tue 17/06/2025

Theatre Reviews

Treason The Musical In Concert, Theatre Royal Drury Lane review - plenty of musical gunpowder but not enough plot

Gary Naylor

A semi-staged concert performance of a musical is a little like a third trimester ultrasound scan. You should see the anatomy in development, the shape of what is to come and, most importantly, discern a heart beating at its centre. But you can’t tell if what will arrive some time later will be a bouncing baby or a sickly child. So it is with this iteration of a new British musical, Treason

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The End of Eddy, Edinburgh International Festival 2022 review - powerful but lacking compassion

David Kettle

Those working-class people really are appalling, aren’t they? Racist, sexist, definitely homophobic, violent too. Thank god our young hero can escape their clutches into the safety of a nice, bourgeois acting academy where he can be his true self.

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Edinburgh Fringe 2022 review: The Stones

David Kettle

In many ways, The Stones is what the Fringe is all about: a new theatre company (London-based Signal House); a single actor; a small black-box space; just a chair, a bit of smoke and some almost imperceptible lighting changes for a staging. And with those modest ingredients, it generates a work that’s really quite unnerving in its quiet power, and magpie-like in its references.

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Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Ode to Joy / Wilf

David Kettle

Ode to Joy (How Gordon Got to Go to the Nasty Pig Party), Summerhall

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The Trials, Donmar Warehouse review - chillingly compelling

aleks Sierz

Dystopian theatre takes many forms – but this is the first which is a jury-room drama. Dawn King has previously explored the world of double-think and the use of fear and fake news by oppressive regimes in her 2011 drama, Foxfinder, and now turns her attention to climate change litigation. With a twist. In The Trials, a jury of young people must deliver verdicts on the role of older individuals in contributing to the climate change.

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Wonderville Magic and Cabaret review - fast-paced show delivers the promised wonder

Gary Naylor

There’s nothing quite like magic, live, up close and personal. Sure there are the TV spectaculars, the casino resort mega-shows and even The Masked Magician to pull back the curtains, but there’s a frisson in the air when the card that’s in your head appears in the conjuror’s hand.

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Room, Edinburgh International Festival 2022 review - decadent, extravagant, and somewhat mystifying

David Kettle

"I feel I owe you an explanation." That much James Thierrée concedes partway through his sprawling, freewheeling, dream-like, hallucinatory Room in Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre. By which stage, most of the audience was probably in agreement. It’s a proposal he comes back to again and again during the rest of the show – but, of course, no explanation ever materialises, save a few strangulated noises, which seem about the best Thierrée can manage.

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Counting and Cracking, Edinburgh International Festival 2022 review - ambitious, powerful, but sadly under-attended

David Kettle

First, a bit of housekeeping. Maybe it was the three-and-a-half-hour duration, or maybe the unfamiliar Sri Lankan subject matter, or maybe even the very un-festival-like hot weather that put people off an evening inside Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre. Or maybe (very possibly) continuing Covid concerns.

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Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Temping / Work.txt

David Kettle

Temping, Assembly George Square Studios

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Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Afghanistan Is Not Funny / Yippee Ki Yay / Eh Up, Me Old Flowers!

Veronica Lee

Afghanistan Is Not Funny, Gilded Balloon 

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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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