Might this be the worst play I see all year?

In This Issue:

• Anora sweeps the Oscars

• Reviews of More Life at The Royal Court, The Glass Menagerie at The Yard and Unicorn at The Garrick

• Till The Stars Come Down returns to the West End

Things I’ve read this week:

• ‘Just to see Tom Hiddleston would be enough!’ My eye-popping night with the fans who mob stage doors - Has celebrity culture in West End theatre gone too far?

• An argument on reading that I highly condemn - surely reading (just like film, TV and theatre) should be ambitious and challenging to some degree. It can’t all be boilerplate genre-fiction…

• James Marriott’s Substack - https://substack.com/@jamesmarriott716869

Anora Again Olé Olé

Sean Baker’s Anora stole the show at this years Oscars. Baker’s films excel at portraying genuine people in relatable situations, making it easy for audiences to connect with them. Consider his 2015 masterpiece Tangerine, a breakthrough film that followed the festival success of Prince of Broadway (2008) and the Independent Spirit Awards winner Starlet (2012). Shot on modified iPhone 5Ss equipped with prototype widescreen anamorphic lenses, Tangerine brilliantly captured an authentic slice of life across the streets, burger joints, and doughnut shops of Los Angeles. In Anora, Mikey Madison shines in a scorching role as a savvy New York table dancer and escort who gets tangled in a dark, twisted anti-romance—imagine Pretty Woman colliding with Eastern Promises . Her character’s reckless alliance with the bratty son of a Russian oligarch shifts from playful to perilous in an instant. True to Baker’s style, Anora delivers a gripping, unflinching and at times darkly hilarious portrayal of characters who, in the hands of other filmmakers, could simply be background noise.

Taio Lawson Appointed Artistic Director of Bush Theatre

The Bush Theatre has announced the appointment of Taio Lawson as its new Artistic Director and Co-CEO, set to take up the role in summer 2025. Lawson will be succeeding Lynette Linton, who steps down in March 2025 after a highly successful period leading the renowned West London venue. Lawson’s first season at the Bush Theatre is scheduled to launch in early 2026. Currently the Genesis Fellow and Associate Director at the Young Vic, Lawson brings a wealth of experience to his new role. His previous positions include Associate Director at Kiln Theatre and Resident Director roles at Sheffield Theatres, the Almeida, and the West End production of Hamilton.

To Watch

Adolescence on Netflix

From the powerhouse creative duo of Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, and directed by Philip Barantini, Adolescence is a gripping new series featuring four one-shot episodes that follow a family thrown into turmoil when their 13-year-old son is accused of murder. This terrifyingly brilliant drama dives headfirst into the dark underbelly of incel culture, making for unmissable, nerve-shredding television. And each episode is masterfully shot in one take. Fabulous.

To Book

Till The Stars Come Down heads to the West End

After a triumphant run at the National Theatre’s Dorfman Theatre in early 2024, Beth Steel’s Till The Stars Come Down is making its way to the West End. Directed by Bijan Sheibani, this acclaimed production explores family dynamics against the backdrop of a wedding in a former mining town. My favourite play of last year.

The Thinking Game in cinemas now

Demis Hassabis has spent his entire life fascinated by the nature of intelligence. From his days as a child chess prodigy to his teenage years developing hit games at Bullfrog Games, and later earning a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at University College London, every step led him toward co-founding DeepMind. The company’s ambitious mission? To solve intelligence itself.

Dartmouth Films’ The Thinking Game sounds like a captivating exploration of Hassabis’s mind, philosophy, and groundbreaking achievements—most notably cracking the mysteries of protein folding.

Reflections

More Life at The Royal Court

Kandinsky Theatre Company’s More Life takes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and brings it to the twenty first century as tech companies spark life into a corpse by uploading minds into perfect bodies. This sci-fi drama, directed by James Yeatman and written by Lauren Mooney, probes greed, loss and the hollow promise of immortality.

Marc Elliott plays Victor, a consultant obsessed with reviving a dead woman, Bridget (Alison Halstead), as his company’s first success. Halstead’s unsettling performance, with her voice and movements twisted by dislocation, captures Bridget’s struggle to reclaim humanity. I normally find AI plays dull or undeveloped, but there is a real heart at this corse Shankho Chaudhuri’s retro-futuristic set, evoking the ’70s, underscores our misguided predictions of progress. Kandinsky’s work, emerging from New Diorama under David Byrne (now the Royal Court’s AD ), highlights his visionary style. More Life strips away the illusion of perfection, leaving only the beauty and tragedy of our flawed, yearning existence.

Unicorn at The Garrick

Mike Bartlett’s Unicorn stumbles almost immediately under the weight of its own pretensions. Despite the considerable charisma of Nicola Walker and Stephen Mangan bolstering the cast, the script feels shallow and painfully self-conscious, offering more smugness than substance. The plot, centred on poet Polly (Walker) and her restless husband Nick (Mangan) inviting brash young student Kate (Erin Doherty) into their marriage, flirts with complexity but never commits. Instead, Bartlett’s writing drowns in clumsy general social commentary and tepid dialogue, skimming the surface without ever truly engaging with its themes. It’s just about the unsexiest drama about sex you could imagine - Eunichorn would be more apt.

What could have been a sharp, provocative study of desire and intimacy is reduced to a series of artificial exchanges (nobody talks like this!) and tiresome clichés, awkwardly staged on a dreary EasyJet sofa. Occasionally, very occasionally a witty line in the first half sparks a glimmer of hope that we are seeing a play by the writer of Cock and Charles III, only for it to fizzle out in the broader monotony of it all. It’s less a bold exploration of sexual politics and more a drawn-out exercise in passionless tedium. A proper yawn fest.

Give this restless, wordy exploration a miss - like its titular creature, the play’s humour is a myth - hollow and ephemeral. I can’t imagine I see a worse piece of theatre with such a good cast this year.

The Glass Menagerie at The Yard Theatre

Jay Miller’s revival of The Glass Menagerie at The Yard Theatre is a daring send-off for the venue before its demolition and rebuild. Miller’s vision strips back Tennessee Williams’s classic, giving it a jagged, modern edge. Beyoncé’s Hold Up pulses through the air, memories flash across concrete walls, and characters are often left in harsh spotlight isolation.

Tom Varey’s Tom is all raw frustration, his head torch slicing through darkness as he prowls the stage. Small’s Amanda is more monotone warrior than wilting belle, pushing back against time with wit and a relentless drive to support her family - even if her performance does get a little repetitive. The boldest choice, though, is having Laura as autistic—donning ear protectors and with precise mannerisms, Eva Morgan’s performance is a delight. It makes her shyness and obsession with delicate glass feel heartbreakingly real.

The emotional core of the piece is the climactic candlelit scene between Laura and Jim (Jad Sayegh). It’s fabulously theatrical—Morgan’s fragile intensity meets Sayegh’s awkward charm, turning hope into heartbreak. Not every risk lands (Tom’s final monologue is butchered by a microphone and the final image didn’t work for me) but Miller’s vision is refreshingly ambitious. A beautifully unsettling farewell to The Yard’s old space.