thu 26/06/2025

Theatre Reviews

Tiger Country, Hampstead Theatre online review - a taut drama of NHS pressure and pain

Tom Birchenough

If ever there was a “play for today”, it’s surely this.

Read more...

Treasure Island, National Theatre at Home review - all aboard this thrilling adventure story

Marianka Swain

Swaggering pirates, X marks the spot, a chattering parrot, “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum”? All present and correct.

Read more...

Theatre Lockdown Special 1: Starry podcasts, late-career Shakespeare, a celebrity basement - and more

Matt Wolf

The lockdown has been extended, but here's the good news: each week whereby we are shut inside seems to bring with it ever-enticing arrays of theatre from across the spectrum, from online cabarets to freshly conceived podcasts and all manner of archival offerings of tites both familiar and not. Below is an unscientific sampling of items of interest to look out for either at the moment or during the week ahead.

Read more...

Twelfth Night, RSC/Stratford-upon-Avon online review - inventive but underfelt

Matt Wolf

Twelfth Night is rarely long-absent from the British stage and nor is it in our current climate of streaming aplenty. This 2017 production for the RSC from the director Christopher Luscombe will soon be followed online by the National Theatre’s gender-flipped version, with Tamsin Greig as Malvolia, which actually preceded this Stratford production at the time.

Read more...

Wise Children, BBC online review – beautifully bizarre

aleks Sierz

Reviewing theatre now means reviewing film. Knowing that Emma Rice’s Old Vic 2018 production of Wise Children, her typically rambunctious version of Angela Carter’s last novel, published in 1991, has been recorded by The Space immediately raises expectations of high quality.

Read more...

Drawing the Line, Hampstead Theatre online review - modern history becomes dark farce

Marianka Swain

This week’s gem from the Hampstead’s vaults is Howard Brenton’s political drama from 2013, telling the extraordinary, stranger-than-fiction story of Cyril Radcliffe and his 1947 mission: to arrange the Partition of India in...

Read more...

Flowers for Mrs Harris, Chichester Festival Theatre online review - a warmly open-hearted weepie

Matt Wolf

18 months or so after it opened in Chichester, Flowers for Mrs Harris launches a sequence of streamed productions from the West Sussex venue just in time to allow a new British musical to join the ever-swelling ranks of theatrical offerings online.

Read more...

Jane Eyre, National Theatre at Home review - a fiery feminist adaptation

Marianka Swain

The National Theatre’s online broadcasts got off to a storming start with One Man, Two Guvnors – watched by over 2.5 million people, either on the night or in the week since its live streaming, and raising around £66,000 in donations.

Read more...

Gators, Tramp Productions online review - the glittering dark

aleks Sierz

She’s an ordinary young woman, and she really doesn’t know what to think. After all, things are way out of control. She knows that the natural world is pretty fucked, and that nothing grows in the earth any more — well, at least not on her patch. She knows that the gators, the semi-aquatic reptiles that used to live in swamps, have now taken to strolling through cities.

Read more...

Wonderland, Hampstead Theatre online review - a major play about the miners

Matt Wolf

The talk is of an “economy in ruin [with] unemployment through the roof”: a précis of Britain in lockdown?

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... ...
Aldeburgh Festival, Weekend 2 review - nine premieres, three...

Actually it was a Thursday evening to Saturday experience, but what riches in seven concerts. The only Britten I heard was one of the S...

F1: The Movie review - Brad Pitt rolls back the years as mav...

As producer Jerry Bruckheimer cautioned a preview audience, “Remember, this is not a documentary. It’s a movie.” Bruckheimer teamed up with...

Bleak landscapes and banjos: composer Bernard Hughes discus...

Composer Bernard Hughes first met director Richard Bracewell when working on the film Bill, a 2015 Horrible Histories take on...

Album: Bruce Springsteen - Tracks II: The Lost Albums

It’s somewhat surprising to read that The Boss wasn’t happy with Born in the USA. After all, it was –...

Brad Mehldau Trio, St George's Bristol review - exquisi...

There's something luminous about the Brad Mehldau Trio. The music they create with such joy shines with a special clarity, in which ever-changing...

Dangerous Matter, RNCM, Manchester review - opera meets scie...

Opera can take many forms and fulfil many purposes: this chamber opera by Zakiya Leeming and Sam Redway is about vaccination. Based on history, it...

Ian Leslie: John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs review - h...

Do we need any more Beatles books? The answer is: that’s the wrong question. What we need is more Beatles books that are worth reading. As the...

Album: BC Camplight - A Sober Conversation

A Sober Conversation is the work of a master songwriter, one who knows how to achieve their goals. As the album’s nine tracks pour from...

Schubertiade 3 at the Ragged Music Festival, Mile End review...

Aldeburgh offered strong competition for the three evenings of Schubert at the discreetly restored Ragged School Museum, but I knew I had to...