UK REGIONAL THEATER REVIEWS

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...

Bleak, yet hopeful, drama/dance hybrid gives food for thought...

Something wicked this way comes: it’s another exciting high-concept Shakespeare. Director Daniel Raggett moves the action of the Scottish Play to a safe-house pub in the midst of a racketeering war. Succession meets Sons of Anarchy with a hint of The Sopranos in this daring, new production. With a...

Sir Peter Hall's iconic production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream has achieved legendary status since its premiere in 1981. In 2025, it has lost none of its magic, with the Glyndebourne audience still wide-eyed at the visual feast on stage....

PucciniAs the nights draw in, it seems highly appropriate to return to Glyndebourne for the start of its Autumn season and the chilly streets of Puccini’s La bohème. Floris Visser’s production, beautifully revived by Rachael Hewer, has the spectre of death ever-present. In this case, quite li...

How many extended metaphors does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, please, Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Commissioned by Ralph Fiennes to come up with a new play for the Ralph Fiennes/Theatre Royal Bath Season, Lenkiewicz's Small Hotel offers way too many exciting ideas – alas, none of which string t...

Four years on from its premiere at the Noel Coward Theatre, 2:22 A Ghost Story continues to unsettle audiences across the UK and internationally. The celebrity casting in this iteration of the UK tour adds a new dynamic in the form of real-life couple Stacey Dooley and Kevin Clifton....

Glamorous and mythic, the Mitford sisters often feel like untouchable figures of the past, central to the tumultuous politics of the interwar period and yet forgotten amidst the rollcall of far more significant names. They seem like the sorts of characters who would be impossible to bring to life, a...

Talented by name, talented by nature: Ed McVey is a perfectly cast Mr Ripley, deftly juggling paranoia, wild optimism, self-pity and bouts of violence, while never losing either his sense of humour or the audience's tolerance. It's a demanding role requiring seemingly endless reams of dialogue as Ri...

James Phelan’s latest production, The Man Who Was Magic, arrives at the Adelphi Theatre for one night only after a triumphant Edinburgh run and confirms his reputation as a magician with both flair and heart. The show opens to the smooth sounds of the Rat Pack and swing, the stage bathed in the wa...

Micaela Prada has built her career on both artistry and discipline, combining the vision of a producer with the presence of a performer....

Will lovers of Louisa May Alcott's semi-autobiographical novel Little Women, published more than 150 years ago, be content with Anne-Marie Casey's stage adaptation first performed in 2022 and now running at Salisbury Playhouse?...

If it ain't broke, don't fix it - but by all means develop it into a one-show-does-all situation, which is very much the case for The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe currently showing at Sadler’s Wells. The production is geared towards a younger audience, however anyone who goes won't be able to ...

What did our critic think of AS YOU LIKE IT, STARRING HARRIET WALTER, THEATRE ROYAL BATH at Theatre Royal Bath?...

What if, instead of being based in a castle in Denmark in the late Middle Ages, Hamlet was set at a backyard barbecue in the United States in modern times? That’s exactly what audiences witness in James Iijames’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Fat Ham, which follows Juicy (Olisa Odele), a young, queer b...

Anyone who thinks Lily Allen's simply an upstart pop star plonked onstage to pull in the punters and rake in the cash, well, you can think again. She's delightfully dangerous and destructive – so much so you can't take your eyes off her – in Matthew Dunster's new cheeky version of Ibsen's Hedda ...

Marisha Wallace, Broadway’s current Sally Bowles, has had a career in New York and London marked by starring roles in musicals about women surviving tough circumstances. As we find out in her debut live recording, Live in London, her own life hasn’t been much different....

Joanna Bowman brings Shakespearean Italy to The Other Place at the RSC with her new production of his first play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. At a pacy 90 minutes (without an interval) and set in the round, the play is reimagined for the present day with a talented cast of actor-musicians - an idea...

There's something inherently magical about outdoor theatre, especially when the theatre is in such beautiful surroundings as Kilworth House's. Watching Rydell High's disco ball throw tiny swirling lights across the theatre's tented roof as the cast hand-jive beneath it and night falls outside, it's ...

Don’t Rock the Boat tries to be a wild ride down the Thames as the title suggests, but it only lightly bumps into its chaos. The cast make a valiant effort with the material and its set beautifully fits the Mill at Sonning, but its outdated nature makes me question who this play is for in 2025....

What did our critic think of MARY POPPINS at Birmingham Hippodrome?...

Adapted from Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, director Richard Jones’s glorious Falstaff makes a welcome return to Glyndebourne, losing none of its charm or deft comedy. It is playful, witty and a pure delight....

It's a bold move for the Royal Shakespeare Company to slip in a remake of W Somerset Maugham's 1920s lesser-known comedy about infidelity in amongst more serious offerings like King Lear and Timon of Athens....

Fiennes captures the voice and gait of actor-manager Sir Henry Irving and Miranda Raison conveys the intuitive nature of actress Ellen Terry in a superb production by director Jeremy Herrin in Fiennes' new season at Theatre Royal Bath....

The Watermill Theatre may be small, but this Jesus Christ Superstar is epic on biblical levels. Exuberant, dynamic yet intimate, if you’re on the lookout for an alternative stripped back Andrew Lloyd Webber revival this summer, this one is worth taking a holy pilgrimage...