sun 17/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

Fanny and Stella, Garden Theatre review - a saucy slice of queer history

Sam Marlowe

In a purgatorial summer, this boisterous, camp and chaotically charming musical is a tonic. It’s a winning combination of slick and slapdash, performed before a masked, socially distanced audience in a hastily repurposed beer garden behind the Eagle pub in Vauxhall.

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Blindness, Donmar Warehouse review - a beautifully haunting parable

aleks Sierz

Wowee! Twenty weeks after the last time I set foot in a theatre, I was able to visit a venue once more. Hello again Donmar! It’s great to see you again. Not for a show featuring live performers, who are currently banned, but for a theatre experience in the guise of an art installation, which is allowed.

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Imagine... My Name is Kwame, BBC One review - interesting but incomplete

Matt Wolf

Filmed, as one would, well, imagine, prior to lockdown, Imagine .... My Name is Kwame hearkens to what now seems a bygone era of full and buzzy playhouses and adventurous theatre-making that was about the live experience and not some facsimile online.

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Scrounger, Finborough Theatre online review – autobiography meets meta-theatre

aleks Sierz

During the current pandemic, stories about isolation have a particular resonance. Feelings of claustrophobia, loneliness and frustration slide off the stage and echo in our subconscious – yes, this is us alright.

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The Merchant of Venice, BBC iPlayer review – a parable on the limits of tolerance

Laura De Lisle

Ah, 2015. Those halcyon days of packed theatres. Thank God the RSC had the presence of mind to film Polly Findlay’s production of The Merchant of Venice, now streaming on BBC iPlayer.

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Songs for a New World, The Other Palace Digital review - chimes with our extraordinary 'moment'

Marianka Swain

We’ve already had The Last Five Years in lockdown; now, we get a digital production of American composer Jason Robert Brown’s earliest work.

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My White Best Friend (And Other Letters Left Unsaid), Royal Court review – raw but generous

aleks Sierz

The strength of the response to the re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter campaign has provoked some theatres to create provocative new work. Often, the keynote is personal feeling.

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Institute, BBC Four review – masculinity and memory in a nightmarish world of work

Sam Marlowe

Missing the office? Or dreading the day you have to return? What’s your relationship to the people you work with and for, and how does it intersect with your personal life? Do your paymasters know you? Do they care about you? Are there days when the routine and the hierarchy of it all just feels like a spirit-crushing game?

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Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain, Northampton Saints review - history made funny

Veronica Lee

In each of its incarnations – books, television series and theatre shows – covering more than 80 titles, Horrible Histories, created by Terry Deary, has been a hit.

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Amadeus, National Theatre at Home review – wild dance at the edges of sanity

Rachel Halliburton

It is 41 years since Peter Shaffer ripped off Mozart’s respectable façade to reveal a foul-mouthed verbally incontinent child-man with no more ability to control his behaviour than his genius.

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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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