mon 18/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

Noises Off, Lyric Hammersmith review - farce doesn't catch fire

Veronica Lee

Michael Frayn's Noises Off is a modern classic, a backstage sex farce that pokes affectionate fun at a profession he loves. And now Jeremy Herrin, one of our most accomplished directors, revives it for Lyric Hammersmith, where the play was premiered in 1982.

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Rust, Bush Theatre review - slender yet invigorating

aleks Sierz

The best kind of two-hander is the play about couples. And the most dramatic way of saying something about relationships is to show a couple who are in trouble, bad trouble. Crisis. Especially if they start off well together.

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Summer Rolls, Park Theatre review - racism laid bare to mixed results

Tim Cornwell

There’s a moment in Summer Rolls, at the Nguyen family dinner table, when a veil is briefly pulled back on the ugly racism so many Asian immigrant communities must endure in the UK.

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Europe, Donmar Warehouse review - timely, tender, brutal and brilliant

aleks Sierz

In the middle of the current decade, there was a mild vogue for reviving a handful of the great plays of the 1990s, such as Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking and Patrick Marber's Closer.

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On Your Feet!, London Coliseum review - Gloria Estefan bio-musical hits familiar notes

Marianka Swain

This well-meaning biographical jukebox musical about icons Gloria and Emilio Estefan, which did two years on Broadway and a US tour, is good summer scheduling, what with its Latin-pop bangers, infectious dance routines and “Dreams come true” messaging.

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The Hunt, Almeida Theatre review - tense Scandinoirland drama

aleks Sierz

For a while, child abuse has been banished from our stages. After all, there is a limit, surely, to how much pain audiences can be put through.

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Cash Cow, Hampstead Theatre review - timely look at pushy tennis parents

Marianka Swain

“How much does she owe us?” So ponder the now estranged parents of a former tennis pro, as they calculate the very literal investment they’ve put into their daughter.

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The Damned, Comédie-Française, Barbican review - slow-burn horrors in devastating images

David Nice

Is the terrifying past of Germany in 1933 also our future?

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Bitter Wheat, Garrick Theatre review - Malkovich monologue is more chaff than wheat

aleks Sierz

John Malkovich is back in town - and he's starring in the most controversial play of the year. Trouble is, it might well also be the worst. When the subject of veteran American playwright David Mamet's new drama was announced as being about a Hollywood mogul, who, like Harvey Weinstein, is accused of abusive behaviour there was a predictable outcry. How dare Mamet write about this?

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Three Sisters, Maly Drama Theatre, Vaudeville Theatre review - a Chekhov of luminous clarity

Tom Birchenough

Lev Dodin has been artistic director of the famed Maly Drama Theatre for some three and a half decades now, over which time the St Petersburg company has earned itself the highest of international reputations.

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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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