Photo of Clare Brennan
Clare Brennan

Clare Brennan, who has worked as a director, deviser and dramaturg, is The Observer's national theatre critic, providing the out of London reviews.

Photo of Clare Brennan

Clare Brennan

Clare Brennan, who has worked as a director, deviser and dramaturg, is The Observer's national theatre critic, providing the out of London reviews.

  • Clare Brennan
    Planet Omar: Accidental Trouble Magnet – a joyous glimpse inside the mind of a Muslim boy

    Zanib Mian’s children’s book and its zinging illustrations are brought to sharply coloured onstage life at Leeds Playhouse

    Sun, 19 Apr 2026

  • Clare Brennan
    Good Golly Miss Molly at the New Vic: a harmonious vision of social turmoil

    Bob Eaton’s rock’n’roll musical about social change through the decades is a glorious trip down memory lane

    Sat, 11 Apr 2026

  • Clare Brennan
    Henry V at the RSC – Shakespeare’s war play fails to resonate

    Alfred Enoch is dynamic in a production that prioritises combat scenes over moral probing

    Sun, 29 Mar 2026

  • Clare Brennan
    Small Island on stage: a patchily successful adaptation

    Matthew Xia’s powerfully acted but uneven production retells Andrea Levy’s 2004 novel spanning colonial Jamaica and postwar Britain

    Sun, 22 Mar 2026

  • Clare Brennan
    The Grand Babylon Hotel – Arnold Bennett’s fun, frolicking farce

    A caper about the mystery of missing hotel staff is carried off by a multi-talented, multi-roling cast with joyous aplomb

    Sun, 15 Mar 2026

  • Clare Brennan
    The Manningtree Witches is a stage adaptation meant for the screen

    Ava Pickett, the young playwright behind the Olivier-nominated 1536, reimagines AK Blakemore’s witchy historical novel in a punchy but patchy production

    Sat, 7 Mar 2026

  • Clare Brennan
    Trevor Nunn’s deft, delightful Noël Coward revival

    Easy Virtue at the Arts Theatre Cambridge skewers upper-middle-class morals with a witty, well-balanced cast

    Sat, 28 Feb 2026

  • Clare Brennan
    Crown of Blood moves Macbeth’s blasted heath to Yorubaland

    Oladipo Agboluaje’s reimagining of the Shakespeare tragedy is ambitious, finely crafted and occasionally confusing

    Sat, 21 Feb 2026

  • Clare Brennan
    War of the Worlds is a visually thrilling portrait of desolation

    Imitating the Dog transports the hero of HG Wells’s novel to 1960s London where paranoia and fascism is on the march

    Sat, 14 Feb 2026

  • Clare Brennan
    Manipulate festival: candyfloss puppets and cabaret Anna Karenina

    The city’s international festival is smaller and shorter than its summer siblings – but big on imagination

    Sun, 8 Feb 2026

  • Clare Brennan
    The Little Mermaid on stage proves the fairytale has legs

    Theresa Heskins’s adaptation features beach parties and an Instagramming prince

    Mon, 5 Jan 2026

  • Clare Brennan
    Treasure Island – A New Musical Adventure is not as thrilling as it could be

    The cast transport us to a world of pirates, sea voyages, talking parrots and singing coconuts – but the story lacks the fear factor of the Robert Louis Stevenson original

    Wed, 31 Dec 2025

  • Clare Brennan
    Hull Truck theatre’s Oliver Twist reveals the darkness and light of Dickens

    This adaptation daringly delivers the novel’s broad-brush humour and unsanctimonious message

    Sat, 20 Dec 2025

  • Clare Brennan
    A Child’s Christmas in Wales is a delight

    Emma Rice’s imaginative production captures the joy, fear and melancholy yearning of the poet’s work

    Mon, 15 Dec 2025

  • Clare Brennan
    What should we make of Mrs Mary Whitehouse?

    Maxine Peake stars as the Christian moral crusader in a play that asks us to pass judgment without having the facts straight

    Sat, 13 Sept 2025

  • Clare Brennan
    The Constant Wife plays Somerset Maugham for laughs

    Laura Wade’s reworking of this sparkling comedy seems tailor-made for a West End transfer

    Sun, 13 Jul 2025

  • Clare Brennan
    How to Win Against History: the real Henry Paget

    How To Win Against History celebrates his supposedly wasted life

    Sun, 29 Jun 2025

  • Clare Brennan
    Review: Tick, tick… Boom!

    Theatr Clwyd reopens after a long closure with a rocking production of Jonathan Larson’s peppy three-hander. Shame, then, that downpour stopped play

    Sat, 14 Jun 2025

  • Clare Brennan
    Our imperilled planet in three acts

    Flora Wilson Brown’s new play unfolds in the past as well as near and far futures, with climate change the linking theme

    Sat, 24 May 2025

  • Clare Brennan
    A ‘Gogol-lite’ production of The Government Inspector

    Sat, 10 May 2025

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