sat 16/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

The 4th Country, Park Theatre review – sympathetic and intriguing

aleks Sierz

History is a prison. Often, you can’t escape. It imprints its mark on people, environments and language.

Read more...

David Suchet - Poirot And More, A Retrospective, Harold Pinter Theatre review - the much-loved actor looks back

Gary Naylor

In the 80s, An Audience With... gave a television studio to an actor who then recounted stories culled from a life in entertainment. The best subjects were the natural raconteurs with plenty to say - Billy Connolly, Barry Humphries, the incomparable Kenneth Williams - and it's a testament to the format's longevity that Adele did one as recently as November.

Read more...

Force Majeure, Donmar Warehouse review - fissures in a marriage

David Nice

It sounds like the title of a play by Rattigan. No such luck: “Force Majeure” – a legal term with which all too few will be familiar, in which circumstances beyond anyone’s control cancel a contract – is how Ruben Östlund’s 2014 film Turist is known beyond Sweden (an American remake with Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, not good by all accounts, has much the best title, Downhill).

Read more...

Folk, Hampstead Downstairs review - thoughtful play about folklorist Cecil Sharp

Helen Hawkins

Cecil Sharp, heritage hero or imperialist appropriator? If you attended school in the first half of the 20th century, you would have sung from his collections of English folk songs, and probably gritted your teeth and performed the country dances he recorded, too.

Read more...

Pantomime 2021 round-up 2: TV stars in the spotlight

Veronica Lee

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells ★★★★

Read more...

Peggy For You, Hampstead Theatre review - comedic gold, and a splinter of ice, from Tamsin Greig

Tom Birchenough

Was Peggy Ramsay a “woman out of time”? The celebrated London literary agent, who nurtured the talents of at least one generation of British playwrights, surely counted as a legend in her own lifetime (she died in 1991). Has she lasted beyond it?

Read more...

Spring Awakening, Almeida Theatre review - must-see revival for Tony-winning musical

Helen Hawkins

When Berliners sat down to watch Franz Wedekind’s debut play Fruhlings ErwachenSpring Awakening – in 1906, they had little inkling of the kind of drama he had written, or how it would change theatre for the century to come, despite being banned for long periods.

Read more...

The Tiger Lillies' Christmas Carol: A Victorian Gutter, Southbank Centre review - cult band get inside Scrooge's head

Gary Naylor

Charles Dickens and Martyn Jacques is a marriage made in heaven (well, hell I suppose): the Victorian novelist touring the rookeries of Clerkenwell the better to fire his imagination and, 150 years or so later, the post-punk maestro mining London's netherworlds for his tales of misfits and misdeeds.

Read more...

Habeas Corpus, Menier Chocolate Factory review - grappling with Alan Bennett's anti-farce

Helen Hawkins

In his 1973 play Habeas Corpus, now revived at the Menier Chocolate Factory under the direction of Patrick Marber, Alan Bennett had his way with the venerable Whitehall farce.

Read more...

Pantomime 2021 round-up 1: a great Dame and two debuts

Veronica Lee

Jack and the Beanstalk, Hackney Empire ★★★

Read more...

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.


latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: Ordinary Decent Criminal / In...

Ordinary Decent Criminal, Summerhall ...

Alien: Earth, Disney+ review - was this interstellar journey...

Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie from 1979 was an all-time sci-fi/horror classic, and even an endless stream of sequels and spin-offs...

Unmoored review - atmospheric Swedish noir set on Exmoor

“When have you ever gone off alone?” scoffs Magnus (Thomas W Gabrielsson) when his wife, Maria (Mirja Turestedt), expresses the wish to go to...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: Kinder / Shunga Alert / Clean...

Kinder, Underbelly, Cowgate ★...

Album: Tom Grennan - Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Did...

Who’d have guessed that a dude who first came to attention a decade ago guesting on a cheesy Chase & Status drum & bass track would likely...

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, RSC, Stratford review - not qui...

I have two guilty secrets about the theatre – okay, two I’m prepared to own up to right here, right now. I quite enjoy some...

Orpheus and Eurydice, Opera Queensland/SCO, Edinburgh Intern...

There’s a lot to shout about in this Orpheus, especially the way it looks. In a thin year for staged opera at the Edinburgh International...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Eric Rushton / Bella Hull

Eric Rushton, Monkey Barrel ...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: The Horse of Jenin / Nowhere

The Horse of Jenin, Pleasance Dome ...