fri 20/06/2025

Theatre Reviews

Downstate, National Theatre review - controversial but also clear-eyed and compassionate

Matt Wolf

"Some monsters are real," notes a retribution-minded wife (Matilda Ziegler) early in Downstate, Bruce Norris's beautiful and wounding play that has arrived at the National Theatre in the production of a writer's dreams.

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The Bay at Nice, Menier Chocolate Factory review - David Hare talkfest takes intermittent wing

Matt Wolf

David Hare knows a thing or two about sustaining an onstage face-off. Skylight and The Breath of Life consist tantalisingly of little else and so, for the most part, does his 1986 curiosity The Bay at Nice, which I caught back in the day during a premiere engagement at the Cottesloe that was given immediate lustre by the ravishing Irene Worth.

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The Rubenstein Kiss, Southwark Playhouse review - slick spy drama doesn't quite come together

Laura De Lisle

It's an ideal time to revive James Phillips's debut The Rubenstein Kiss. Since it won the John Whiting Award for new writing in 2005 its story, of ideological differences tearing a family apart, has only become more relevant.

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Richard II, Sam Wanamaker Theatre review - electrifying mixed-race all-female production

Rachel Halliburton

Richard II has become the drama of our times, as it walks us through the impotent convulsions of a weak and vain leader brought down by in-fighting among his men.

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Betrayal, Harold Pinter Theatre review - Tom Hiddleston anchors a bold, brooding revival

Marianka Swain

The grand finale of Jamie Lloyd’s remarkable Pinter at the Pinter season is this starry production of one of the writer’s greatest – and certainly most personal – works, inspired by his extramarital affair with Joan Bakewell.

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Admissions, Trafalgar Studios review - topical and whiplash-smart

Matt Wolf

Joshua Harmon knows how to stir and excite an audience and does that and more with Admissions, newly arrived in the West End as part of the ongoing tsunami of American theatre across the capital just now.

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The Twilight Zone, Ambassadors Theatre review – retro wit for our new space age

Rachel Halliburton

As China and the US arm-wrestle for world domination in everything from trade to military power, we find ourselves in the throes of a space race again.

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Angry Alan, Soho Theatre review - superb monologue about the rise of 'meninism'

Veronica Lee

Penelope Skinner's monologue was a critical and audience hit at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, when its talking point found its moment. Here is Roger, a divorced father who lives in Walnut Creek and has lost his senior management job at AT&T, drifting along in middle age, when he discovers Angry Alan, his online saviour. 

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Waitress, Adelphi Theatre review - sweet if sometimes silly musical arrives from Broadway

Matt Wolf

There's a lovely, quietly subversive musical lurking somewhere in Waitress, and for extended passages in the second act that show is allowed to shine through.

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Medea, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, Barbican review - lacerating contemporary tragedy

David Nice

Hallucinatory theatre has struck quite a few times in the Barbican's international seasons.

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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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