Read more about the article REVIEW: King Charles III, Almeida (2014)
Tim Piggot-Smith as King Charles III Photo - Johan Persson

REVIEW: King Charles III, Almeida (2014)

Mike Bartlett may be our best British playwright. With each play he writes he demonstrates a variety of talent and perception, inventing new and diverse subjects. His latest play surprised some of the critical fraternity, who hadn't done their homework, when they realised his modern history play, like Shakespeare's histories was in verse. Except that it isn't accurate to call King Charles III a history play as it is about events that haven't yet taken place.

Continue ReadingREVIEW: King Charles III, Almeida (2014)
Read more about the article REVIEW: A Very Expensive Poison, Old Vic (2019) <br> Winner Critics’ Circle Best New Play 2019  from our archives
Tom Brooke as Alexander Litvinenko (centre flanked by his assassins) (Photo: Marc Brenner)

REVIEW: A Very Expensive Poison, Old Vic (2019)
Winner Critics’ Circle Best New Play 2019 from our archives

This action by Russian agents (the KGB or their successors, the FSB) is the suspected second prominent murder case on British soil, the first known about being the murder of Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov in 1978 with a ricin poisoned pellet shot from an umbrella. The latest in 2018 took place in the sleepy West Country cathedral city of Salisbury when Novichoc a nerve agent was smeared on the door handle of Sergei Skripal's house putting Mr Skripal, his daughter Yulia and a local policeman into hospital and killing another English woman whose partner found the perfume bottle containing the nerve agent.

Continue ReadingREVIEW: A Very Expensive Poison, Old Vic (2019)
Winner Critics’ Circle Best New Play 2019 from our archives
Read more about the article REVIEW: 13, Olivier Theatre (2011)
Danny Webb as Stephen (centre) and Company - Photo: Marc Brenner

REVIEW: 13, Olivier Theatre (2011)

13 is about politics and the part we play or don't play in decision making. Faced with a society, set in the present where the banks call the shots and where people die in pointless wars, Bartlett questions whether it has to be like this.

Continue ReadingREVIEW: 13, Olivier Theatre (2011)