Theatre
Elephant, Menier Chocolate Factory review - subtle, humorous exploration of racial identity and musicSaturday, 31 May 2025
This charmingly eloquent semi-autobiographical show – which first played at the Bush Theatre in 2022 – tells the story of a girl whose life growing up in a council flat is transformed by the arrival of an upright piano. Lylah – like the show’s... Read more... |
The Frogs, Southwark Playhouse review - great songs save updated Aristophanes comedyWednesday, 28 May 2025
As a regular theatregoer, you learn pretty quickly that there’s no story too bizarre to work as a musical. Cannibalistic murders in Victorian London? Faking a miracle in smalltown USA? The westernisation of Japan? And that’s just Sondheim…... Read more... |
This is My Family, Southwark Playhouse - London debut of 2013 Sheffield hit is feeling its ageFriday, 30 May 2025
MOR. Twee. Unashamedly crowdpleasing. Are such descriptors indicative of a tedious night in the stalls? For your reviewer, who has become jaded very quickly with a myriad of searing examinations of mental health crises and wake up calls about the... Read more... |
Mrs Warren's Profession, Garrick Theatre review - mother-daughter showdown keeps it in the familySaturday, 24 May 2025
How do you make Bernard Shaw sear the stage anew? You can trim the text, as the director Dominic Cooke has, bringing this prolix writer's 1893 play in under the two-hour mark, no interval. And you can introduce a non-speaking ensemble of women in... Read more... |
The Crucible, Shakespeare's Globe review - stirring account of paranoia and prejudiceThursday, 22 May 2025
A society ruled by hysteria. Lurid lies that carry more currency than reality. There’s no shortage of reasons that Arthur Miller’s 1953 drama about witchcraft and revenge resonates so strongly today.In an article in the New Yorker he described how... Read more... |
The Fifth Step, Soho Place review - wickedly funny two-hander about defeating alcoholismTuesday, 20 May 2025
The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic dialogue and very funny banter. The Fifth Step, though, is a gentler beast whose humour ends with a simple visual gag. Maybe because this is more... Read more... |
The Deep Blue Sea, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - Tamsin Greig honours Terence RattiganSaturday, 17 May 2025
The water proves newly inviting in The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Rattigan's mournful 1952 play that some while ago established its status as an English classic. Lindsay Posner's production, first seen in Bath with one major change of cast since then,... Read more... |
The Brightening Air, Old Vic review - Chekhov jostles Conor McPherson in writer-director's latestSaturday, 17 May 2025
It's one thing to be indebted to a playwright, as Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter have been at different times to Beckett, or Sondheim's latest musical is to Sartre. But Conor McPherson's The Brightening Air – the title itself is derived from Yeats... Read more... |
1536, Almeida Theatre review - fast and furious portrayal of women in Henry VIII's EnglandThursday, 15 May 2025
Ava Pickett’s award-winning début play, 1536, is a foul-mouthed, furious, frenetically funny ride through the lives of three young women living in Henry VIII’s England in the year of Anne Boleyn’s execution. It’s less Wolf Hall than a wolf howl of... Read more... |
The Comedy About Spies, Noel Coward Theatre review - 'Goes Wrong' team hit the spot againThursday, 15 May 2025
From the creative team that brought you The Play That Goes Wrong in 2012 (and assorted sequels) comes this spy caper. As ever with Mischief productions, their latest work is a lot of fun and pays its dues to the great age of British farce (and... Read more... |
House of Games, Hampstead Theatre review - adapted Mamet screenplay entertains but is defangedWednesday, 14 May 2025
There is so much that is right about Jonathan Kent’s new production of House of Games – the casting, the staging, the direction. But the flaw it can’t overcome is that the 1987 David Mamet screenplay on which Richard Bean based this stage version in... Read more... |
Here We Are, National Theatre review - Sondheim's sensational swan songFriday, 09 May 2025
You don't have to be greeting the modern day with a smile unsupported by events in the wider world to have a field day at Here We Are. The last musical from the venerated Stephen Sondheim has only grown in import and meaning since I caught its New... Read more... |
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