UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Narrative ballet is hard, so anyone willing to go there deserves a medal regardless of the outcome. The Royal Ballet (mainstage) season opened last night with Christopher Wheeldon's 2022 Like Water for Chocolate. Based on the 1989 Laura Esquivel novel of the same name, the ballet is fundamentally a ...

Ghost Stories, written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, promises audience members at the Peacock Theatre “moments of extreme shock and tension,” warning potential ticket bookers that the show is “unsuitable for anyone under the age of 15” and recommending that those of a “nervous dispositio...

A dangerously erotic production, Maxim Didenko’s Salomé dazzles with a decadent set by Galya Solodovnikova, uncanny music by Louis Lebée, and excellent performances by the lead cast....

Lee Krasner has now received her flowers, with major retrospectives at the Barbican among other European galleries in recent years, but it wasn’t always that way. Cian Griffin’s new play Lee does more than merely drag her out from behind her husband Jackson Pollock’s shadow, but uses her story...

No one could accuse Max Webster's flamboyant production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest of being subtle. A new cast takes the reins from the National Theatre's hugely successful production last year and moves onto the intimate Noël Coward stage, bringing with them the biting wit,...

Once the provocative point has been made, that violence against the planet and against women are one and the same, Uprooted seems unsure of where to go next....

It’s over 40 years since English National Opera staged Rossini's Cinderella (La Cenerentola) and they open their 2025-26 season with a vibrant new production of the sparkling comedy. After the rocky time the company has had in recent times, it is great to see them having such fun on stage....

A true crime story that offers hope as well as tragedy...

Caroline Guiela Nguyen and her cast and creatives have made something very special indeed...

This is rich, layered writing on mental illness which avoids tired cliches of germaphobes forever washing their hands....

There’s a lot of pressure on an Artistic Director’s first production at a new venue, especially if they’re directing it themselves. Nadia Fall kicks off her tenure leading the Young Vic with a revival of a classic Joe Orton play, promising ‘seduction and devilish wit.’ But could this show ...

First performed at Dallas Theater Center in 2015, Samuel D. Hunter’s three-hander play Clarkston makes its British première in a production at Trafalgar Theatre, which is directed by Jack Serio. Set in the Washington state town of Clarkston, the lives of Connecticut native Jake and nearby Lewisto...

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...

More TikTok than tragedy...

Douglas Hodge commendably leads a star-studded cast in Lindsay Posner's new adaptation of Endgame at Theatre Royal Bath's intimate Ustinov Studio....

One minute you’re in an East London street, the next you are immediately transported to early-1970s Kingston: the style, the sounds, the rhythms, the smell of ambition and frustration. The Harder They Come at Stratford East is a vivid, energetic production that honours the cult classic film while ...

A biracial actor stands in the harsh glare of the spotlight, about to recite the St Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V, clad in a bulletproof vest. Her gaze defiant, she unfurls the flag of St George’s Cross. English Kings Killing Foreigners is a play largely about probing the com...

This musical of 50 First Dates tones down a lot of the crude humour found in the film, and produces a very safe piece of entertainment. It's an accomplished work on the whole which should attract fans of the rom-com genre or feel-good musicals in general....

Hampstead Theatre has seen its fair share of gore. Even so, Max Webster’s Titus Andronicus leaves the boards drenched in something more caustic than fake blood: the acid tang of a civilisation eating itself. Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy is a grotesque feast, and here it’s served up with relis...

Like much science fiction, US playwright Matthew Gasda’s Doomers has to contend with one crucial issue – how do we make sure that the dramatic stakes remain high, when nobody yet knows the end result of the technology driving the story? Doomers is concerned with where the balance is between prog...

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...

The Sicilian Vespers is always going to be a challenging proposition. In a move smacking of sheer hubris, Verdi’s original version lasted over four hours and featured half an hour of ballet partway through. Stefan Herheim's production for the Royal Ballet & Opera removes that dance sequence but tr...

Little Angel Theatre’s adaptation of Tim Hopgood’s much loved picture book offers a tender and imaginative introduction to theatre for the very young. Directed and adapted by Joy Haynes, this one woman show uses puppetry, music and inventive staging to guide children aged two to five through a b...

Esther Manito’s Slagbomb, currently on a UK tour, contains unfiltered honesty and sharp observational wit about ungraceful aging and 2.4 manic family life. Opening with a bare stage, save for a brown box daubed with the word “slagbomb” and the unapologetic strains of Meredith Brooks’ “I�...

Hexmoor Wizarding Prison, created by Sam Shearman and written and directed by Tanner Paul, invites audience members to explore a mysterious wizarding prison under Alcotraz, another alcohol-fueled prison theatre experience from Inventive Productions....