mon 18/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

Groan Ups, Vaudeville Theatre review - adding ambition and emotion to the mix

Matt Wolf

If ambition were all, Groan Ups would get an A*.

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Either, Hampstead Theatre review - funny, ingenious investigation of gender and love

Rachel Halliburton

This ingenious short work deftly investigates themes of love and identity with a breezy assurance that marks first time playwright, Ruby Thomas, out as a daring and exciting new voice.

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Assassins, Watermill Theatre, Newbury, review - Sondheim musical in scalding form

Matt Wolf

“Every now and then the country goes a little wrong”: so goes one of the many lyrics from the Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical Assassins that makes this 1990 Off Broadway musical (subsequently chosen to open Sam Mendes’ Donmar Warehouse in 1992) a piece of theatre very much for our time.

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Mephisto [A Rhapsody], Gate Theatre review - the callowness of history

Tom Birchenough

You wonder about the title of French dramatist Sam Gallet’s Mephisto [A Rhapsody], an adaptation for our days of Klaus Mann’s 1936 novel about an actor unable to resist the blandishments of fame, even if they come at the cost of losing himself.

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The Man in the White Suit, Wyndham's Theatre review - sparks but no combustion in this chemistry farce

Marianka Swain

A hit comedy about a textile scientist? It might sound unlikely, but Ealing Studios’ 1951 sci-fi satire, starring Alec Guinness, was one of the most popular films of the year in Britain.

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Shuck 'n' Jive, Soho Theatre review - a mixed bag, lots of promise

Katherine Waters

Shuck 'n' Jive is an hour-long two-hander about writing a play about being black in a white industry. The industry? Theatre. Performance. The stage.

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Noises Off, Garrick Theatre review - sublime chaos in Michael Frayn's meta-farce

Marianka Swain

“Doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That’s farce. That’s the theatre.

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Our Lady of Kibeho, Theatre Royal Stratford East review - heaven and hell in Rwandan visions

Tom Birchenough

The American dramatist Katori Hall has created a work of rare accomplishment in Our Lady of Kibeho, a play that combines a beautifully established picture of a particular world – a church school in rural Rwanda, in the early 1980s – with...

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Ian McKellen On Stage, Harold Pinter Theatre review - a master relishes the joy of theatre

Heather Neill

Reviewing Ian McKellen's show is, in one sense, like appraising the Taj Mahal or Mount Everest: he too is an awe-inspiring phenomenon.

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A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Trafalgar Studios review - tragi-comic masterpiece

aleks Sierz

Playwright Peter Nichols died aged 92 last month, just before the opening of this starry West End revival of his most celebrated masterpiece. A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967) is based on his own family experience of bringing up his disabled daughter in the 1960s, and it has the reputation of being one of the most ground-breaking plays of its generation.

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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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