fri 12/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

Noises Off, Garrick Theatre review - sublime chaos in Michael Frayn's meta-farce

Marianka Swain

“Doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That’s farce. That’s the theatre.

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Our Lady of Kibeho, Theatre Royal Stratford East review - heaven and hell in Rwandan visions

Tom Birchenough

The American dramatist Katori Hall has created a work of rare accomplishment in Our Lady of Kibeho, a play that combines a beautifully established picture of a particular world – a church school in rural Rwanda, in the early 1980s – with...

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Ian McKellen On Stage, Harold Pinter Theatre review - a master relishes the joy of theatre

Heather Neill

Reviewing Ian McKellen's show is, in one sense, like appraising the Taj Mahal or Mount Everest: he too is an awe-inspiring phenomenon.

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A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Trafalgar Studios review - tragi-comic masterpiece

aleks Sierz

Playwright Peter Nichols died aged 92 last month, just before the opening of this starry West End revival of his most celebrated masterpiece. A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967) is based on his own family experience of bringing up his disabled daughter in the 1960s, and it has the reputation of being one of the most ground-breaking plays of its generation.

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'Master Harold' ... and the Boys, National Theatre review - timelessly moving

Matt Wolf

Time has been kind to Athol Fugard's "Master Harold"...and the Boys. It's a stealth bomb of a play that I saw in its world premiere production in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1982 and that has been a regular part of my playgoing life ever since.

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The Watsons, Menier Chocolate Factory review - Laura Wade's inventive new play

Veronica Lee

What a joy Laura Wade's latest play is.

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Macbeth, Chichester Festival Theatre review - cosmic yet closely crafted

Tom Birchenough

There’s a fine balance between the cosmic and the closely crafted in director Paul Miller’s Macbeth, his first production in the expansive space that is Chichester’s main stage.

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Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp., Royal Court review - still experimental after all these years

aleks Sierz

At the age of 81, Caryl Churchill, Britain's greatest living playwright, is still going strong. Her latest is a typically imaginative quartet of short plays. Each of them is vividly distinct, being linguistically agile, theatrically pleasurable and emotionally dark, yet all are also united by the common theme of folk tales and strongly archetypal stories.

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The Thunder Girls, The Lowry, Salford review - all-girl solidarity

Robert Beale

An all-girl rock group from the 1980s meet again, 30 years after an acrimonious break-up brought their shared stage career to an end … and the sparks fly as old resentments resurface and the bitterness of life’s blows emerges. Will their one-time all-girl solidarity overcome their pain and regrets? Will the show end with them back together, belting out their iconic anthem?

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Two Ladies, Bridge Theatre review - Cvitešić and Wanamaker really rock

aleks Sierz

Are first ladies second-class citizens? Do they always have to stand behind their husbands? What are they really like as people? Questions such as these have inspired Irish playwright Nancy Harris to explore the relationship between two fictional first ladies, each of which bears an uncanny resemblance to a real-life figure. One is clearly based on Melania Trump, the other on Brigitte Trogneux, better known as Mrs Macron.

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Pages

Advertising feature

★★★★★

A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.
The Observer, Kate Kellaway

 

Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.

 

★★★★★

This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.
The Times, Ann Treneman

 

Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.

 

Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
with no booking fee.


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