John Nathan

Latest from John Nathan

Theatre

Here We Are, review: ‘this Sondheim musical feels like unfinished business’

The composer’s swansong is best described as a play with some music

1 min read

Eerily modern: the cast of Here We Are on stage at the National Theatre (Photo: Marc Brenner)

Thunderbolt review: ‘not even Florence Pugh can fire this up’

1 min read

Mo Chara (left) and Moglai Bap from Northern Irish hip hop trio Kneecap perform onstage during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (Image: Getty)

Up Hamas, down sense: The music industry’s moral failure

3 min read

Tense: John Lithgow as Raold Dahl and Elliot Levey as his agent Tom Mascher (Photo: Johan Persson)

Giant review: ‘Dahl – a very poisonous national treasure’

1 min read

Motel Destino review: ‘sordid thrills in Brazil’

An unflinchingly seedy thriller set under a bleaching sun

1 min read

April 30, 2025 17:38

Love hotel: Nataly Rocha and Iago Xavier

My play about being young, gay and strictly Orthodox

A formerly frum writer on how he hopes his ex-community will watch his new work

5 min read

April 30, 2025 15:18

Leap of faith: Clara Francis, Ilan Galkoff and Ben Caplan. Inset: Shimmy Braun (Photos: Michael Wharley, Ryan Howard)

Dealer’s Choice review: ‘male inadequacies laid bare’

Set around a poker table, this play anchors on a painful father-son relationship and shows that the stake are always higher than the amount of cash on the table

1 min read

April 29, 2025 17:27

Deal or no deal: Brendan Coyle and Kasper Hilton-Hille in Dealer's Choice

Film review, Sinners: ‘Magical’

A vampire film which nearly transcends the familiar

1 min read

April 25, 2025 10:10

Theatre review: Ghosts ‘Today’s moral landscape imposes itself on Ibsen’s play’

The action is updated to 21st century Britain

1 min read

April 24, 2025 11:43

Midnight Cowboy review: ‘not cut out for the stage’

Why turn John Schlesinger’s famous 1968 film starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight into a musical? Does the story really need more music?

1 min read

April 20, 2025 13:28

Paul Jacob French (centre) as Joe Buck & cast in Midnight Cowboy- A New Musical, Credit Pamela Raith

The Penguin Lessons: ‘Steve Coogan p-p-picks one up’

Steve Coogan’s English teacher takes up a position at a boarding school in Buenos Aries in the 1970s, where a military coup and a penguin upend his life

1 min read

April 16, 2025 18:50

Birds of a feather: Steve Coogan and his co-star penguin

‘The Holocaust documentary my father made with Alfred Hitchcock’

The daughter of socialist media mogul Sidney Bernstein who made a historic film about Bergen-Belsen with the help of Hitchcock reflects on their collaboration, the subject of a new BBC radio play out tomorrow

7 min read

April 11, 2025 19:30

Alfred Hitchcock (left) and Sidney Bernstein

What They Found review: Sam Mendes presents the proof of Bergen-Belsen

The intention to counter Holocaust denial is achieved in the director’s first documentary

1 min read

April 9, 2025 15:19

An Imperial War Museum archive still used in the film

Rhinoceros review: ‘don’t follow the herd’

The message of this 1959 absurdist play survives. But instead of looking back at the horrors of conformism in 20th-century Europe, it now warns of the stampede ahead

1 min read

April 9, 2025 10:55