sun 17/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

Pass Over, Kiln Theatre review - fierce critique of racist brutality

aleks Sierz

The Black Lives Matter movement is such an important international protest that it is odd how few contemporary plays even mention it. Since the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has been around since 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman who shot African-American teenager Trayvon Martin in February 2012, there is little excuse.

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La Cage aux Folles [The Play], Park Theatre review - half-cock farce

David Nice

Not the musical then, worst luck. How timely it would have been to mark Jerry Herman's passing with a celebration of a great achievement. Just how brilliantly the pathos and panache of his score lift Jean Poiret's long-running 1970s farce about a gay couple and their St Tropez drag club having to "straighten up" for family values is only emphasised by this ultimately threadbare adaptation by Simon Callow....

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Upstart Crow, Gielgud Theatre review - terrific Shakespeare spoof

Veronica Lee

What joy it is to welcome this offshoot of the television series to the West End stage – complete with several of that show's cast, plus a few new additions.

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The High Table, Bush Theatre review - party on in Lagos and London

aleks Sierz

Queer people of colour face a double discrimination: racism and homophobia. Against this sickness of negation and stupidity one of the best antidotes is a culture of celebration. And in this theatre can play its part.

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Leopoldstadt, Wyndham's Theatre review - Stoppard at once personal and accessible

Matt Wolf

It’s not uncommon for playwrights to begin their careers by writing what they know, to co-opt a frequently quoted precept about authorial inspiration.

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Far Away, Donmar Warehouse review - one for the devotees

aleks Sierz

Caryl Churchill, Britain's best living playwright, is enjoying a spate of high-profile revivals of her classic work. Last year, the National Theatre staged her Top Girls, and an upcoming production of A Number is coming soon to the Bridge Theatre.

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Nora: A Doll's House, Young Vic review - Ibsen diced, sliced and reinvented with poetic precision

Heather Neill

Ibsen's Nora slammed the door on her infantilising marriage in 1879 but the sound of it has continued to reverberate down the years.

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Collapsible, Bush Theatre review - a high-wire solo engagement

Tom Birchenough

There’s such remarkable symbiosis between material and performance in Irish dramatist Margaret Perry’s Collapsible that you wonder how the hour-long monologue will fare in any future incarnation.

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On McQuillan's Hill, Finborough Theatre review - timely glance at Northern Irish myths and tensions

Rachel Halliburton

The news that the Continuity IRA created a bomb destined for England on Brexit Day has added to the timeliness of this revival of Joseph Crilly’s gut-punching comedy.

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The Taming of the Shrew, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - a confused and toothless mess

alexandra Coghlan

Say what you will about The Taming of the Shrew (and you’ll be in good company), but it is one of Shakespeare’s clearest plays.

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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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