UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

We’ve certainly come a long way in the “theatre filmed from individual homes” genre of online shows. After a hit debut in the US last year, the musical comedy web series A Killer Party has been adapted for UK audiences featuring an all-star cast headed by Jason Manford, Debbie Kurup, and Rache...

Toni's life is about to change on a sunny day in East London. Issues of memory, identity and shadows of the past are explored in this one-woman show featuring Georgie Henley....

Mr Wickham is best known as the villain of Jane Austen’s iconic novel Pride and Prejudice; a dastardly rake who seduced Elizabeth’s impetuous younger sister Lydia and threatened to bring the whole family into disrepute. Adrian Lukis, who played Wickham in the seminal 1994 BBC series, now return...

The Importance of Being Earnest is probably Oscar Wilde’s best-known play. Now over a century old, the satirisation of society’s desire for wealth and status holds true today. Now adapted by Yasmeen Khan, the story moves to the north of a modern-day, multi-cultural England where the cast is foc...

Following on from the Orange Tree’s successful debut into the world of theatrical streaming with Inside, comes Outside: a premiere of three plays from new and established artists. The concept of inside and outside has been questioned by everyone over the last year. For many, being outside represen...

With spring quickly approaching and lockdown measures slowly easing, there probably isn’t a better piece of theatre to accompany the warmer weather and cheerier moods than A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Jenny Caron Hall brought a captivating reading filled to the brim with stars to our screens last ...

Simon Godwin’s much-hyped version of Romeo & Juliet at the National Theatre was originally slated for summer 2020. Not to be outdone by the pandemic, a new version was filmed in just seventeen days on a closed set in the Lyttleton theatre and is now being broadcast on Sky Arts. Combining elements ...

In his Olivier Award-winning performance as Aaron Burr in Hamilton, Giles Terera asks Alexander Hamilton, “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?”. Now the tables have turned and Terera has clearly been busy composing Black Matter, a song cycle consisting of twelve songs covering p...

Strictly Come Dancing’s golden couple, Aljaz Skorjanec and Janette Manrara, return for a socially distanced iteration of their latest big budget production. The pair have toured every year since 2017 with homages to Fred Astaire and the silver screen before this tribute to the Oscars became a COVI...

Over a year since the lights went out, the Orange Tree Theatre is now entering the realm of live streaming with a new concept: Inside/Outside. This showcase of six new plays is written by both emerging and established writers, who were asked to think about the mental and physical thresholds that w...

After making its UK debut in 2019, BKLYN - The Musical returns in an online revival with new cast and creatives at the helm....

We're tight close-up on a pair of eyes that become many pairs of eyes as single, spat out verbs tell us the emotions such eyes transmit. Done more slowly, it would capture something of those silent movie screen tests from 100 years ago in which Clara Bow would express fear or Theda Bara allure....

Adapting classic works for the modern day is a double-edged sword. The usual risk is a clash between a hip makeover and situations that stay too rooted to their original framework. Not in Henry Filloux-Bennett’s take on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. He reframes beauty and popularity ...

As it is now a year since theatres went dark, it seems appropriate for one of the country’s most eminent theatre companies to now produce one of the most innovative and inventive productions seen since the pandemic began. With a production that was due to open to live and online audiences in Sp...

Last week, we acknowledged the forthcoming birthday of Andrew Lloyd Webber via a look back at five defining London stagings of his work. This time, we offer the same tribute to Stephen Sondheim, with whom Lloyd Webber, 18 years Sondheim's junior, shares a birthdate of March 22: on that day, the gre...

March is the month in which both Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim celebrate their birthdays and on the same date (March 22), albeit 18 years apart. To mark the occasion, we are givng over four weeks to honour some of their finest moments on the London stage, taking each composer in turn to ...

Theatre reviews do not often start with a cardboard package, delivered late at night by a black lycra-clad bike courier. In modern parlance, a ‘thirst trap’ is an often sexually-charged photo, used on social media to entice a response, so I felt a level of trepidation when the box was opened to ...

This past week saw the release of Dear Tomorrow – Hope From Home, an exciting collaboration by Actors Touring Company and Northern Stage. The virtual project consisted of six video-letters of hope and optimism, released each day from 22 February to 27 February, and written by six different writers...

Filmed at Southwark Playhouse and now streaming online, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice updates and elaborates a classic poem to create a family-friendly musical....

Sharon and Barry have been married for years. They are in lockdown and getting bored. Having come across Sharon’s old school copy to Romeo and Juliet in the attic, they are inspired to help their nephew Alex study the play by acting it out themselves, having inadvertently invited various people to...

Have you ever found yourself reading or watching one of Sherlock Holmes' adventures and wanted to get involved in the action itself? Now you can. Les Enfants Terribles have taken their expertise in crafting immersive theatre to the world wide web in Sherlock Holmes: An Online Adventure, directed by...

Thoughtful, poignant and insightful, Ryan Calais Cameron’s play, Typical, debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe before transferring to the Soho Theatre in 2019. Shot there during the pandemic, this important and unsettling play is now streaming on Soho Theatre On Demand....

Our monthlong series culling some of the early London theatrical triumphs of stars before they became known to the world at large draws to a close with our look back at a brilliant quintet of actresses who commanded attention in one musical (sometimes several) before broader renown came to call....

Themed around Broadway classics, it stars Freddie Fox, Bonnie Langford, Marisha Wallace, Mazz Murray and Gary Wilmot, as well as series regulars the Café Four....

Two men meet at a funeral in Lolita Chakrabarti's intense and uncompromising new play, which proves a lively yet thoughtful piece on family and friendship and features her husband, Adrian Lester, in the cast....