UK REGIONAL THEATER REVIEWS

The touring production of The Bodyguard arrives at a pivotal moment in its continental journey. After stops in Zurich, Munich and Berlin, interspersed with various UK engagements including London, the show now plays its final German date at the Alte Oper Frankfurt. From here, it will return to Briti...

With countless depictions of Queen Victoria in the media, Daisy Goodwin has managed to create something original and thought-provoking. Forcing the audience to question both history and memory, it's the wonderful cast and stunning visuals that complement her script and make for an all-around excitin...

Good songs and good performances but a curiously mixed message from Sara Bareilles's smash hit show...

Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile—here adapted by Ken Ludwig and directed by Lucy Bailey—arrives on stage with all the glamour and menace you’d hope for: a sun-soaked cruise, a clutch of suspiciously well-dressed passengers, and, inevitably, a murder that sends everything spiralling....

Henry V of England is one of those big roles for an actor. Alfie Enoch follows in the footsteps of Laurence Olivier and Tom Hiddleston as the king who led a battalion of tired and outnumbered soldiers to victory. Excellent performances may save it, but co-artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare C...

Christy Lefteri’s 2019 bestseller The Beekeeper of Aleppo is both a powerful and poetic story about the refugee experience. Her story of Nuri and his wife Afra's escape from Syria to England was inspired by time Lefteri spent working in a refugee camp in Athens. Syria may currently be seen as le...

The filter-like haze hits you first. Then the occasional lighting, the tiled ceiling, and the faint whiff of the 80s. But it's the arrival of two extraordinary performances – Madelyn Smedley's fizzing, fearless Rita and Julius D'Silva's weary, cynical Frank – that makes Reading Rep Theatre's Edu...

Adapted by Olivier Award-winner Laura Wade from Somerset Maugham’s original play, The Constant Wife, this new version is directed by Co-Artistic Director of the RSC Tamara Harvey and is now embarking on a UK Tour which, delightfully, opened in Brighton this week. It may not have played to a f...

What did our critic think of LA BOHEME IN CINEMAS at Cinemas Across The UK?...

Innovative take on familiar comedy proves hit and miss as lovers and fairies fight...

Before Taylor Swift versus Charli XCX - but after The Beatles versus The Rolling Stones - came Blur versus Oasis. David Niven's debut comedy at Birmingham Rep takes us back to the summer of 1995, when temperatures and egos both soared and the nation was gripped by the chart battle between Oasis’ �...

Set beneath a vibrant circus tent filled with sparkling multicoloured lights and fluttering flags, the production opens with a jovial instrumental atmosphere that immediately invites children into the world of the show....

Today we are wearily familiar with the terms 'Stop the Boats' and the narrative that all refugees are coming to Britain to take 'our' jobs, scam us for benefits and prey upon young girls. Nick Ahad's adaptation of Onjali Q. Raúf's beautiful book, The Boy at the Back of the Class, takes much of th...

Three years ago, I sat in this same auditorium reviewing Blood Brothers for this publication, and I wondered then what gives this show its extraordinary staying power. Returning now to see the very same production - with the same creative team and even some returning cast members - the answer is cle...

If it's not quite as slick as it might be, this oldies show can still push a lot of the right nostalgia buttons...

Whitney White collapses time and space to insert new perspectives into old plays...

There are many times you catch yourself, as a parent, doing things you never thought you would do - worse, that you would scoff at if reported by others. I recall looking at one, probably both, of my sons in their crib and becoming aware that I couldn’t see or hear them breathing. You walk away (�...

NT Live's filmed screening of Hamlet, featuring Hiran Abeysekera (Olivier award-winner for Life of Pi) in the title role, will be released in UK cinemas on January 22 and soon after around the world....

Alan Ayckbourn’s 1985 play Woman In Mind is a darkly comic look about mental disintegration and a mid-life ennui that would have rarely been spoken about forty years ago. In the first major West End revival since 2012, director Michael Longhurst presents a startling portrait of a woman who ret...

After staging a charming version of Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer two years ago, the Orange Tree's Tom Littler brings us Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 250-year-old comedy The Rivals. Like She Stoops to Conquer, Littler, along with associate Rosie Tricks, has almost rewritten the play, ...

Co-Artistic Director of the RSC Daniel Evans brings to life one of Roald Dahl’s most darkly beloved children’s books in an utterly thrilling adaptation by Tom Wells. ...

In Norwich’s 2025 pantomime, Cinderella, audiences are transported to the beach town of Crabbington Sands, where Cinderella (Georgie May Foote) has been trapped in the old hotel that her deceased parents used to run by her wicked sisters, Lou (Owen Evans) and Lav (Kenny Moore). But, when Cinderell...

A biscuit-scented, warm-hearted Dickens – Beth Flintoff's adaptation relocates the classic to Reading's Huntley & Palmers factory, and the result is festive theatre with real local soul. Until 3 Jan...

A free exhibition at the National Theatre proves an eye-opener for those of us who, too often, take stage design for granted...

Richhard Linklater's film is set of the opening night of Oklahoma! in 1943, the beginning of the end for Richard Rodgers' first lyricist...