UK REGIONAL THEATER REVIEWS

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’ �...

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...

At Theatre Royal Winchester this holiday season, Play to the Crowd is bringing one of the classic pantomimes, Puss in Boots, to life in a pawsome new production, written and directed by Robin Belfield. Audiences join Puss (Bekah Selina), who must not only battle the evil Fluella Frostbite (Emma Fenn...

For their Christmas show this year, The Mill at Sonning is putting on My Fair Lady, the 1956 Broadway musical written by Alan Jay Lerner (Lyrics and Book) and Frederick Loewe (Music). For those unfamiliar with the venue, it is an intimate, 217-seat theatre in the semi-round that operates as a dinner...

There are some stories that never grow old, and The Sound of Music is definitely one of them. Sixty years after the movie premiered, and sixty-six since the stage show first hit Broadway, this tale of love, family, the healing power of music, and resistance against persecution in 1930s Austria is as...

Hal Cruttenden is at truly at the top of his game, in his skilled and polished new show Hal Cruttenden: Can Dish It Out But Can’t Take It. The comedy is focused on schadenfreude, in terms of rawness and pain, by being brutally honest about the effects of heartbreak. ...

Falling snow, a rapidly-growing Christmas tree and an army of sword-fighting rats: it can only be Sir Peter Wright's The Nutcracker. Birmingham Royal Ballet's opulent, charming and whimsical production returns to Birmingham Hippodrome - where Wright's version received its premier in 1990 - and bring...

Sherlock Holmes and the 12 Days of Christmas, written by Humphrey Ker and David Reed with original songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Price, has the iconic duo of Sherlock Holmes (Ker) and John Watson (Reed) solving a string of mysterious murders on the West End in Victorian England....

If there is one message that those who were in attendance at More Than One Story LIVE on 9 November absorbed through their skin, it is that “The arts don’t belong to a few, they belong to everyone.” The sentiment was declared proudly by Rory Kinnear in his opening speech and echoed warmly by ...

Patricia Highsmith's psychological thriller The Talented Mr Ripley was published 70 years ago, but remains fascinating due to her brilliant writing, but also movie and Netflix versions that have kept the story alive. This excellent new stage adaptation, written and directed by Mark Leipacher, stri...

Romeo a Juliet does not make any of its political points overtly, and this is an occasion where some things are better left unsaid, without cheap gimmicks. With nothing made explicit, the audience comes away reflecting on their own use of language and dialect in their daily life, as well as on how o...

Here & Now arrives at New Wimbledon Theatre with all the sparkle, nostalgia and high-camp energy you’d expect from a show built around the hits of one of Britain’s most beloved pop groups, Steps. Set in a seaside supermarket, the musical blends tongue-in-cheek humour with heartfelt moments, deli...

Theatre beyond London proves varied and interesting...

Directed by Daniel Raggett, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s brings a new version of Macbeth to the small studio space in Stratford-upon-Avon. Starring Sam Heughan, best known for his role in the series Outlander, and Lia Williams as Lady Macbeth. This staging imagines the play in a gangland pub i...