Theatre Reviews
Scandaltown, Lyric Hammersmith review - Restoration-comedy-style take on 21st Century shamelessnessMonday, 18 April 2022
If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, then Boris Johnson has played the whole sodding orchestra. Between the parties, the lying, the enabling of Russian financial interests and the record European Covid death-toll he has not just traduced Pitt, he has tap-danced on Churchill’s grave in his narcissistic attempt to assert gravitas. Read more... |
Zorro the Musical, Charing Cross Theatre review - struggling to find the right toneSaturday, 16 April 2022
Zorro (what a name!) is back, swashing and buckling his way into the West End, 13 years after he left and now not the only one wearing a mask. He’s also an entertainer turned political leader, inspiring his people to resist an evil martinet. Well, that sort of thing is back in fashion too. Read more... |
Wolf Cub, Hampstead Downstairs review - haunting solo play about the American nightmareThursday, 14 April 2022
Ché Walker claims he wrote Wolf Cub, now in the Hampstead Downstairs studio space, in a two-day blitz prompted by Donald Trump’s election win in 2016. Read more... |
Persuasion, Alexandra Palace Theatre review - graphic-novel-style AustenThursday, 14 April 2022
Jane Austen’s waspish vision revealed the vanities, delusions and cynical financial calculations that underpinned most of the relationships of her day. Read more... |
The 47th, Old Vic review - ambitious Trump satire doesn't quite hit its targetMonday, 11 April 2022
Megalomania is inherently theatrical. So it feels like it was only a matter of time before Donald Trump took to the boards, blasting the assembled crowd with his tangerine paranoia and clownish nihilism. Read more... |
'Daddy' A Melodrama, Almeida Theatre review - production exuberance carries a new play of promiseMonday, 11 April 2022
Danya Taymor’s production of “Daddy” A Melodrama has a huge exuberance: a tour de force in itself, it's also a scintillating introduction to the work of Jeremy O Harris. The young American dramatist earned considerable attention, and acclaim for the acuity of his investigation of race issues, for his 2018 Slave Play, but it's this earlier piece, written when Harris was in his mid-twenties, that reaches London first (after a two-year Covid delay). Read more... |
Anyone Can Whistle, Southwark Playhouse review - full-on bonkersFriday, 08 April 2022
Musicals don't get madder than Anyone Can Whistle, the 1964 Broadway flop from onetime West Side Story and Gypsy collaborators Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents which makes history of sorts at Southwark Playhouse as the first Sondheim show to be revived since his death last year, age 91. Read more... |
Project Dictator, New Diorama Theatre review - anarchic satireThursday, 07 April 2022
When Rhum + Clay conceived this show, the idea of a comic becoming a political leader might have prompted thoughts of Boris Johnson's carefully cultivated buffoonery on "Have I Got News For You" and elsewhere. Since then, a certain Volodymyr Zelenskyy has given politician-comedians a rather better name. Comedy, as is so often the case, is in thrall to timing. Read more... |
The Fever Syndrome, Hampstead Theatre review - ambitious family drama falls shortWednesday, 06 April 2022
The Fever Syndrome has an ambition that places itself firmly in the tradition of the great American family drama (comparisons with Arthur Miller feel the most appropriate), a piece in which the reassessment of ties of blood is played out against a background of issues that touch on the wider society in which its protagonists exist. Read more... |
Clybourne Park, Park Theatre review - excellent revival of Bruce Norris's award-winnerSaturday, 26 March 2022
Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park arrived at London’s Royal Court like a blazing comet in 2010, a bold kind of satire about race relations that was both sassy and savvy. Read more... |
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★★★★★
‘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*
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