The Latest Breaking News from Marc Brenner

The Contingency Plan review – climate-crisis dramas on a human scale

Updated 13 years after their first showing, Steve Waters’ double bill of plays feels more urgent than before – while their personal dynamics hint at challenges yet to overcome

The Guardian - UK · Oct 23, 2022

Hamlet review – slick tragedy fuelled by fury

With inky backdrops, jagged sound and frenzied violence, John Haidar’s production stars Billy Howle as a prince emanating unhinged anger

The Guardian - UK · Oct 20, 2022

The week in theatre: Good; The Band’s Visit; The Boy With Two Hearts – review

As a mild-mannered German academic who drifts into becoming an SS officer, David Tennant is transfixing

The Guardian - UK · Oct 16, 2022

Othello review – taut update from the superb Watermill ensemble

An excellent cast animate Karla Marie Sweet’s adaptation with a drilled menace, while contemporary songs are employed to remarkable effect

The Guardian - UK · Sep 23, 2022

The cold never bothered them anyway: how Frozen made musical magic

The set, costume, video and lighting designers of Disney’s London production – now in its second year in the West End – break the ice about the show’s frocks, crystals and astonishing effects

The Guardian - UK · Sep 20, 2022

Dawn French Is a Huge Twat review – mini-masterpieces of self-mockery

French heaps detail upon self-abasing detail as she shares hugely engaging stories from her 40-year career

The Guardian - UK · Sep 18, 2022

Into the Woods review – Terry Gilliam’s rollicking take on Sondheim’s ‘fairytale collision’

Terry Gilliam’s production is visually enticing, playful and dreamlike but doesn’t quite reach the mournful depths of parental anxiety that run through the story

The Guardian - UK · Aug 25, 2022

The week in theatre: Closer, The Tempest, The Darkest Part of the Night – review

Patrick Marber’s four-way passion play still adds up; Sean Holmes takes enjoyable liberties with his party island Tempest; and the heartfelt vies with the spelled out in Zodwa Nyoni’s new work

The Guardian - UK · Aug 7, 2022

The Tempest review – the bard in budgie smugglers

Sean Holmes’s gleefully comic take is a riot of holiday colour and fun, featuring luminous lilos, stag do bantz and a playful Prospero in eyewateringly tight trunks

The Guardian - UK · Aug 1, 2022

Billy Elliot the Musical review – the boy who just wants to dance is back in an electric new production

Nikolai Foster’s new version is more like a play with dance and songs, giving ideas around love and loss, community and isolation, passion and violence room to breathe

The Guardian - UK · Jul 24, 2022