fri 27/06/2025

Theatre Reviews

Kunene and the King, Ambassadors Theatre review - a Shakespearean voyage through the legacy of apartheid

Tom Birchenough

John Kani’s Kunene and the King is history in microcosm.

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The Sugar Syndrome, Orange Tree Theatre review - pushing empathy to the limit

aleks Sierz

Your sweet tooth can get you into trouble. Lots of trouble.

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Faustus: That Damned Woman, Lyric Hammersmith review - gender swap yields muddled results

Marianka Swain

Changing the gender of the title character “highlights the way in which women still operate in a world designed by and for men,” argues Chris Bush, whose reimagining of Marlowe’s play premieres at the Lyric ahead of a UK tour.

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Uncle Vanya, Harold Pinter Theatre review - a superlative company achievement

Tom Birchenough

Uncle Vanya must surely be the closest, the most essential of Chekhov’s plays, its cast – just four main players who are caught up in the drama's fraught emotional action, and four who are essentially supporting – a concentrated unit even by the playwright's lean standards.

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The Sunset Limited, Boulevard Theatre review - all talk, no theatre

Matt Wolf

Cormac McCarthy’s two-hander, premiered at Chicago's mighty Steppenwolf Theatre in 2006, has by this point been everything short of an ice ballet: a self-described “novel in dramatic form”, as one might expect from the American author of such titles as All the Pretty Horses and The Road, followed by a film made for TV directed by, and starring, Tommy Lee Jones, opposite Samuel L Jackson.

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The Welkin, National Theatre review - women's labour is a pain

aleks Sierz

History plays should perform a delicate balancing act: they have to tell us something worth knowing about the past, that foreign country where they do things differently, and also something about our current preoccupations. Otherwise, what's the point?

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Scenes with Girls, Royal Court review - feminist separatism 2.0

aleks Sierz

Last night, I discovered the gasp index. Or maybe just re-discovered. The what? The gasp index. It's when you see a show that keeps making you exhale, sometimes audibly, sometimes quietly. Tonight I gasped about five times, then I stopped counting – I was hooked.

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You Stupid Darkness!, Southwark Playhouse review - an intriguing muddle

Matt Wolf

Armageddon would appear to be at the gates in Sam Steiner’s intriguing if ramshackle play, a co-production between Paines Plough and Theatre Royal, Plymouth, that has reached London while still seeming a draft or so away from achieving its full potential.

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Rags: The Musical, Park Theatre review - a timely, if predictable, immigrant tale

Marianka Swain

“Take our country back!” is the rallying cry of the self-identified “real” Americans gathered to protest the arrival of immigrants.

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Les Misérables, Sondheim Theatre review - join in our crusade

aleks Sierz

Do you hear the people sing? In recent months, you're more likely to have heard news stories about the longest running West End musical than the actual music.

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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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