UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

“The memories are imprinted in my mind like ink that spreads”. This is Mark’s story. New at school, his Year-10 classmates ignore him and the highlight of his day is going back home to play with his dog Barney. Then, he meets Darren. A lads’ lad and part of the local bully group, he chooses ...

A unique approach to storytelling proves triumphant in a deeply moving production that demands our attention and repays it handsomely....

It's 13 years since Mike Bartlett's provocatively named play made its debut at the Royal Court. Now, Marianne Elliott assembles a starry cast for this West End revival. But how has Bartlett's exploration of sexuality and identity aged, and does it earn its place in the current theatre landscape?...

On the night marking two years since theatres were forced to close their doors due to the pandemic, we are reminded of the power of theatre in Franz Xaver Kroetz’s Tom Fool. This poignant and disquieting play from 1978 neatly explores the crumbling of a family as social pressures thwart the...

Phelim McDermott is among the very top tier of opera directors and, with this welcome revival of his 2014 interpretation of Così fan tutte, it is easy to see why....

When you think of Little Women, what probably springs to mind is a group of earnest young ladies in Massachusetts learning how to navigate the adult world – or, potentially, Joey’s reaction to Beth getting sick when he reads the book in an episode of Friends. What you don’t immediately think o...

A powerful cacophony of visceral imagery, music, and poetry, Dogs of Europe paints a haunting vision of fractured identities, nations, and narratives. It is unsettling to watch because it is a future that is increasingly tangible....

​Some nights at Covent Garden feel heavy with a sense of occasion and this particular performance of Swan Lake, taking place a week after opening night, was certainly one of them. Liam Scarlett’s Swan Lake is not even 4 years old as a production in the Royal Ballet’s repertoire but it already ...

Just a few days after it was announced that Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance was found in near-perfect conditions off the coast of Antarctica after it sank in 1915, a play about another tragic, marginally more famous shipwreck opens at the Park Theatre....

This rare revival of Dance is the epitome of Philip Glass' artistic ethos, combining minimalism and layered music with huge projections and skilful dancing....

The concept behind Fiji really shouldn’t work. A black comedy about the incongruous combination of online dating and consensual cannibalism was well-received when it ran for a few performances back in 2019. This unlikely premise, inspired by the 1991 case of the 'Rotenburg Cannibal', sparks a surp...

Among the many reflections on the legacy of the late, great Stephen Sondheim, here comes a touchingly personal one from his frequent collaborator Maria Friedman, who also pays tribute to two other dearly departed composers: Marvin Hamlisch and Michel LeGrand....

An imbalance between thematic exposition and dramatic tension means that a promising play fails to reach its full potential...

Was it Professor Plum in the library with the dagger? To many of us, the board game Cluedo is a family staple, but director Mark Bell’s play takes more of its influence from the 1985 American film Clue. The play retains the characters, weapons and location of a spooky manor house and turn it into ...

David Mamet's 1977 play, exploring and exposing gender differences, is given its first London Revival in 25 years....

Secret Cinema never shy away from the challenge - but transforming a warehouse in Wembley into a 19th Century Ballroom may be their most impressive feat yet....

At one point in Beautiful - The Carole King Musical, Carole declines a request to sing with a band, because she can't imagine anyone would want 'to hear a normal person sing'. As it turns out, millions of people want exactly that, and the show starts and ends with Carole performing her smash-hit alb...

Let’s rewind to 2016. The fires of Brexit are being stoked left and right and the discourse is rife everywhere, the news swarm with opinions and facts. Theresa May is about to go from Home Secretary to Prime Minister. Kenneth Clarke is being interviewed by Sky and he’s passing judgement on the c...

Myah is in her thirties, recently single, homeless, now unemployed, and agonizingly uncomfortable in her own skin. After a tense weekend at her parents it's time to get her life together... again....

The Merchant of Venice is vastly considered to be Shakespeare’s most controversial and problematic play and director Abigail Graham does not shy away from the tough antisemitic and racist themes covered in the bard’s text....

Rufus Norris’ stage production of Andrea Levy’s Small Island was hailed as a triumph on its debut in 2019. The epic story of race, friendship and betrayal set among the Windrush generation was a welcome distraction when streamed during lockdown and now makes an exultant return to the grandeur of...

The theatre gods work in mysterious ways. Right when Putin is wreaking havoc in Ukraine, threatening to start a nuclear world war, a show set in a fallout shelter opens at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Dennis Kelly’s After The End is a play about power and displays scenes of spine-chilling violenc...

First seen back in 2017 at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Jeff James and James Yeatman’s boldly modern adaptation of Jane Austen’s last novel Persuasion now makes a triumphant entrance at the Rose Theatre. It is often cited that Austen was ahead of her time and this adaptation throws away the co...

What a time to be opening a play about war, nationalism, and power. Max Webster’s new production of Henry V is now running at the Donmar Warehouse, and offers us a ringside seat to the harsh realities of warfare, both medieval and modern....

An epic sweep of the millennials' generation told through verbatim theatre, maximising all the opportunities (and problems) that format brings...