sat 23/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

Collective Rage, Southwark Playhouse review - a rollicking riot

Katherine Waters

“Pussy is pussy” and “bitches are bitches” but Jen Silverman’s Collective Rage at Southwark Playhouse smashes tautologies with roguish comedy in a tight five-hander smartly directed by Charlie Parham.

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Paines Plough Roundabout, Orange Tree Theatre review - too brief to really rock

aleks Sierz

Hype is a dangerous thing. It often raises expectations beyond the reasonable, and disappointment inevitably follows. It also prioritises PR over artistic activity, putting the publicity cart before the creative horse, sucking energy away from plays to feed the marketing machine.

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Booby's Bay, Finborough Theatre review - a bit fishy

Katherine Waters

Carry on out of London past the Finborough Theatre and you hit the A4. Follow it east as it becomes the M4, take a southern turn at Bristol for the M5 and you’re in the West Country. Bude and Bodmin, Liskeard, St Austell, Padstow, Mousehole, Newquay and Newlyn.

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Julius Caesar, Bridge Theatre review – blood, sweat and bullets

Sam Marlowe

All hail! Shakespeare’s Roman drama may be enjoying something of a resurgence at present, but it rarely proves as vital and arresting in performance as this.

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The Open House, The Print Room review - razor wit, theatrical brio

Tom Birchenough

The American family has seldom looked more desperate. Will Eno’s The Open House depicts a gathering of such dismal awfulness that it surely sets precedents for this staple element of American drama.

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The Believers Are But Brothers, Bush Theatre review - a gimmick in search of a story

aleks Sierz

Do boys never leave the playground? Just when I was reasonably sure that the crisis of masculinity was an old-fashioned trope – I mean, so very 1990s – along comes a one-man show that investigates how lonely young men, seething with resentment, surf the internet, attracted like flies to shit by tech-savvy extremist groups of both secular and religious persuasions. And boy are they persuasive!

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Mary Stuart, Duke of York's Theatre review - superb teamwork from Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams in Schiller's thriller

Jenny Gilbert

Casting decisions do not usually make gripping theatre. But in Robert Icke’s version of Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 political thriller, newly transferred from the Almeida to the West End, settling the question of which of two actresses will play the title role and which her nemesis, Elizabeth I, is an edge-of-the-seat moment night after night. Heads or tails? Before the entire assembled cast, the...

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John, National Theatre review - in for the long haul?

Katherine Waters

On their return home from Ohio to New York, young couple Jenny and Elias (Anneika Rose and Tom Mothersdale, main picture) make a detour to Gettysburg for a few days’ sightseeing. Elias has been fascinated by the town and its bloody history since he was a young boy; Jenny is ambivalent, and in the throes of an incapacitatingly painful period.

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The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, Kneehigh on tour review - sweetest musical Chagalliana

David Nice

Time flies so much more beguilingly in Daniel Jamieson and Emma Rice's 90-minute musical fantasia than it ever has, for me, in Bock and Harnick's Fiddler on the Roof – and the songs aren't bad, either.

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Beginning, Ambassadors Theatre review - funny and richly moving comedy about loneliness

Tom Birchenough

Awkwardness is a challenging effect in drama, and one so rewarding when it works. When the movement isn’t easy, when the dialogue doesn't flow; when, with emotional revelations broken and coming with difficulty, the pauses speak more powerfully than the words.

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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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