sun 22/06/2025

Theatre Reviews

Don Juan in Soho, Wyndhams Theatre review - 'David Tennant is Marber-Molière playboy'

aleks Sierz

Updating the classics is not without its pitfalls. How can a modern audience, which has a completely different set of religious beliefs, relate to a 17th century morality tale in which the lead character behaves really badly, but gets his comeuppance by being roasted in hell fire? This is the case with Molière’s Don Juan, or The Feast with the Statue, which was originally staged in 1665.

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The Wipers Times, Arts Theatre review - 'dark comedy from the trenches'

Veronica Lee

You may be having a moment of déjà vu, as Ian Hislop and Nick Newman’s new play (which lands in the West End after a UK tour) was previously a BBC film (shown in 2013), and a very fine one too, covering as it does a true story from the First World War.

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The Kid Stays in the Picture, Royal Court, review – ‘sad, bad and sprawling’

aleks Sierz

The beauty of fiction is that its stories have both compelling shape and deep meaning – they are dramas where things feel right and true and real. The trouble with real life is that it’s the opposite: it is messy, frequently shapeless and often meaningless.

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An American in Paris review - 'stagecraft couldn't be slicker'

Jenny Gilbert

What’s in a yellow dress? Hope over experience? Reckless confidence? This is a legitimate question when the second big cross-Atlantic people-pleaser hoves into view featuring a girl in a frock of striking daffodil hue. It doesn’t take a degree in semiotics to translate this. Forget the bad stuff, people. C’mon, get happy.

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Love in Idleness, Menier Chocolate Factory

Tom Birchenough

What's in a name? Terence Rattigan’s Love in Idleness is a reworking of his 1944 play Less Than Kind (never staged at the time, it was first produced just six years ago). It reached the London stage at the very end of the same year with the Lunts, the premier theatre couple of their time, in the leads.

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Roman Tragedies, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Barbican

David Nice

It felt good to be encountering Shakespeare at his most political with a world event to smile about, for once (hailing, of course, from this brilliant Dutch company's homeland).

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Stepping Out, Vaudeville Theatre

Veronica Lee

Richard Harris's award-winning comedy about a group of seven women and one man who attend a weekly tap-dancing class in a dingy north London church hall ran for three years from 1984 in the West End, from where it went to Broadway.

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A Dark Night in Dalston, Park Theatre

aleks Sierz

Michelle Collins, actor and TV presenter, is so strongly associated with her roles in EastEnders and Coronation Street that it is something of a shock to see her live on stage at the Park Theatre, and not behind a bar or in a snug.

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The Miser, Garrick Theatre

Tom Birchenough

Trimmings, trimmings. They prove the final straw for Molière’s Harpagon in this new adaptation of the classic French comedy-farce. The menu for his wedding banquet – which he doesn’t want to spend a centime more on than he has to – is being concocted by chef-cum-dogsbody, Jacques. Soup, yes; a bit of meat, possibly.

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Romeo and Juliet, West Yorkshire Playhouse

graham Rickson

Amy Leach’s energetic Romeo and Juliet is fast, furious and a little breathless, the setting transposed from Verona to a fairly grim contemporary Leeds. Think West Yorkshire Side Story.

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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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