UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

What If If Only, the prolific Caryl Churchill's latest short play, explores incredibly complex issues of grief and time in its very short 20-minute run time. Premiering at the Royal Court, James Macdonald's production finds the humour and humanity in the text, which is brought to life with imaginati...

There are many plays that have been pushed back by the pandemic. For some, their delay is an honest shame. For others… well… even more development time might have actually saved them. Dissident Theatre’s snazzy debuting run of Snowflakes is now playing at the Old Red Lion Theatre after its ori...

CR8TRACT Theatre's production of Godspell makes the most of the excellent songs but cannot escape the straitjacket of the show's dated structure....

Opening its doors for the first time since March 2020, London’s iconic little Finborough Theatre is back. Jordan Hall’s How To Survive An Apocalypse, an award-winning, touching and witty romantic comedy, also looks at the need to prepare for potential Armageddon....

In a world where people are being displaced every day, with very little news coverage on the seriousness of the situation, Kate Prince MBE imagines a fictional story of a family trying to find a place to call a new home. They live in harmony, until civil war disrupts this existence and devastates th...

Fresh off their debut, critically acclaimed and award-winning play, Jasmine Lee Jones brings a new solo show to Soho Theatre’s main stage. Jones both writes and performs the piece, which takes a look at a multitude of things; drama school anxiety, queer discovery, lust and sex, along with Black fe...

A fire is ignited as the ensemble gather silently in an act of remembrance. It then ascends high above the Olivier stage, where it continues to burn for the duration of the play. It conjures a feeling of warmth, comfort, and community, echoed by the in-the-round configuration of the extensive audito...

Based on Agatha Christie’s 1925 short story, Witness For The Prosecution was well-established at London’s County Hall before the pandemic. It now makes a welcome return and is as ingenious as ever. We are all used to seeing television adaptations of Christie’s work, but Lucy Bailey’s creativ...

​Are we really that different from who we were at school? Mischief Theatre’s Groan Ups takes a light-hearted look at this question. This comedy, a diversion from Mischief’s usual “goes wrong” flavour of plays, tugs at the heartstrings but still leaves you in stitches....

So called 'Tokyo Rose' Iva Toguri's struggle for a post-war pardon is given life by Burnt Lemon Theatre in a musical that has many echoes of Hamilton...

This new opera, adapted by Tamsin Collison from Michael Palin's play, is both funny and wonderful to hear, Scott Stroman's score swinging as much as the characters are stuck...

​Akram Khan’s third work for English National Ballet finally debuted after numerous COVID-related false starts to a vocal Sadler’s Wells audience this week....

Award-winning new playwright Mufaro Makubika leads us from Nottingham to Zimbabwe in a tale of mothers, daughters, and spiritual ancestors....

There is something unexplainable and idiosyncratically intimate about Aria Entertainment’s The Last 5 Years. In a journey begun at Southwark Playhouse right before the pandemic hit our stages, Jonathan O’Boyle’s production of Jason Robert Brown’s beloved musical has redefined the piece itsel...

Men who have behaved badly fail to communicate in Conor McPherson's reflection on guilt, emotional intelligence and a kind of redemption...

In 1955 Michael Tippett introduced his first opera The Midsummer Marriage to a grey, post-war society desperate for some joy and optimism. It has divided the critics, with detractors pointing to the awkward libretto and fans in raptures with the sumptuous score. It is certainly a huge piece for the ...

On Shaftesbury Avenue, right opposite The Palace Theatre with its Cursed Child, a venue which holds a mesmerising surprise lies between a Wing Stop and an educational centre. Stone Nest - an old Welsh Presbyterian church - is now home to an Anglo-Russian multimedia production with looks as luscious ...

When Charlie joins Jimmy and Cazza's acting agency, things go badly and well all at the same time in an absurdist comedy...

Rock of Ages, the brash rock musical, is back for another tour. The cheesy story of small-town girl Sherrie arriving on 1980s Sunset Strip to follow her dreams is full of stone-washed denim and bad hair. Unfortunately, it also remains full of chauvinism and boorish gags....

Barbra Streisand and Joan Rivers kvetch (a lot) and kvell (a little) before and after they become two of the biggest stars in the USA...

Richard Eyre’s production of Noël Coward’s 1941 Blithe Spirit was just settling into its West End home last year when lockdown struck. Now revived with most of its original cast, it settles into the Harold Pinter theatre for an eight-week run, featuring a stage-stealing appearance by Jennifer S...

The Old Vic stages the world premiere of American playwright Bess Wohl's Camp Siegfried. This two-hander drama is directed by Katy Rudd and depicts a budding romance at a real-life fascist summer camp for young German-Americans operating on New York's Long Island in the 1930s....

Move over Hamilton and Six. There’s a new historical musical in town and it’s creating ripples. After a sold-out debuting run at the New Diorama back in pre-covid times and another one in 2020 at Southwark Playhouse, SplitLip’s Operation Mincemeat has just returned to Elephant and Castle once ...

In 1940 a group of four teenage friends, thinking they’d be crawling through a secret passage to the close-by Lascaux Manor, made one of the most astonishing discoveries of the 20th Century. Over nine hundred paintings dating back god-knows-how-long, in their eyes. Something inside of them knew th...

Rigoletto delves deep into the human psyche to ask questions both through its subject matter and its melding of music and voices...