fri 12/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

South Pacific, Chichester Festival Theatre review - gloriously revived and also refreshed

Gary Naylor

We’ve come to learn what socially distanced means but, 72 years ago, the distance that concerned Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers was that between racial groups in the United States.

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Last Easter, Orange Tree Theatre review - over-performative and strangely off-putting

Laura De Lisle

Last Easter has become a lot more relatable since it was forced to postpone this run at the Orange Tree Theatre, originally scheduled for 2020.

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King Lear, The Grange Festival review - friendship in adversity

Peter Quantrill

Much has been made of the raison d’etre for this King Lear as the slowly gestated, Covid-delayed brainchild of the director Keith Warner, assembling a company of acting singers who have made their names on the opera stage.

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The Dumb Waiter, Old Vic: In Camera review - more in sorrow than in anger

Heather Neill

Pinter wrote The Dumb Waiter in 1957 (although it wasn't seen in London until 1960) the year before The Birthday Party received its notorious première at the Lyric Hammersmith. When a friend described them both as political plays, about power and victimisation, the playwright readily agreed.

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The Invisible Hand, Kiln Theatre review - balanced on a knife edge

Laura De Lisle

A lot’s changed since Kiln Theatre boss Indhu Rubasingham directed The Invisible Hand’s first UK outing in 2016, not least the theatre’s name (it was known as the Tricycle back then).

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Pippin, Charing Cross Theatre review - happy-clappy vibe

Gary Naylor

If Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1966 was anyone under the age of 25, why couldn’t a teenage student write a musical in 1967? There are plenty of answers to that question of course, none of which stopped the composer Stephen Schwartz, who conjured Pippin while still at Carnegie Mellon University.

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Wonderful Town, Quick Fantastic, Opera Holland Park review - everybody's swinging it

David Nice

It’s a wonderful thing to hear a nine-piece Broadway-style band at full pelt, and to see real show dancing – the first time for me, in both cases, since early 2020.

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Constellations, Vaudeville Theatre review - a starry revival

Laura De Lisle

A cosmologist and a beekeeper walk into a barbecue. Or a wedding. The beekeeper is in a relationship, or married, or just out of a relationship, or married again. The cosmologist shares the secret of the universe with him: it’s impossible to lick the tip of your own elbow, because if you did, you would gain immortality. Somehow, the line works – sometimes.

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Bach & Sons, Bridge Theatre review - humorous and deeply intelligent

Rachel Halliburton

In John Eliot Gardiner’s magnificent wide-ranging biography of Bach, Music In The Castle of Heaven, he tells the story of the composer’s early run-in with a bassoonist with his typical zest for detail.

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J'Ouvert, Harold Pinter Theatre review - formless yet fabulous

Matt Wolf

A welcome West End upgrade is the order of the day at J'Ouvert, the debut play from Yasmin Joseph whose 2019 premiere at South London's Theatre 503 additionally marked the directing debut of the actress Rebekah Murrell.

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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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