Edinburgh festival 2024: 20 theatre shows making a scene this summer
With subjects ranging from the deadly serious to the downright silly, this year’s shows include plays about addiction, politics, funk and Come Dine With Me
Tiny theatres take big risks – in cautious and precarious times, their survival is vital
Brian Logan
We need to keep open offbeat DIY spaces that belong to artists and communities. Even if the odd performance sells zero tickets, they push theatre forward
The Children’s Inquiry review – exhilarating political musical about kids in care
Soulful anthems with hard-knock lyrics cover 150 years of British care system history in a sophisticated show from Lung theatre company
June 2024
The week in theatre: The Constituent; Kyoto; Mean Girls – review
James Corden and Anna Maxwell Martin struggle for urgency in Joe Penhall’s drama about a threatened female MP; climate crisis talks are turned into a whirligig show; and Tina Fey’s musical of the 2004 film is pink and perky
The Constituent review – timely Joe Penhall political drama makes the specific universal
Anna Maxwell Martin excels as a good MP, while James Corden’s ex-soldier shows he can be dark as well as funny
Venice Biennale theatre: running from UK immigration and revisiting Chekhov
A welcome glimpse of what is playing beyond Britain, this year’s programme includes a deeply moving drama of migrant jeopardy and an intriguing Three Sisters
May 2024
Artists shouldn’t be political? Here’s a show that challenges Britain’s creeping censorship
Brian Logan
Cutting the Tightrope: The Divorce of Politics from Art, at the Arcola in London, tackles freedom of expression – with particular focus on Gaza, writes Brian Logan
April 2024
‘I was brought up among giants’: Gillian Slovo on her revolutionary parents – and her mother’s murder
As she takes the words of Grenfell Tower fire survivors to the New York stage, the playwright talks about being drawn to painful subjects, and the disaster’s worldwide relevance
The Legend of Ned Ludd review – workers stage against the machine
No two performances take the same order as Joe Ward Munrow’s scenes of industrial conflict range across history – led by a machine’s chance decrees
Trevor Griffiths: Mancunian Marxist whose political plays deserve revival
Griffiths, who has died aged 88, explored the conflict between reform and revolution in plays and scripts from the film Reds to dramas such as Occupations, The Party and Comedians
March 2024
James Corden to return to London stage in political drama The Constituent
Joe Penhall’s new play marks the talkshow host’s first theatre role since One Man, Two Guvnors and will see him star opposite Anna Maxwell Martin at the Old Vic
February 2024
Cable Street review – dazzling musical portrait of a community against fascism
Rewind review – ingenious portrait of oppression and dissent in Latin America
December 2023
Protest Song review – grief, rage and a singalong in Occupy movement drama
‘Red Ladder shares a lot of my DNA’: radical Yorkshire theatre company’s new leader Cheryl Martin
October 2023
I’m Sorry, Prime Minister, I Can’t Quite Remember: Hacker and Sir Humphrey’s last hurrah
Jonathan Lynn’s new play finds the political double act in their 80s, in a suitable final chapter to a magnificent comic project
August 2023
‘Neglected’ but beloved youth theatre on west London estate forced to close
SPID theatre raised £2.6m for renovation but says Kensington and Chelsea council has not carried out repairs
Woodhill review – astonishing portrait of Britain’s failing prison system
Matt Woodhead’s urgent drama focuses on the deaths of three real prisoners with mental health issues – and their families’ fight for justice
England & Son review – Mark Thomas’s funny and ferocious telling of a lost childhood
Playwright Ed Edwards frames the story of a juvenile offender through the lens of colonialism
June 2023
The new Accidental Death of an Anarchist is a riot of laughs – but does it make us angry enough?
Michael Billington
As accusations of police corruption are once again in the news, Dario Fo and Franca Rame’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist arrives in the West End
