Mayer, with a starry trio of central players and yet another new book, this time by Danny Strong, known more for his TV than theatre work. It would be lovely to report that this is the definitive Chess, that Strong, who in more than one press interview has proclaimed that he’s “fixed” the problematic musical, has finally cracked it and turned the show into the beloved blockbuster that diehard fans of this undeniably thrilling score always felt it should be. 

Well, it certainly seems to be making a lot of money, mainly one suspects due to the presence of Lea Michele as lovelorn, power-belting Chess analyst Florence, evacuated to the USA as a child from her native Hungary when the Soviets invaded. She’s alongside Broadway darling Aaron Tveit and rising star Nicholas Christopher as the (respectively) American and Russian Grandmasters competing with each other and squabbling over her. These bare bones of plot seem to be the only constant between each variation of the show. 

Unfortunately though, what’s currently doing phenomenal box office business at the Imperial (the same theatre where the original production played) is nearer to a particularly ballad-heavy episode of American Idol with a bit of politics and witless narration thrown in, than a coherent, fully realised musical. Essentially, it’s a semi-staged concert with Ian Weinberger and Brian Usifer’s band (excellent by the way, but less satisfying than the symphony sized orchestras on some recordings of the score) on platforms at rear and fully visible at all times, and the suited (women as well as men) ensemble sat around on couches throughout like a less decadent version of the cast over at Chicago.

They don’t just sit there, to be fair: they also execute choreography by the usually terrific Lorin Latarro that occasionally finds a natural dynamism but mostly feels like a confused distraction from all the park-and-bark singing. Why the bizarre sat-down interpretive dance when Christopher’s Anatoly is delivering his first crie de cœur solo ‘Where I Want To Be’? They strip to their underwear for ‘One Night In Bangkok’ but it feels more desperate than sexy, and a bit odd since they don’t change clothes at any other time (no Tyrolean costumes for Merano!) Much is made at the beginning of them donning a blue or red kerchief to denote American or Russian, but that concept is abandoned for the rest of the show.

Worse is Strong’s misguided book which sets up Bryce Pinkham’s Arbiter (“from square one, he’ll be watching all sixty four”) as a narrator-cum-MC, commenting on scenes as they unfold. There was a not-fully-realised antescendent to this with the late, fabulous Tom Jobe in the original London version, but Pinkham, working very hard, seldom shuts up. Strong has him rabbiting on incessantly, re-describing dialogue sequences we either just witnessed or are about to watch but are really not that complex, as though to an audience of halfwits. Then there’s the contemporary “jokes” and allusions he’s saddled with: Chess is set at the height of Soviet vs West tensions in the 1980s but we get gags about Robert F Kennedy Jr’s brain worm, Biden and Trump, constant references to “our Cold War musical” and fatigued digs at the show and characters we’re watching (“see I told you he was a dick” he winks at us over the head of a villainous American agent; “that was HOT!” after Bangkok…like ok we get it, we’re right here). 

It’s as though Strong doesn’t trust the piece to speak for itself, and his approach keeps us at a constant emotional remove from a show that, while soaringly effective as a collection of bombastic theatre songs, suffers from a certain chilliness that I doubt even its most passionate advocates would deny. Mayer’s staging, glossy but soulless, doesn’t help, favouring the prosaic over the inspired, and giving two of his three leads little to make their dramatic mark with. Michele and Christopher are authentically great singers and have moments of vocal power here (‘Nobody’s Side’, ‘Anthem’, ‘Endgame’) that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, but neither registers much in the way of personality beyond a general air of discontent. Comparisons may be odious but anyone who saw Elaine Paige and Tommy Körberg in these roles will likely miss the edge, warmth and humour these two performers brought (and Florence as a leading lady role that barely passes the Bechdel test needs as much help as she can get).

Tveit, on the other hand, nails American player Freddie’s mix of swagger, instability and vulnerability, plus has the perfect stratospheric rock tenor to really do justice to the role’s extraordinary vocal demands. He’s superb and his breakdown number ‘Pity The Child’ has never sounded better. Strong ups the ante by making explicit the character’s mental health issues but then turns us off Florence by having her snatch away the meds that keep him on an even-ish keel, just as she’s leaving him for Anatoly. 

The other improvement in this new Chess is the depiction of Anatoly’s abandoned wife Svetlana, forced to come to Bangkok by the KGB to plead for his flunking of the  international championship game and return to Moscow. No longer the dowdy drudge of old, here she’s a manipulative, ambiguous vamp, tough, sexy as hell but with an edge of real desperation (one of Strong’s more inspired modifications is suggesting the mortal danger Russians found themselves in if perceived as having shamed the motherland in some way). Hannah Cruz invests her with a powerful presence and fascinating, focused unknowability, plus a steely, enthralling vocal belt (has this woman ever played Evita?!) She is stunning but when the most complex and satisfying performance is from a secondary character who only appears in act two, you know the show has issues.

Bradley Dean and Sean Allan Krill are enjoyably nasty as a pair of men from opposing sides of the political divide with more interest in furthering their national interests than fair play, and the ensemble singing is consistently potent. A pivotal character shows up in the very final moments but in a way that comes across as more eye-rollingly risible than the deeply moving that was presumably intended.

In eschewing the black and white colour palette, redolent of an actual chessboard, employed by original designers Robin Wagner and Theoni T Aldredge and many of their successors on later revivals of the show, this Chess is a retina-bruising mishmash of colours and styles that don’t add up, the visual storytelling being virtually non-existent. David Rockwell’s set, static but gleaming and surrounded by giant chess pieces with the occasional nuclear warhead thrown in to unsettle, is dressed up with garish lighting by Kevin Adams and video designs by Peter Nigrini that only really register properly if you’re sitting centrally. The stage is mostly empty (well, apart from the omnipresent orchestra that encroaches on everything) but then, ponderously, a bed will elevate through the floor for Michele to deliver a power ballad from, while chandeliers that look like they’ve been borrowed from the Met Opera twinkle overhead: it just doesn’t feel very well thought through. Tom Broecker’s costumes are dismayingly drab, with little sense of the 1980s.

One of the finest, most moving songs in the show, Florence’s rueful admission of romantic defeat, ‘Someone Else’s Story’ premiered by Judy Kuhn in the original Broadway version, is placed now at the very end, making no sense beyond giving Michele an eleven o’clock number (although it feels well past midnight by this point). John Shivers’ sound design is impressive though, balancing the neo-operatic overwhelm with the pop/rock elements of the score and (mostly) letting us hear Rice’s wittily incisive then heartfelt lyrics.

Tveit and Cruz apart, the principal pleasure of seeing Chess is to hear this score again. Cleverer and more complex than Saigon and Les Mis, more urgently grandiose than Phantom, with a Puccini-esque richness offset by bracing Scandinavian steel, it’s gorgeous, and apparently indestructible. Anders Eljas’ orchestrations, in collaboration here with Usifer, remain distinctive and exciting.

The perfect Chess though? We are all still waiting for that. Maybe, like world peace, it can’t exist. This glittering Frankenstein’s monster of a makeover, only intermittently stirring, isn’t it, but the cast album will be a cracker. 

OTHELLO

by William Shakespeare 

directed by Tom Morris

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London – until 17 January 2026

running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval 

https://trh.co.uk/whatson/othello/

Raging passions and envy run through Shakespeare’s Othello like veins through the human body but that’s only fitfully apparent in this handsome West End mounting headed by David Harewood returning to the title role twenty eight years after playing it at the National. Harewood is, as expected, very fine, with natural gravitas and nobility, plus a voice that envelopes the language in a rich warmth that is a pleasure to listen to but never loses the meaning of it. He’s also such a good technician that he makes Othello’s descent into jealousy and mental disintegration plausible. If it’s not as moving as one might hope that is more due to other factors in Tom Morris’ production than the performance itself. 

The modern dress staging (Ti Green’s costumes are pretty unflattering, borderline hideous though) is strong on storytelling and is an admirably swift, clear rendition of the text. It’s more workmanlike than inspired perhaps never drags, and has a genuinely innovative take on the tragedy’s doomed heroine, as played by Caitlin Fitzgerald.

This Desdemona is a mature patrician beauty who when required to soothe Othello to seems more like Othello‘s mother than his wife. She is initially formidable when standing her ground against her raging husband, then later admirably brave as she realises she’s staring down a dangerous, physically powerful man whose mental health has entirely broken down. Fitzgerald uses her own American accent, which gives the impression of Desdemona being as much an outsider as Othello himself, and speaks the verse superbly.

Toby Jones also has a masterful way with the language but it’s never clear what’s propelling this Iago towards destruction. The character is frequently portrayed as motivated by racism (which wouldn’t work in this interpretation as people of colour are integrated into the polyglot modern world of this production, plus his wife Emilia is Black here), or by unspoken love for Othello. This Iago just seems like a meddlesome imp, disempowered in multiple areas of his life, a mean-spirited manipulator for sure, but never truly chilling. There is perhaps a clue as to what powers him in a brief moment where he watches, intently and transfixed, as Fitzgerald‘s magnificent Desdemona kneels and prays in distress after a particularly nasty showdown with Othello. Is he in love with her or is he the type of sad little man who’s intimidated by the sort of strong woman that this Desdemona unusually is? His controlling behaviour towards his own wife is unpleasant to watch.

Ewan McGregor in the 2007 Donmar’s production gave us an Iago that was so affable on the surface that one could see how others were taken in by him, but Jones is quirkier than that. He’s a brilliant actor, capable of tremendous nuance and pleasing eccentricities, but he doesn’t strike me as a natural Iago, and it’s never entirely clear why he would have the ear of Harewood’s Othello.

Vinette Robinson is a terrific Emilia, a walking ball of understated anxiety and pragmatism that erupts distressingly (but dramatically satisfyingly) in the final act. Her howls of grief and screams of retribution at what Othello has done come from the depths of her soul. Equally, her crude, world weary assessment of men (“they are all but stomachs, and we all but food; to et us hungerly, and when they are full, they belch us”) seems to come from a place of bitter experience.

Elsewhere, Morris‘s production has an abundance of ideas, few of which seem fully formed, and so seldom coalesce into a satisfying whole. The Venetian scenes play out on a blank stage dressed with a series of gleaming frames that mirror the gilt gorgeousness of Haymarket’s auditorium while also suggesting a skeletal version of the elaborate ceilings in the Doge’s Palace. Then a series of images from exotic foliage to a full moon are beamed onto a stage-wide beaded curtain that looks as though it was bought as a job lot from the Jamie Lloyd Sunset Boulevard. The faces of principal characters are briefly projected huge at the back of scenes for no apparent reason, actors mime in slow motion upstage as others speak to the audience out front. Even more mystifyingly, lighting rigs fly and track on from the side for the final act as if to create a stage of the stage for Desdemona’s final reckoning. What’s that all about? Surveillance? The idea that Iago’s set-up for the tragedy turns everyone into play actors? It’s unclear. It’s not that the tone is inconsistent exactly, but nothing adds up.

PJ Harvey’s widely advertised musical contribution is unobtrusive to say the least, but Green’s set, Richard Howell’s lighting and Jon Nicholls’ sound design are all fine. Luke Treadaway is a decent Cassio, genuinely unhinged in drink, and there’s good support from Peter Guinness as Desdemona’s aggressively bereft father and Felix Hayes as the Duke of Venice, he and his church elder associates all wearing ID lanyards over their flowing scarlet robes. It’s interesting to note Rose Riley in the cast as a spirited  Bianca: her luminous Desdemona was a highlight of the expressionistic 2023 Othello which cut the whole play down to 100 minutes and featured three Iagos.

This version isn’t as innovative as that, but it does give the tragedy its full dramatic weight. Essentially, it tells the story well while repackaging it as a semi-thriller; the nice Australian lady sitting next to me had never read or seen the play before but her gasps of shock and, at the end, her tears suggest that, for all my reservations, this Othello fundamentally works.

THE MEAT KINGS! (Inc) OF BROOKLYN HEIGHTS

by Hannah Doran

directed by George Turvey

Park Theatre, London – until 29 November 2025

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://parktheatre.co.uk/events/the-meat-kings/

If Hannah Doran’s The Meat Kings! (Inc) of Brooklyn Heights feels familiar it’s because it belongs to the same rich tradition of American industrial dramas as the works of Lynne Nottage (Sweat, Clyde’s) and Dominique Morisseau (Skeleton Crew), reflecting on the bitter, hard underside of the American Dream and how even hard work isn’t always the path out of a challenging existence. The biggest surprise here, other than the fact that a debut full length play is this accomplished, is that Doran isn’t even American. This powerful piece is the recipient of last year‘s Papatango prize for new theatre writing and, honestly, it’s hard to recall a more worthy winner in several years. It’s an absolute belter. 

Set entirely in the back/cutting room of Cafarelli’s butchers shop, run by the same Italian-American family for generations in New York’s second largest borough, it’s a pacy, gripping look at lives in freefall, tough, edgy, but also full of humour and heart (not in the offal sense). Dorian’s characters, vividly drawn, are lost, or at least misplaced, valiant souls trying their best but coming up at every turn against apparently insurmountable issues, some of them some of their own making, but many not. The dialogue is salty and sharp, mostly convincing as coming out of the mouths of hard-bitten New Yorkers, just occasionally straying into cliché.

Boss lady Paula Cafarelli, a butch, potty-mouthed straight talker (Jackie Clune, absolutely magnificent) employs ex-cons to give them a second chance, but can’t control the infighting and rivalry. Billy (Ash Hunter, conveying authentic vulnerability and sadness under his swaggering exterior) has been there for years as a trainee but needs the job to fund the healthcare for his seriously ill mother, so is desperate to secure a full-time position. His main obstacle to that, beyond his own attitude at times, is Marcello Cruz’s charming, enthusiastic Mexican JD, whose only shortcoming is some lapsed residency papers that he hasn’t informed Paula about. Then there’s former Wall Street highflyer David (Eugene McCoy), whose previous greed and excesses caused him to lose everything, and newly recruited T (Mithra Malek), Billy’s spiky younger cousin, fresh out of jail and unexpectedly, given her line of post-incarceration employment, a vegetarian.

It’s not fair to give away too much of what happens but it very much speaks to the uncertainty and terrors facing immigrants in the USA right now. Dorian and director George Turvey ratchet up the tension and intrigue to thrilling levels, and there’s an electrifying showdown near the end that equals Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge in themes and intensity. David as a character feels more sketchily drawn than the others, and T has a speech eviscerating her cousin that, while rooted in a legitimate plot development, seems excessively and implausibly vicious. McCoy and Malek are so good though that they make the characters fully resonate even when the writing doesn’t fully support that.

The acting is uniformly stunning. Paula could be a one-note bruiser in less distinguished hands than Clune’s, but here she has an unsentimental warmth and kindness that proves surprisingly moving. Cruz’s JD mixes sunniness, sensitivity and street smarts to memorable effect, and Hunter is flat-out devastating.

Mona Camille’s set turns the Park 200’s ground floor into the butchers shop anteroom, complete with carcasses hanging overheard, and has a clinical chilliness that contrasts strikingly with the heat of the text and performances. Turvey’s direction is immaculate, naturalistic but employing potent theatricality when required. 

Given all the sharp butchers knives hanging around (the butchery looks pretty realistic) I was vaguely expecting a ‘Chekhov’s gun’ type situation but I’m rather pleased Doran spared us that. It’s a huge pleasure to encounter such an impressive new playwright, and it will be fascinating to see what Doran’s voice turns out to be (she’s British-Irish so presumably won’t keep churning out plays about the American working classes). As it stands, this is a shattering piece of theatre, and likely to be a smash hit for the Park. Wonderful, meaty stuff; pun intended.

THE MAIDS 

by Jean Genet

new version written and directed by Kip Williams

Donmar Warehouse, London – until 29 November 2025

running time: 100 minutes no interval 

https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/whats-on/the-maids-fs5q

Swapping the narcissism and cruelty of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray for the shadowy same-sex erotica and claustrophobic power games, but also cruelty, of Jean Genet’s esoteric 1947 three hander seems like a natural progression for Australian auteur Kip Williams.  If The Maids, reinvented for the social media generation, feels like a sequel to the recent The Picture of Dorian Gray in terms of bravura performances, slightly hysterical tone and, especially, in the use of visually astounding, groundbreaking tech, it’s a striking piece of theatre nonetheless. 

Allegedly inspired by an infamous real crime where a pair of sisters murdered their employer in 1933 France, the original Genet is more stream-of-consciousness fever dream than coherent drama. The previous Donmar production in 1997 directed by John Crowley rendered it fey and esoteric, while a starry Jamie Lloyd revival at Trafalgar Studios nearly a decade ago was flashy but still mystifying. Here it remains ritualistic and periodically ponderous, but informed and enlivened by the ultra modern approach. The themes of self-loathing, envy and repressed longings are a marriage made in heaven (or hell?) with the self-obsession and mutual ownership often engendered by social media use: a frequently impenetrable play is illuminated (literally and figuratively) and made wildly entertaining. 

In fact, Williams is only collaborating with one of his Dorian Gray creative colleagues here, costume designer Marg Horwell whose eye-popping art-meets-fashion creations for Madame – usually a socialite but here an image-obsessed online influencer – could teach the team over at The Devil Wears Prada a thing or two. The aesthetic is similar to the earlier show though, with actors features cartoonishly beautified or grotesquely modified via filters as their images are live-streamed up on the the vast mirrored screens dominating Rosanna Vize’s opulent, oppressive boudoir set.

Lydia Wilson and Phia Saban as ladys maids Claire and Solange, the role-playing sisters under the thumb of the histrionic Madame while plotting her demise and wishing for different existences, are haunting and impressive, alive to every change in pitch and emphasis in Williams’ new text which is going for essence of Genet rather than slavish adaptation. There are references to social media apps, vaping, Soho House, contemporary fashion designers, and so on ….the language is snappy, dirty, terse, and often extremely funny. 

The contrast between the heightened grandeur of Claire pretending to be Madame and her self-effacing throwaway delivery as her way less confident self is superbly managed by Wilson, whose combination of stridency and vulnerability tantalisingly suggests what a great performance her Blanche DuBois might have been in the Almeida-Paul Mescal Streetcar. Saban is every bit her equal, giving Solange a pragmatism and eagerness that is extremely affecting, the epitome of a young woman who constantly feels that she’s in the shadow of others.

Probably the longest shadow is that cast by Madame, a gorgeous monster in designer gear, played with spitfire precision and comic volatility by Yerin Ha. She’s a merciless parody of the new-ish breed of physically blessed, self-aggrandising young person rich and famous for reasons that nobody can quite fathom; a ghastly human being perhaps but, as presented and played here, fabulous theatrical company. It’s not hard to see why she fascinates the sisters so much, but it’s equally clear why they feel compelled to destroy her, in a fitting metaphor for the para social obsessions that are the downside of fandom and constant access via modern mass media.  

The garish artificial beauty of the world these women exist in belies the ugliness and banality lurking beneath; Williams and team capture this with a vicious brilliance that unsettles as it simultaneously delights. Zakk Hein’s video designs and the music score by DJ Walde, redolent of club beats then grand opera, are essential components in the shows success.

It’s a provocative reflection on our modern obsession with bright, shiny things….and Williams’ dazzling production is a very bright and shiny thing. It’s also lethal. Whether you find it exhilarating or simply exhausting will depend on your tolerance for all the posturing and digital trickery, and how much you can engage with the humanity of the deeply unhappy sisters. Personally, I found it unforgettable.

CROCODILE FEVER

by Meghan Tyler

directed by Mehmet Ergen

Arcola Theatre, London – until 22 November 2025

running time: 2 hours including interval 

https://www.arcolatheatre.com/event/crocodilefever/

If you can imagine a female-centric Northern Irish take on Sam Shepard or early Tracy Letts, add a splatter of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros and trace a rich, bloody vein back to the gorefests of Jacobean revenge tragedy, and you’ll have some idea of Meghan Tyler’s thrilling play, previously seen at the Edinburgh Festival in 2019. Crocodile Fever, in a note-perfect, full throttle staging by the Arcola’s artistic director Mehmet Ergen, is packed with surprises (some of them deeply unpleasant), jet black humour and, perhaps most impressively, a razor sharp clarity of vision and willingness to march into territory that fainter hearted theatre makers might blanch at. 

It’s the 1980s and two sisters from rural County Armagh have dealt with the tragic but suspicious death of their mother and the decades-long reign of terror by their misogynistic bully of a father, in markedly different ways. Alannah (Rachael Rooney) has become a recluse in the family home, caring for her now severely disabled but still vile father and developing chronic OCD, while Fianna (Tyler, as exciting an actor as they are a writer) joined the IRA and has done time in prison. Fianna’s return (via a broken window, naturally) throws Alannah into a complete tailspin. 

It’s great fun watching wild Fianna pushing (apparently) strait laced Alannah’s buttons, and the pugnacious dynamic between the siblings is brilliantly realised. Meanwhile their bed-bound father (Stephen Kennedy), now unable to use his legs thanks to a run-in with British soldiers, rumbles overhead. The staircase in Merve Yörük’s nicely kitschy farmhouse set suggests that he will make an appearance at some point, and when he does, it’s quite a moment. Kennedy is gloriously, repellently vivid.

The first act is biliously funny but also succeeds in achieving a real, palpable sense of danger. Remarkably, it also has moments that are genuinely touching as Fianna and Alannah try to reconnect over remembered pop tunes and phenomenally strong drinks. Tyler is like a firecracker in human form, and Rooney, although a trifle over-emphatic at first, finds colours and layers in Alannah’s issues and defensiveness that feel authentic. These performances sizzle.

If act one is a riot, the even more visceral but less satisfactory second half really snaps the tether. Nothing quite prepares you for what’s to come but Tyler seems to be making valid, if not particularly original, points about women being the repeated victims of war and male aggression, and that the capacity for female rage is infinite. No spoilers here but suffice it to say you may not be able to believe your eyes and ears. If it strays into the preposterous, it does, ultimately, feel of apiece with what we’ve seen before, and it’s technically astonishing (special mentions are due to puppet designer Rachael Canning, and the lighting and sound contributions of Richard Williamson and Benjamin Grant respectively). 

Powered by vengeful rage, 80s bangers, industrial quantities of booze, Taytos (yes, the Irish brand of potato crisps) and a chainsaw, Crocodile Fever (the title will make sense when you watch the play) is essential viewing if you want to see a playwright giving a two fingered salute to the limits of imagination, but with potty-mouthed wit and theatrical panache. It isn’t perfect, and it’s certainly not for the faint-of-heart but it makes a lot other plays currently on offer seem awfully safe. As an impressed but bewildered Fianna says of Alannah’s hilariously eccentric analysis of ‘Africa’, the Toto hit single from 1982 and one of the songs the sisters bond over, “that’s genius, I mean, it’s mental but it’s genius”. Well, quite.

THE LINE OF BEAUTY 

based on the novel by Alan Hollinghurst

adapted by Jack Holden 

directed by Michael Grandage 

Almeida Theatre, London – until 29 November 2025

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/the-line-of-beauty/

It’s been a while since I’ve seen something that so clearly has ‘West End transfer’ written all over it. Michael Grandage’s production of this adaptation by Jack (Cruise, Kenrex) Holden of the bestselling novel by Alan Hollinghurst (which already had an acclaimed BBC TV version back in 2006) sold out at the Almeida almost as soon as tickets became available. Admirers of Grandage’s spare yet glossy house style are unlikely to be disappointed, but fans of the book might be dismayed at the simplification of The Line of Beauty’s myriad complexities.

With Kenrex (transferring to The Other Palace at Christmas and under no account to be missed) and Cruise, Holden has proven himself a potent, highly original theatrical voice, but his work here feels more like that of a writer for hire. He’s provided a fleet, perhaps inevitably episodic, distillation of Hollinghurst’s novel, skittering between an ultra-privileged 1980s London with forays into its gay underbelly and rural, sun-drenched France. It covers all the plot points and principal characters, and is tremendously watchable, but doesn’t sear or devastate the way one might expect from a piece chronicling the fatal havoc AIDS wreaked on the penultimate decade of the twentieth century. 

It doesn’t help that the central figure Nick Guest, the middle class gay aesthete embroiled in the family life of upper crust Conservative MP Gerald Fedden and his wife Rachel having befriended their son Toby (Leo Suter) at Oxford University, is strangely unknowable on stage. Without the inner life a novel can afford, or the intensity of the screen which allowed us to experience Dan Stevens’ Nick at close quarters, there is a sort of blankness at the centre of the story. A lot of his actions, such as the dumping of Alistair Nwachukwu’s cockily charming working class Leo after a declaration of love, are unlikely to elicit much sympathy, and neither does his obsession with beauty – human and artistic – which is only expressed fitfully in the play. It’s not the fault of Jasper Talbot who gives a technically accomplished account of the role, mining it for as much empathy and humour as the script allows, but Nick remains out of reach and hard to like.

Certain scenes, such as Nick’s final, separate showdowns with Gerald and Rachel (Charles Edwards and Claudia Harrison respectively, both superlative) blaze into theatrical life, and there’s a wonderfully awkward comic sequence where Nick has dinner at home with Leo’s ultra-religious mother (Doreene Blackstock, delightful). A lot of the time though, the exchanges sound like prose from a book rather than legit dramatic dialogue, which occasionally leads to some rather stilted acting. 

There’s fabulous work though from Artie Froushan as the ridiculously wealthy, coke-snorting closet job who seduces Nick with his money and connections, and Hannah Morrish doubling as a comically inept budding actress and a disenchanted political secretary. Robert Portal’s boorish, insensitive, homophobic Badger, wildly rich from a career in asset stripping and a close family friend of the Feddens, is the epitome of clichéd Tory baddie, but is played to the hilt. Francesca Amewudah-Rivers brings a lovely presence to Leo’s all-seeing sister, and Ellie Bamber is appropriately volatile as the youngest and most unstable of the Fedden brood, who becomes Nick’s biggest ally.

The sense of gay men driven to furtiveness and extremes of bad behaviour by the lack of acceptance from the mainstream is a potent theme, but the characters are so unsympathetic that we find ourselves watching passively rather than becoming emotionally involved. Compared with, say, Mathew López’s epic The Inheritance, or Larry Kramer’s pivotal The Normal Heart, The Line Of Beauty seems a bit tepid, and watching wealthy people disporting in luxurious surroundings feels tone deaf in 2025, despite the erudition of the language and the slickness of Grandage’s staging, punctuated by invigorating blasts of 1980s pop bangers.

As if to point up the artificiality of it all, Christopher Oram’s set is dominated by a large, ornate white frame reminiscent both of a proscenium arch and the portico of the Kensington Palace Garden mansion in which much of the story takes place. The whole show looks great, Howard Hudson’s inventive lighting working wonders in transforming the space into the multiple locations. 

It’s a decent piece of entertainment which strikes an appropriate balance between the intellectual and the sensationalist, but it seldom cuts as deep as it should, coming across as an elegant potboiler with artistic pretensions, swirlingly staged. Undoubtedly a crowd pleaser and a big fat hit. 

THE ASSEMBLED PARTIES

by Richard Greenberg

directed by Blanche McIntyre 

Hampstead Theatre, London – until 22 November 2025

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2025/the-assembled-parties/

Early on in Richard Greenberg’s 2013 The Assembled Parties, now receiving a belated UK premiere at Hampstead, a wealthy American Democrat complains about the incoming Republican President, and no, they’re not decrying the wildly divisive current administration. Tracy-Ann Oberman’s tough-talking, histrionic/neurotic Long Island Jewish Faye is referring to the arrival in the White House of former film star Ronald Reagan back at the dawn of the 1980s when the first half of this Tony-nominated family dramedy is set. Fast forward twenty years to act two, it’s 2020 and loquacious, fabulous Faye is at it again, but this time the source of her ire is incoming President George W Bush, another Republican leader.

Greenberg’s talky but rewarding play, situated entirely in the Bascov family’s palatial, rent-stabilised Upper West Side apartment at Christmas two decades apart, isn’t an overtly political piece but uses discussion of the current President as a handy indicator of historical period and the source of some humour (“Republican Jews, what is that?” snorts Faye derisively, “it’s like ‘skinny fat people’”). Essentially it’s an elevated hybrid of sitcom and soap opera, laced with an elegant, vivid use of language and some gloriously sassy humour.

Although Jewish, the Bascovs are so assimilated and such quintessential New Yorkers that they celebrate Christmas in high style, and the curtain rises on fragrant lady of the house Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt in an entrancing London stage debut) welcoming Sam Marks’ Jeff, the eager, impressed college friend of her golden boy son Scott.  We also encounter Julie’s go-getting husband Ben (Daniel Abelson, excellent), their sickly, bed-bound four year old Timmy, and Scott himself (Alexander Marks), also clearly unwell and in thrall to a feisty, unseen girlfriend. It’s enlivened considerably by the arrival of Oberman (an actor with a proven and unrivalled ability to take a scene by the scruff of its neck and revitalise it) as Ben’s sister Faye and a suitably grizzled David Kennedy as her thuggish husband Mort, in from New Jersey for the holidays.

Played out on a slowly revolving stage (nicely evocative design by James Cotterill), the first act of Blanche McIntyre’s production is stronger on atmosphere than pace, and you may find yourself heading out into the interval full of questions. Why is Mort blackmailing Ben for an heirloom necklace that is likely worthless? Why does Faye and Ben’s mother apparently hate her? What’s with Jeff’s vitriolic phone conversation with his own mother? What’s wrong with Scott?

Stick with it though, as the second half is an absolute beauty. It’s infinitely richer, not least because it centres on Julie and Faye (several of the men are dead, reinforcing the belief that women really are the stronger sex) and their longstanding friendship. Most, not all, of the questions posed by the first act are resolved, but there are insights into the nature of parenthood, about kindness and about how people can show up for you when you don’t necessarily expect it, that are pure bittersweet gold. Cotterill’s set opens out and becomes more specific, as though to suggest that the passage of time imparts more information and detail. Furthermore,  Oberman and Westfeldt’s performances become even more glorious. 

If Faye is the more flamboyant creation, and Oberman, looking like a million bucks, inhabits her completely and irresistibly, Julie is fascinating and often more surprising. A beloved figure that the other characters seek to protect at all costs but who is savvier than she appears, she’s almost a Manhattanite version of Arthur Miller’s Kate Keller but with a wider array of eccentricities and hang-ups. 

Greenberg gives her a charmingly baroque way of expressing herself, befitting of a former actress (“So lovely, Christmas, although you find all the dying tends to accelerate around now. And of course there’s Bing Crosby, he’s a tribulation, don’t you find? You can’t escape him”), but a couple of sharp edges to offset the sweetness. “A cheerful nature is an utterly ruthless thing,” she informs an understandably enchanted Jeff, “I’m the most ruthless woman you’ll ever meet.” Westfeldt catches every note and nuance.

There’s still a slight hesitancy to McIntyre’s staging that will probably iron out as the run continues, and The Assembled Parties is likely to frustrate anybody looking for action rather than talk and mood. Within its own (deceptively ambitious) confines however, it’s a work of considerable warmth and depth, a witty elegy for a way of New York living that feels like it’s teetering on the brink of extinction. It’s one that stays with you after the performance, and this London debut is a lovely way of commemorating Richard Greenberg, one of America’s most prolific and insightful modern playwrights, following his death this summer. Vahksin.

 

 

FANNY

by Calum Finlay

directed by Katie-Ann McDonough

Kings Head Theatre, London – until 15 November 2025

running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval 

https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/fanny-qft1

It’s funny…you wait your whole life for a show about prodigious musically talented sisters of classical composers being overlooked in favour of their less gifted, but now more famous, younger brothers due to historical sexism, and two come along within the same year. Sarcasm aside, it’s curious how 2025 has already given us Saving Mozart, the glossily produced but DOA tuner about Wolfgang Amadeus’ neglected sibling Nannerl this summer at the Other Palace, and now a London transfer for the Watermill’s smash hit Fanny, a merry, music-infused comedy commemorating Mendelssohn’s older sister whose composition ‘Italien’ was a favourite of Queen Victoria’s. Of course that long running monarch believed it was the work of Fanny’s prodigal brother Felix. 

Calum Finlay’s script is often laugh-out-loud hilarious – the drollness and invention of Mischief, one of the founding members of which, Charlie Russell, plays the eponymous heroine here, only with more heart – but also meticulously researched. In between the gags (some inspired and others groan-worthy), the wordplay, and the frenzied comic business, Finlay provides a lot of biographical meat and detail. There are also some trenchant observations on early nineteenth century womanhood and the impossibility of a woman in the Romantic era having an independent career in the arts  (“we can only play exactly what we’re handed” ruefully comments Fanny’s mother Lea, herself a talented musician).

There’s even a superbly orchestrated (pun intended) bit of audience participation where the onlookers joyfully become the musicians inside Fanny’s imagination. It’s an inspired moment in an evening brimming with them. Russell marshals the crowd brilliantly and elsewhere delivers a funny, rebellious, resourceful heroine with a touching sadness behind the eyes. It’s a glorious performance, more nuanced and layered than any of her Mischief appearances to date, blending high precision comedy playing with a genuine depth, and a wondrous physicality (watching her “conduct” is mesmerising).

Director Katie-Ann McDonough and writer Finlay have surrounded her with quality. West End regular Kim Ismay is sheer camp joy as the Mendelssohn’s snobbish mama, pitched half way between Mrs Malaprop and a Teutonic version of Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennet, also doubling as Queen Victoria and a deeply disapproving innkeeper. Equally glorious is Danielle Phillips as the perpetually furious, boxing-obsessed other daughter, determined to get Fanny married off so that she can then in turn be free. Daniel Abbott as the better known Felix captures exactly the right combination of warmth and ruthlessness while Jeremy Lloyd raises gormless to an art form as bewildered older brother Paul, the one with a good heart but little musical ability. Although saddled with some tiresome humorous schtick as the pun-loving Wilhelm Hensel, the painter Fanny ends up marrying, Riad Richie is dynamic and tremendously likeable, rather more than just a typical love interest. 

McDonough’s staging, attractively designed with period trappings by Sophia Pardon, moves at a hell of a pace and mines Finlay’s text for all its wit and maniacal fun, but also gives the serious stuff and an authentic appreciation of, and love for, classical music, room to breathe. It’s not perfect: an act two sequence with a character who speaks exclusively in rhyme doesn’t fully land. Similarly, an Allo Allo-adjacent section where the German Mendelssohns arrive in London and an English coachman converses with them “in German”, i.e. with a strong Teutonic accent and lots of mangled, bawdy mispronunciations, really outstays its welcome. The drastic changes in heart for Felix and mother Lea with regards to Fanny happen with a whiplash-inducing speed that defies logic in the second half.

These are comparatively minor quibbles though in a rollicking, crowd-pleasing romp that is likely to appeal equally to connoisseurs of comedy and classical music buffs. I roared with laughter, and I actually learnt something, but perhaps most surprisingly, given how much fun it all is, the integrity and transformative power of great music is honoured. Fanny is fabulous.