When it was first written, the 1952 film High Noon drew much of its force from the then political context and from Gary Cooper’s Oscar-winning performance. Created during the era of McCarthyism by Carl Foreman while he was under scrutiny from the House Un-American Activities Committee, the film’s moral urgency, combined with Cooper’s quiet integrity, helped secure its status as a classic. The tale of a small-town marshal who confronts an anarchic threat to the rule of law struck a deep chord with audiences. In this allegory, Will Kane stands isolated as he faces an approaching tyranny that leaves his fellow citizens paralysed by fear. Set against their timidity and willingness to submit to intimidation or to flee, his resolve appears all the more heroic. Kane’s ordeal is further complicated by the two opposing forces that inform his personal life and underscore his symbolic role as the law. His Quaker wife embodies noble but impractical ideals, grounded in a faith that rejects violenc...

The Paranormal franchise has a proven following, and horror fans are likely to enjoy this new stage incarnation. When James and Lou relocate from Chicago to London in search of a fresh start, it soon becomes clear that leaving their problems behind will not be so easy. He has a new job and she can work remotely, yet, as the programme hints, hauntings are not always tied to places. Sometimes they attach themselves to people. James must contend with his prying, Bible-quoting mother via a laptop screen, while Lou quickly realises that her grandchild- obsessed mother-in-law is the least of her concerns. Darkness, sudden loud noises and the occasional effective illusion are used to draw the audience into their increasingly unstable world. While this production recalls the successful 2:22 A Ghost Story and the long running The Woman in Black, it lacks the technical ingenuity of a show like Stranger Things: The First Shadow . Fly Davis’s set is a meticulously detailed two storey house, but ...

Phillip is an emotionally immature, developmentally challenged recluse, protected and controlled by his impulsive and potentially violent older brother Treat who supports them both by stealing. Together they inhabit a sealed world of rituals, games, and shared fantasy. However, when Treat kidnaps Harold, an apparently wealthy criminal on the run, this act proves far from the solution he expects. Instead, the power dynamic shifts as Harold, himself an orphan, assumes an almost parental role, exposing the brothers to an alternative way of living beyond their self-made confinement. In just two weeks, he becomes a conduit to the outside world and offers the boys a new vision of themselves. Harold’s repeated rendition of “The Prisoner’s Song” underscores the play’s central metaphor of entrapment. Phillip is paralysed by his fear of leaving the apartment, Treat by his reliance on violence and control, and Harold by his desperate attempt to outrun the past. While Lyle Kessler’s dark vision e...

Alan Ayckbourn’s 1985 dark comedy Woman in Mind dissects the illusions we cling to in order to make life bearable. Trapped in a sexless, emotionally barren marriage, Susan retreats into fantasy, inventing an ideal family in which she is cherished and admired. Around her, others nurse their own comforting fictions: her husband, a vicar, takes refuge in Christian certainty; her sister-in-law embraces spiritualism; her son disappears into a cult; and her doctor cultivates a wilful obtuseness that allows him to ignore his wife’s blatant affair. Each illusion functions as a psychological prop, easing acceptance of relationships and realities that fall short of fulfilment. Ayckbourn’s question is a chilling one: what happens when illusion hardens into delusion, and fantasy supplants the ability to live in the real world? The play lays bare the cost of surrendering to make-believe when escape becomes entrapment. Michael Longhurst’s revival captures the bleak humour of Ayckbourn’s vision with...

This latest version of The Rivals is one part Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his eighteenth-century social satire, one part P. G. Wodehouse and the Roaring Twenties, plus a dash of topical humour such as references to the television series Survivor . It is not a mocktail that will be to everyone's taste, but it is clearly a labour of love for director Tom Littler. This attempt to reimagine Sheridan’s comedy of manners and modernise its references frequently succeeds, yet it also produces some awkward moments. Elements such as the anachronism of a duel set in the 1920s or the unnecessary aside about nudity in a bathroom scene are jarring and forced. Indeed, too often, the drive to provoke laughter at any cost appears to dominate the production, resulting in moments that feel strained and tonally uneven. This approach undermines the original and intelligent concept of relocating Sheridan’s play to a period whose literature was often similarly dismissed as superficial but which was al...

This adult-themed, all-drag panto delivers all the seasonal fun and silliness one could hope for, and then some. There are plenty of clever jokes mixed with a fair number of groaners, alongside some strong physical comedy and parodies of familiar tunes that genuinely raise a laugh. The contemporary cultural references are right up to date and so numerous it is hard to catch them all. Everything from the new Paddington Bear musical to The Traitors gets a mention. Nods to RuPaul’s Drag Race and The Great British Bake Off come thick and fast, with the latter earning extra resonance thanks to drag king Oliver Clothezoff, who plays the Prince, having previously appeared on the show. Not all of the material lands. Some well worn sexual puns feel overdue for retirement, as does the "Twelve Days of Christmas" routine. Even so, there are far more hits than misses, although the second act does seem to lose a little momentum. We were also left uncertain about why Keir Starmer had bee...

Set in 1908 and written in 1938, When We Are Married was produced shortly after the passage of the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1937, which expanded the grounds for divorce beyond adultery to include cruelty and desertion. At the turn of the century, particularly for the chapel-going middle classes, marriage was firmly understood as a till-death-do-us-part commitment. For Priestley’s original audience, the play’s premise that three couples might discover, after twenty-five years together, that they were not legally married and could therefore make different choices was not only comic but almost subversive. Times have changed, but Priestley’s comedy remains strikingly relevant, especially in its clear-eyed identification of the pressures that can undermine marriage: infidelity, financial anxiety, and bullying abuse. Although these themes are treated lightly, the point behind the laughter remains sharp. The play offers shrewd insight into relationships, class and the hypocrisy that often i...

Riffing on the long-standing rumours that Mary Todd Lincoln was an alcoholic and that her husband harboured homosexual tendencies, Oh, Mary! is a drag extravaganza with a sharp ahistorical and satirical edge. Its humour relies heavily on standard drag tropes. There is abundant mugging, snide asides, sexual puns, and what was once considered blue language. Much of this feels familiar, and the shocked laughter that taboo sexual references once provoked has been dulled by overuse. Indeed, anyone acquainted with the drag genre will see most of the jokes coming well in advance. That said, the production values are notably higher here than those of the average drag show. The set is handsomely appointed, and the use of music to underscore scenes is effective. Cole Escola’s script presents Mary as a bored housewife yearning to become a cabaret star. In an effort to keep Mary away from the bottle, her husband hires a teacher to give her acting lessons. The funniest moments actually emerge from...

In an odd warehouse conversion where his son and daughter live with a strange assortment of inhabitants, a Jewish father joins his children for a Christmas Day meal. Elliot, a secular Jew, represents a generation for whom identity and allegiances are largely unquestioned. His children, however, inhabit a far less certain world. His daughter Tamara is urgently searching for spiritual answers and openly challenges Israel’s actions, even as her former boyfriend has found a new sense of himself through Israeli nationalism. On the other hand, Elliot’s son Noah, who has a non-Jewish girlfriend, is adrift, struggling to locate himself within the tradition that shaped him but no longer anchors him. Sam Grabiner’s Christmas Day explores what it means to be Jewish in contemporary Britain, asking whether it is possible, or even desirable, to maintain or reconcile ethnic, religious, and cultural identity in an assimilative society. While rooted in a specifically Jewish experience, the play’s ques...

This first-rate production of Tom Stoppard’s palimpsestic masterpiece is simply a must-see. When the English poet Flora Crewe travels to India, she sits for a portrait by the Indian painter Nirad Das. Both that portrait and this play reflect the complex melding of cultures that emerged from the British presence in India. Exploring different approaches to art and the presentation of the artist, the drama also exposes the intricate and often fraught political relationship between the two countries whose histories became so deeply intertwined. Flora’s meeting with the Indian painter hints at the complicated dynamic between a dying imperial vision and its colonial subject, while also questioning the epistemological frameworks through which we seek to understand the past. Many years later, Crewe's American biographer meets with her sister Mrs Swan as he attempts to reconstruct that Indian encounter. Both that actual experience and the artistic impression of Crewe created by Das stand in...