sat 16/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

Macbeth, Almeida Theatre review – vivid, but much too long

aleks Sierz

Remembering the months of lockdown, I can’t be the only person to thrill to this play’s opening lines, “When shall we three meet again?”, a phrase evocative enough to be borrowed as the first line of this year’s Wolf Alice album, Blue Weekend.

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White Noise, Bridge Theatre review - provocative if not always plausible

Matt Wolf

"I can't sleep": So goes the fateful opening line of White Noise, the Suzan-Lori Parks play disturbing enough to spark many a restless night in playgoers who are prepared to take its numerous provocations on board.

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The Mirror and the Light, Gielgud Theatre review - nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

Ismene Brown

The first two stage adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies – written by Mike Poulton, way back in 2014 - were a very different beast from the novels, but they were at least eyecatching plastinations of her unruly human characters, made attractive to those who had not read the novels.

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Metamorphoses, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - punchy, cleverly reworked classic

Rachel Halliburton

Ovid was exiled – or to put it in twenty-first century terms, "no-platformed" – by an indignant Emperor Augustus for the scandal caused by his three-book elegy on love, Ars Amatoria.

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Hamlet, Young Vic review - Cush Jumbo flares in a low-key production

Heather Neill

It is a truism that every Hamlet is different, depending more than any other play on the casting of the lead. Each production moulds itself around the personality of the actor playing the prince.

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What If If Only, Royal Court review - short if not sweet

Gary Naylor

Few sights speak so eloquently of loss, of an especially cruel and painful loss, as one glass of wine, half-full, alone on a table. A man speaks to a partner who isn’t there, wishes her back, but knows that she has gone. Then another woman materialises to speak of of the futures he could have enjoyed - but now will not - and of the many, many futures that hunger for life, shut out of our world by deliberate action and unintentional chance.

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The Normal Heart, National Theatre review - Ben Daniels triumphant

aleks Sierz

Hypocrisy. Is this the right word? I don’t mean the play, but the audience.

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How to Survive an Apocalypse, Finborough Theatre review - millenarian millennials

Laura De Lisle

Despite its painfully relevant title, How To Survive An Apocalypse was written in 2016. If only Canadian playwright Jordan Hall knew, eh? The end times aren’t just creeping but hurtling towards us, these days.

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Curious, Soho Theatre review - a young playwright puts herself centre-stage

Helen Hawkins

Jasmine Lee-Jones has a hard act to follow – namely, herself.

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Witness for the Prosecution, London County Hall review - return of Agatha Christie's gripping courtroom drama

Heather Neill

Lucy Bailey's production of Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, first staged at County Hall in 2017, has a few years to make up on The Mousetrap's near 70, but it has already proved its staying power, despite the hiatus of the lockdown months.

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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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