sat 21/06/2025

Theatre Reviews

Consent, Harold Pinter Theatre review - exhilarating

David Benedict

Question: is Consent, transferred from the National to the West End, a sharp-tongued comedy or an acute reinvention of a revenge drama?

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Break of Noon, Finborough Theatre review - irredeemable?

Katherine Waters

I’ve forgotten my wallet.

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Peter Pan, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - ensemble playing at its best

Heather Neill

This exuberant production both clarifies and further complicates the conundrum of Peter Pan. In any production true to Barrie there is an underpinning of sadness, an acknowledgement of the losses we must all suffer: children leave home and adult responsibility takes the place of childhood innocence.

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The Grönholm Method, Menier Chocolate Factory - sleek and short but in no way deep

Matt Wolf

Add Catalan writer Jordi Galcerán to the shortlist of European playwrights who are finding an international perch, in this case with a tricksy four-character play that has had more than 200 productions in over 60 countries.

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The String Quartet’s Guide to Sex and Anxiety, Brighton Festival review - molto nervoso

Tom Birchenough

Calixto Bieito has a reputation as a radical theatre-maker, and by any standards The String Quartet’s Guide to Sex and Anxiety is an unusual, genre-breaking piece; Bieito has described it as “like a symphonic poem for a quartet of musicians, and a quartet of voices”.

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As You Like It / Hamlet, Shakespeare’s Globe review - ensemble emphasis sets a leaner style

Tom Birchenough

There’s a distinct feeling of back to basics to this opening double bill at the Globe under the theatre’s new Artistic Director Michelle Terry. The elaborations (some would say gimmickry) of Emma Rice’s short tenure have been reined back, and a new concentration prevails.

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Effigies of Wickedness, Gate Theatre review - this sleek cabaret conceals desolation behind a smile

alexandra Coghlan

The show’s subtitle – “Songs banned by the Nazis” – is a catchy one, and somewhere under the confetti, the stilettos, the extravagant nudity, the sequins and even shinier repartee that are wrapped around Effigies of Wickedness like a mink coat on the shoulders of an SS officer’s mistress is the bruised and grubby story of one of history’s foulest episodes.

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Life and Fate / Uncle Vanya, Maly Drama Theatre, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - the greatest ensemble?

David Nice

Towards the end of the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg's Life and Fate, a long scene in director Lev Dodin's daring if necessarily selective adaptation of Vasily Grossman's epic novel brings many of the actors together after a sequence of painful monologues and one-to-ones.

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Red, Wyndham's Theatre - Mark Rothko drama paints a vivid picture

Marianka Swain

The band’s back together. Alfred Molina plays Rothko for the third time in Michael Grandage’s revisiting of John Logan’s richly textured two-hander, first seen at the Donmar in 2009 and then bypassing the West End for Broadway.

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Describe the Night, Hampstead Theatre review - epic take on the mythology of Putin

Jenny Gilbert

Five years ago, when New York playwright Rajiv Joseph started on his fantasy disquisition on truth, lies and the recent history of Russia, no one was talking about a new Cold War and trump was still a thing you did in a game of cards.

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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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