sat 13/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

Stop and Search, Arcola Theatre review - a murky view of modern-day Britain

Tim Cornwell

A road tunnel through the Alps, stretching underneath Mont Blanc: Tel (Shaun Mason) is ploughing home to London in a borrowed Merc, strung out and sleepless and having been to see his other girl in Monte Carlo. The Arcola Theatre premiere of Stop and Search finds this white van man incarnate returning to his trouble and strife with a bizarre cargo of beaver hats in the back. 

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Rosenbaum's Rescue, Park Theatre review - curiously solid Jewish drama

Rachel Halliburton

Theatrical alchemy is eternally slippery.

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Approaching Empty, Kiln Theatre review - more minicab than Uber

aleks Sierz

Write what you know, says the adage, and that's exactly what playwright Ishy Din has done with his new play, Approaching Empty, now at the Kiln in Kilburn.

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Coming Clean, Trafalgar Studios review - Kevin Elyot play has lost the pathos if not the plot

Matt Wolf

Time and a transfer haven't been kind to this well-meaning but surface-thin revival of Coming Clean, the 1982 Kevin Elyot play that is surely more poignant than is ever apparent here.

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Time Is Love/Tiempo es Amor, Finborough Theatre review - sultry yet static

Tim Cornwell

Confessions first: I fell asleep mid-way through Time Is Love/Tiempo es Amor, from too much time on trains and planes over the New Year. I was kindly allowed back for a second visit to the Finborough Theatre show, for a Sunday matinee, dosed with coffee and determined to concentrate fully. This was a good thing.

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Aspects of Love, Southwark Playhouse review - discourse keeps passion at bay

Marianka Swain

“Love Changes Everything”, as immortalised by Michael Ball, is the most enduring feature of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black and Charles Hart’s 1989 musical – a moderate West End success, and a Broadway flop.

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Pinters Five and Six, Harold Pinter Theatre review - superlatively acted esoterica

Matt Wolf

The scintillating, commercially bold season of Pinter one-acts at the theatre bearing his name plays a particular blinder with Pinter Five (★★★★★), from which I emerged keen to engage with its mystery and breadth of feeling all over again.

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Best of 2018: Theatre

Matt Wolf

Will pride of place amongst theatre productions every year go in perpetuity to the work of Stephen Sondheim?

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Sweat, Donmar Warehouse review - America at once fractured and fractious

Matt Wolf

A tremendous year for American theatre on the London stage is resoundingly capped by Sweat, the Lynn Nottage Pulitzer prize-winner that folds the personal and the political into a collective requiem for a riven country.

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The Tragedy of King Richard II, Almeida Theatre review - Simon Russell Beale leads revelatory interpretation

Rachel Halliburton

Joe Hill-Gibbins’ uncompromising production of The Tragedy of Richard II hurtles through Shakespeare’s original text, stripping and flaying it so it is revealed in a new shuddering light.

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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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