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Smile Upon Us, Lord ★★★★

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Smile Upon Us, Lord ★★★★

Travelling hopefully on a Jewish road trip. Celebrated Lithuanian director Rimas Tuminas grew up alongside Jewish compatriots and his familiarity with Jewish life and custom informs this glorious evocation. Smile Upon Us, Lord, which Tuminas adapted…

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Julius Caesar ★★★★

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Julius Caesar ★★★★

Nicholas Hytner's timely full-blooded production. Julius Caesar is perhaps Shakespeare’s most topical play right now. Nick Hytner’s modern-dress production for The Bridge Theatre, follows the RSC’s 2017/18 Roman-dress version. A populist leader adored by the populace

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Rothschild and Sons ★★★

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Rothschild and Sons ★★★

Feisty musical account of the founding of a golden dynasty. Five years after Sheldon Harnick and the late Jerry Bock struck gold with Fiddler on the Roof, they turned to Mayer Rothschild. Specifically the story of how he and his five sons transmuted the poverty of the ghetto…

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The Birthday Party ★★★★

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The Birthday Party ★★★★

Pitch-perfect Pinter in unnerving seaside fun at 60. Is it an accolade if your name becomes an adjective to describe your work as playwright? Brechtian is (perhaps lazy) shorthand for alienation and Pinteresque for menacing. Unsettling menace may permeate…

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East ★★★★

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East ★★★★

Berkoff’s dark exuberant hymn to London’s East End has lost none of its transgressive power. East first shocked and delighted audiences in 1975 and in Jessica Lazar’s production for Atticist Theatre it has lost none of its power. Her five actors relish Berkoff’s marriage of precisely choreographed physical theatre…

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Another year, another phenomenal Limmud Festival

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Another year, another phenomenal Limmud Festival

Going to Limmud Festival is always a source of wonderment: 2,500 delegates of all ages – from under one year old to over 90 – met at Pendigo Lake in Birmingham for the third year. Hundreds of sessions were given by an international cast of presenters…

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The Tin Drum ★★★★

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The Tin Drum ★★★★

Günter Grass's transgressive Peter Pan, refusing to grow up in 20th-century Europe, proves equally disturbing in Kneehigh's new musical. It’s an odyssey through the first half of the 20th century, an unreliable memoir and a very personal state-of-the-(German) nation allegory – and that's just Günter Grass's epic novel. Now Kneehigh Theatre’s powerhouse