O2 SHEPHERD'S BUSH EMPIRE

by Mica Blackwell - April 02, 2026

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...

by Gary Naylor - April 01, 2026

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

by Caroline Cronin - April 01, 2026

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....

by Cindy Marcolina - March 29, 2026

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...

by Aliya Al-Hassan - March 11, 2026

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...

by Jo Caruana - March 03, 2026

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...

by Caroline Cronin - February 24, 2026

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...

by Cheryl Markosky - March 01, 2026

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

by Gary Naylor - February 19, 2026

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

by Laura Lott - February 18, 2026

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’ �...