On disappointment and Three Kingdoms

On Monday, I went back to the Lyric for a second helping of Three Kingdoms ; my fourth, fifth and sixth kingdoms, if you like. The stalls ca...

Sideways Glance Backwards

Well that, as they say, was the year that was. The tolling of midnight on Thursday will signal the end of my first calendar year of reviewin...

Review: Trilogy, The Arches @ St Stephens

Written for Culture Wars At its very pinnacle, art has the ability to make criticism redundant. Trilogy does just that. It is so important, ...

Distrust Amidst Misrule

Standing out from a crowd of 2,098 is not easy. For the next month, however, it will become a necessity for each individual show under the u...

Welcome to Edinburgh

I'm not there yet. In fact, there's a whole eight hours of day job ahead of me. Not to mention the four hours of languidly paced tra...

On Cavemen (or The Billington in Me)

Recently, as a result of my day job, I’ve been watching theatre with fresh eyes. Perhaps ‘fresh’ is the wrong word. Blinkered, maybe. Or gla...

Support is critical

My latest post for the Guardian Blog - on the lack of support and opportunities available to young critics - has attracted some healthy deb...

A 'Plague' on Both Their Houses

Just as violence begets violence, criticism has this week spun itself into a cyclone in a teacup over Plague Over England. Usually, I despis...