UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

As part of their long-running cultural education programme, Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank, Shakespeare's Globe brings a screening of Macbeth designed for young people. The programme, now in its fourteenth year, offers free tickets so many thousands of students can witness the works of the B...

Continuing their series National Theatre At Home, this week the world is treated to a wonderful version of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, with truly dazzling performances from Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo. At the height of both their powers, one of the three rulers of Rome, the once-grea...

Bitter Pill Theatre's contribution to the lockdown content audiences get to enjoy for free comes in the form of The Painkiller Project, a podcast that edges towards radio drama. The company are keeping their pledge to produce new writing even while theatres around the world are closed down by openin...

Rudolf Nureyev created his version of Romeo and Juliet back in 1977 for what was then called the London Festival Ballet. He commissioned a Russian translation of Shakespeare's play, wanting to use the language to inspire the movement. The result is a cinematic, dark and accurate representation of th...

The Royal Albert Hall continue their online programming in spite of closing their doors, bringing to our screens a ray of sunshine in the shape of Marisha Wallace to ease the lockdown. The West End and Broadway favourite shone with positivity as she brought the party from her living room to ours wit...

The second opportunity for online audiences to enjoy some Royal Ballet repertoire over lockdown is Christopher Wheeldon's adaptation of The Winter's Tale. First premiering in 2014, it has proved popular with ballet fans and has subsequently been programmed in 2016 (this recording) and 2018....

In the third and final installment of Reel Adventures-A Festival of Classics, the wonderful Matthew Bourne's The Car Man celebrated its 20th anniversary last night with a screening on Sky Arts. Set in an Italian-American community in sixties America, the story owes more to film noir influences and t...

The Remote Read revive Sir Tom Stoppard's 1966 television play using the technology of 2020, and provide an interesting insight into theatre's enduring power - and a rattling good play!...

Manchester's HOME is kicking off a series of works commissioned specifically to entertain audiences during the lockdown. First up in the program we find Bryony Kimmings' I am falling in love with you and it's making me do stupid things, where the effects of boredom and loneliness lead to a rollercoa...

Last weekend saw an online celebration of Rodgers and Hammerstein's music by Hope Mill Theatre. Not only is this an opportunity to raise money for a relatively new performance space in these testing times, but it is also a chance to appreciate the duo's wonderful work....

I've written about Dust, Akram Khan's work for English National Ballet World War One programme, Lest We Forget, several times. Somehow, each time, even knowing what's coming, it still packs a chilling, earth shattering punch both through the screen and on stage....

Singer-songwriter KT Tunstall will deliver an exclusive set from her home in Los Angeles as part of the Royal Albert Home sessions....

We all need a bit of escapism now, more than ever. A musical, comedic magic show may sound like something for the children, but Nick Mohammed's show Mr. Swallow: Houdini, is resolutely amusing and surprising in equal measure....

You may have thought you had seen every possible version of Shakespeare's tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and yet the masterful Matthew Bourne manages to surprise you anew. Set in the sterile white of Verona Institute, where the young are forced into submission, this is the story as you will have never ...

National Theatre Live makes its celebrated 2011 production available free for online platforms but, rather like Frankenstein's Creature itself, its reviving isn't without its issues....

Back in 2019, the former Queen's Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue was temporarily closed down to transform the building into the Sondheim Theatre and give its favourite tenant, Les Misérables, a major revamp....

Back in 2011, it was nigh-on impossible to get a ticket for the National Theatre's production of Frankenstein. You may be forgiven for thinking the fact that Danny Boyle was directing the show was enough of a draw, but the news that Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch were not only starring in...

Following on from last weekend's streaming of the 25th-anniversary performance of The Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies has been released worldwide via YouTube as part of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Shows Must Go On lockdown series. Lloyd Webber has described the show as a a?oestand-alone piecea??...

The hype around the National Theatre's production of Twelfth Night when it premiered in 2017 was, understandably, centred around Tamsin Greig. Not necessarily because of her celebrity status (although that of course will have been a factor), but primarily because she would be undertaking a gender-sw...

It's no understatement to say Sir Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake changed the dance landscape back in 1995 when it first premiered. Any Swan Lake is a juggernaut of a production but Bourne's added layers of storytelling, engaging new characters and unique reimagining for a 21st Century audience cemented ...

Admirably enhancing their “at home” offering, in addition to regular live streams of company class and chair-based dance classes for those with limited mobility, English National Ballet now bring us Wednesday Watchalongs, a weekly opportunity to experience key work from their back-catalogue for ...

The overworked and underfunded NHS is on our minds more than ever before. As part of its free digital streaming series in partnership with The Guardian, Hampstead Theatre has made available Nina Raine's stirring medical drama Tiger Country on its website. It is available to stream until Sunday 26 A...

In the latest archive recording released by Curve, their 2017 production of What The Butler Saw a?" co-produced with Theatre Royal Bath a?" is now available to stream online until the end of the lockdown period....

In many ways, the choice of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet is a smart one from Shakespeare's Globe; it is a familiar-enough story to draw in a new audience, while satisfying those who have watched it numerous times. It does, therefore, seem a pity that the Globe has chosen this 2009 version of the wor...

Andrew Lloyd Webber continues to indulge theatre lovers in lockdown with his generous weekly stream of one his works on the dedicated The Shows Must Go On YouTube channel to raise money for charity. This week's offering is the 25th-anniversary performance of The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Alb...