UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

It’s the 11th of September at The Grand in Brighton, first in 1943, then 1982, and then 2001. Writer David Hendon’s choice of years is, obviously, everything but a coincidence. World War II, The Troubles, and then the attacks on the World Trade Centre. One wonders how can a play that spans such ...

Theatre Royal Bath is the ideal venue for Olivier Award-winning Sir Ronald Harwood’s play about a touring rep company set in “a theatre in the English provinces”, according to the programme notes. You can’t get more English than Bath, with its honey-tinged Georgian terraces and nods to Jane ...

Escapist, dated nonsense, but such fun and beautifully done....

“I’m a part-time time-traveler!” Toby is an artist who moonlights (quite literally) in an observatory. While his job is generally a tedious keeping track of stars and making sure they haven’t moved, everything changes when he spots a comet that seems to be coming towards Earth. An action-fil...

Director Rebecca Taichman and playwright Paula Vogel were both drawn to Sholem Asch’s 1907 phenomenon, God of Vengeance. Their Tony-nominated, highly-acclaimed production has landed in London. A show that plays tribute a stage scandal, this is a heartfelt song to something that nearly never was....

Since its release in 1985 Back to the Future has been an iconic film. It made a star out of Michael J Fox and catapulted Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love” into a worldwide hit. Despite repeated pressure and two sequels, creators Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale always refused to make a reboot of th...

Bruce Graham's new play reaches back 20 years to find an explanation (well, a partial explanation) for this new, unhappy, divided USA that has not gone away with the election of Joe Biden...

Memories are fickle things. We rehearse them, we shape them, and we eventually forget the original events and end up making new ones, filling the gaps with our experience of them rather than the actual occurrences. It’s the core concept of Shelagh Stephenson’s multi-awarded play, The Memory of W...

This landmark play in Anglo-Irish drama gets a superb revival in a space that could have been designed exactly for its claustrophobic tale of familial obligations and missed opportunities...

After giving her entire life to make other people smile, legendary comedienne Myra Dubois has decided to make something all about her. In a bid to create the most attention seeking thing of all time, she stages her own funeral – ensuring that everything about her iconic energy is celebrated. Hence...

Emily Head (The Inbetweeners, Emmerdale, The Syndicate) plays all the characters in the intriguing production which was filmed live on stage in a single camera take at the New Wolsey Theatre. 'He’s dead. He died. Now he’s a dead person. He no longer lives.’ Paul's dead. And no one se...

“Where do men go to grieve?” a failed relationship, a fixer-upper job in a pub, a sudden fear of dying, and now his best friend’s suicide are breaking Daniel Hallissey’s character. In the Shadow of the Black Dog (written by Hallissey and directed by Conor Neaves) tackles men’s mental healt...

Phil Willmott brings his years of experience to bear on the familiar story and pulls a fantastic set of performances from his totally committed cast...

The 2019 Edinburgh Fringe hit comes to London with high-quality production values intact. Originally co-produced by HighTide, this run is in association with Queer House. Pink Lemonade is an autobiographical one-person show by Nottingham actor, writer, and performance artist Mika Onyx Johnson....

I would hesitant a guess to say that most of us know about Disney’s colossus beast, Frozen. Made famous when it debuted during Christmas 2013, it quickly became one of the company’s audience’s animated classics. Since its release we’ve had sequels, spinoffs, merchandise and now, a hit musica...

Waitress is off on a UK and Ireland tour, kicking off at the New Wimbledon Theatre. Jenna, waitress and pie creator extraordinaire, unexpectedly finds herself pregnant. But will this unwanted twist keep her tied down in a bad relationship or give her the chance to break free?...

“I wish you weren’t so far away” says Robert Rowell to Elizabeth Bishop in the return of Gate Theatre’s 2019 production of Dear Elizabeth. Staged at Theatro Technis this time around, Ellen McDougall’s concept for Sara Ruhl’s play is still the main focus rather than the actual plot of it....

Hot button topics keep coming, but the drama gets lost a little in Alys Metcalf's new play...

The Grimeborn Festival presents two short operas concerning love failing to land as required, leading to tragic consequences...

If life is 'what happens when you're making other plans' what if you actually act on those other plans - at 60 years of age?...

Winsome Pinnock's new political play finally gets a full run at the National, after its Royal Exchange Theatre premiere was curtailed due to Covid. It's apt since Pinnock began work on the play, which won the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award, while on attachment with the National Theatre's New Work Depa...

Famous for his overtly political works against apartheid, Athol Fugard is probably South Africa's most highly regarded playwright. The Orange Tree Theatre put on his searing Blood Knot in 2019 about brothers across the race divide and now revisits his work with the powerful story of a forbidden rela...

“Everything about him was too big, too heavy, too hard” and yet the abominations of his behaviour went unaddressed for the majority of Donna’s life. Four kids and a broken childhood later, she’s in prison while her father lies in a grave with a head mangled by a cast iron pan that was too bu...

In 1921, female homosexuality was discussed in Parliament for the very first time. Its male counterpart had its earliest outing in the 16th Century. There’s only a four-century gap before the leaders of the country decided that women, after all, do not do certain things. Fast forward to our genera...

All artists must think they’re better than anybody else, even if only by a little bit, or they must be convinced they have something to say at least. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be doing it. “The work has to come first”, even before personal relationships. That’s what Isaac and his two friend...