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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 13h

Little Shop works brilliantly at the little Hope Mill, its cosy proportions really benefiting the sense of the plant’s takeover. But we can probably say enough now to this deeply strange musical

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This new production from the physical comedy director of One Man, Two Guvnors lacks that show’s slapstick slickness and finesse. But there are some nice (if unremarkable) moments, particularly from the two very busy clowns

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Multiple good musicals have first passed through the Lowry in promising embryonic form. This clumsy love letter to Madchester is not one of them

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Theatre by the Lake has one of the most stunning settings of any theatre in the country, especially in yesterday’s early autumn sunlight. And this lovely adaptation of the Helen Rebanks memoir suits it perfectly

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

A few too many ideas attempted at once here, and the pacing could be tighter, so it lacks the pay-off you’d hope from a 3h15 production of Miller’s tragedy www.whatsonstage.com/news/death-o...

whatsonstage.com

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Interestingly, the theatre apparently emailed people an incentive to book where they were promised a full refund if they disliked it so much they left at the interval

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The north’s wannabe Jamie Lloyd roughs up another Shakespeare play beyond all sense and coherence. But Russell Kane fares OK

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Boys from the Blackstuff had some soapy traits and I thought it was great (substance, proper characters, lines that didn’t pong like a ripe Stilton). But I also think one of the region’s largest producers of theatre could just try a different approach for once

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

And an ambling East is East, which is all idle talk and unsubtle speeches, but no plot. The patriarch’s violent abuse is queasily excused and unreconciled, while the mother is less a tough matriarch than a wife grimly clinging on. Should’ve been left in 1996

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Bull, from Deafinitely Theatre, whose deaf cast brilliantly, physically intensify the jockeying office politics and power plays (even if it’s not Mike Bartlett’s best)

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Liverpool’s Royal Court once again can’t help itself but turn a local story into an onstage soap. Thankfully, it has a couple of likeable central performances to save it this time

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

They don’t write plays like August Wilson any more, which is probably not a bad thing considering his speechy style. But it’d be hard to beat Daniel Bailey’s production. Another great show from Headlong

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Reposted by Matt Barton

David Eldridge @deldridgewriter.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Wishing the Royal Exchange Theatre a very happy 50th birthday 🙏🏻❤️🎈🎂5️⃣0️⃣👌🎂😘 It’s been a privilege and honour to play this extraordinary theatre in the great city of Manchester three times over the years. A cauldron, a genuinely shared experience and a room where magic happens.

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

How, aged 82, Alan Ayckbourn has the energy to not just write a 92nd play, but to also direct it, design the sound for it and make the whole thing three hours long is beyond me. But he could do with someone to rein him in here with this interesting enough but wildly bloated play

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

It’s not quite as good as the original production, if we’re comparing, but there are some nice new touches and above all the play just remains brilliant – until the ending

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

So Lear yet so far for Ian McDiarmid. He throws everything he has at this – often all at once – while the production around him has nothing really to offer in return www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/king-lear-re...

sheffieldtribune.co.uk

King Lear — and yet so far

Reviewer Matt Barton argues the Crucible's casting coup proved a poisoned chalice

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

And finally, I also liked another unexpectedly moving and inventive show at EIF: @jahakoo.bsky.social’s Haribo Kimchi, where you’ll actually want to be pulled up on stage exeuntmagazine.substack.com/i/210336403/...

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

The best thing I saw at this year’s festivals, since you asked, was @gregnussen.bsky.social’s QFWFQ. Hilarious, witty, moving: it had it all exeuntmagazine.substack.com/i/210336403/...

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

…and I thought Sanctuary was not. (But you’re never gonna like everything you see at the Fringe) exeuntmagazine.substack.com/i/210336403/...

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I thought Nesting was a strong, strange and vividly staged new play… exeuntmagazine.substack.com/i/210336403/...

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The writing gets a bit carried away at times, but The Distance is really slickly staged and features the kind of warm, surprisingly moving moments of audience interaction that seems to work uniquely well at the Fringe exeuntmagazine.substack.com/i/210336403/...

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Over at the EIF, I found Zora Howard’s Hang Time a haunting hour and the kind of show you’d see at the Royal Court exeuntmagazine.substack.com/i/210336403/...

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

My Edinburgh reviews have started making their way up on Exeunt, beginning with Stockard Channing and David Westhead’s swift and pathos-light Krapp’s Last Tape exeuntmagazine.substack.com/i/210336403/...

exeuntmagazine.substack.com

Edinburgh Festival Fringe reviews 2026

All of our reviews, as we get 'em

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Arrived in Edinburgh to mop up as many of my Exeunt colleagues’ leftovers as I can. The drizzly weather has almost made the sauna theatre an inviting prospect

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Enjoyed hearing Phelim McDermott philosophise on the creative process, bringing wonder to the theatre and reviving MIF (and now West End) hit Tao of Glass

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Magnificent and maddening, epic and exhausting – this Game of Thrones adaptation sometimes lumbers, but when it finds its rhythm and fires on all cylinders, it’s knock-out

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Baffling how many Cleansed reviews claim no point or purpose comes through the play. Rebecca Frecknall’s production might not perfectly balance the real and the abstract, but Kane’s exploration of love’s endurance and our tolerance of atrocity comes through with searing force

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

A Cate Blanchett VR ASMR session evolved into an increasingly tedious 45 minutes of woo-woo guff you wouldn’t even say while tripping out observer.co.uk/culture/thea...

observer.co.uk

Evolver – a VR journey around the body that is more mind ...

The immersive show at Wales Millennium Centre featuring narration by Cate Blanchett is visually hypnotic but fails to tell a story

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I pretty much swooned over Sweeney

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Reviewed The Cherry Orchard, where Helen Hunt gives a tepid, blandly nondescript performance in a production that’s more starchy than starry. Still, she might not summon much feeling, but at least Ken Bran can observer.co.uk/culture/thea...

observer.co.uk

The Cherry Orchard – RSC’s Chekhov yields a barren harvest

Tamara Harvey’s conventional Chekhov production boasts a starry cast, but a fusty new adaptation lacks heart and vigour

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Bechdel’s graphic novel is probably a masterpiece, so I felt slightly disappointed by this musical bellowing the subtext at us (maybe a flaw of musicalising this material?) and the inescapable sense of emotional manipulation in the production. Fun, but it didn’t floor me

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

The Oldham Coliseum CEO has been making lots of noises on social media, so it’s great to see The Mill dig rigorously into what she’s actually delivering (which seems to be just an eye-watering expenses bill)

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

I’m not sure about “anti” in that they share quite similar tastes and sensibilities, but they definitely differ in terms of ambition

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

I do wonder when AD Elizabeth Newman is going to challenge herself directorially, as this is about as safe and harmless as you could get. But if you fancy swaying along idly to some Cliff Rich classics, Sheffield’s the spot for it

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

A dance tribute so underwhelming, even a couple of the Factory International staff were on their phones throughout the second half

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I just don’t know that you can purely laugh off a council leader spending £140k on an artificial ski slope, built using child labour, that would’ve sent people into oncoming motorway traffic, and that was designed as an embezzlement scheme

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Liverpool’s Royal Court seems to have two modes: solid, sincere local stories (Boys from the Blackstuff, Girls Don’t Play Guitars, Conteh) and… this

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I also feel like we’re seeing a general lack of imagination among political plays. Writers can’t seem to resist stiffly staging debate and argument around tables. Surely there are more formally imaginative alternatives?

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I reviewed Atlantis, heading to Chichester, which makes a lot of noise about the climate emergency and political inertia, without having much really to say (which I don’t think is the same as avoiding easy answers). It has a nice, more intimate idea that’s sadly drowned out

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

The venue seems more determined to be a regional outpost for London-based Lightroom than an arts centre with a distinctive identity at the heart of Manchester. It desperately needs new, more committed and imaginative artistic leadership; currently it is, indeed, a sin

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Factory International unveils its “autumn/winter programme”: joining prev announced It’s a Sin are a new play running for all of two nights, an art exhibition and yet another Lightroom experience imported from London

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

The Everyman’s commitment to new writing is admirable, but this piece needs a lot of work. Play, production and performer all trundle along in a low, humdrum gear, with only one real theatrical flourish that lasts maybe six seconds

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

The audience interaction is plainly unnecessary and Green’s apparent personal identification with Woolf never lands as anything other than ludicrous. But she’s so hard to not like as a performer that she just about gets you past those flaws

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I missed the original run of 1536, so was glad to catch the West End transfer of a rightly celebrated and scorching play that would be terrific for anyone to have written, let alone a debut writer

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Matt Barton @matt-barton.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

There are undeniably moving things in Rory Mullarkey’s warm and sincere new play. Even so, the lack of structure and specificity to the city (plus a long, rambling opening monologue that just didn’t work for me) leaves it falling short of shattering

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