UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Sweatpants and slippers aren't the costumes you'd expect to see in an opera. Can a modern version of a classic hit the high notes?...

Working with Carers UK, Carers Trust and Carers Network, Ecoute Theatre bring their verbatim play Take Care to the Vault Festival. Approximately 70 interviews were conducted with the material being amalgamated into 20 different stories that are presented to us by a cast of just 4 talented actors....

It's a mark of a great show that it seems to speak directly to the present moment, even if that moment is years after its original creation. Come From Away passes that test with flying colours; in its depiction of an international community dealing with a crisis – including, raising a wry audience...

Out Of The Forest Theatre return to VAULT Festival with glorious history lesson in their customary unconventional style. They introduce their London public to Boris III of Bulgaria, who rose to power after his country's defeat in World War I....

Mike Bartlett's play has aged not a jot in its analysis of how one generation's freedoms constrains anothers. Funny and clever, it hits hard, even if it ultimately stretches credibility a tad too far....

Two 39-degree days, opposite sides of the world, same heat, different situation. On the 25th July 2019, record-breaking weather is holding London in its grip; five months later, Australia is burning on New Year's Eve....

Robert Hastie directs a dynamic, contemporary production of Shakespeare's tale of leadership, political machinations and the whims of public opinion....

This is perhaps an odd time for Nöel Coward's comedy about death and supernatural apparitions to land in the West End – Richard Eyre's revival transferring from Theatre Royal Bath. On the other hand, there's something comforting about Coward's portrait of the afterlife as essentially a continuati...

Jan Ravens and Julia Watson excel in three of Alan Bennett's famous monologues, two of which pack a surprising punch, 30 years on....

Back to the Future is a must see, whether you're a fan of the film or not. The cast and creatives have nailed this production on the head, finding the perfect balance within every aspect. First stop, Manchester. Next stop? World domination....

Harvey Fierstein's response to the AIDS outbreak in the 80s and the subsequent silence from the government came in the form of three one-act plays. The Network Theatre Company picked to stage Safe Sex as part of VAULT Festival, an accidental choice that turns out to be exceptionally timely at this p...

E.V. Crowe debuts her new play Shoe Lady directed by the Royal Court's artistic director Vicky Featherstone. Katherine Parkinson returns to the stage as a woman who accidentally loses a shoe on her way to work. What ensues from the incident is a bleak reflection on middle-class anxiety....

Adapting a novel for the stage is fraught with difficulties; even more so when the novel is a literary sensation that has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini's devastating 2003 first novel, The Kite Runner, has added difficulties as a play, as it spans 30 year...

During a week when comedian Joe Lycett legally changed his name by deed poll to Hugo Boss, ever dedicated to his craft, it felt fitting to see a revival of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. The comedy about identity and the elite has been revived at Perth Theatre....

Mary Rodger's (yes, daughter of that Richard Rodgers) 1959 musical Once Upon a Mattress makes an appearance in Highgate in a revival that, unfortunately, looks old and stuffy despite all the talent on stage....

Paul Kember's Not Quite Jerusalem received huge critical acclaim following its premiere at the Royal Court in 1980. Forty years on, the Finborough Theatre have chosen to revive the play as part of their own 40th anniversary celebrations....

Enough words have been given to the controversy surrounding this run of Liam Scarlett's Swan Lake, its first revival since a largely triumphant premiere in 2018. I don't wish to dwell further here, and instead want to focus on what was one of the most memorable nights at the theatre in quite some...

In 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall is a beacon of light and the emblem of freedom for everyone in the free world. Around 30 years later, Donald Trump is militating for a barrier to be erected between the United States and Mexico to prevent migrants from crossing the border. Closed Lands takes a ha...

Incognito Theatre are back at VAULT Festival with an adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. Brutal, visceral, and told in Incognito's own exquisite brand of physical theatre, the show is a moving and detailed account of the Great War from the perspective of the German s...

Fat Girl (Erin Gill) is in love with Pizza (Geraint Rhys). Her fatphobic Mother (Vaani K Sharma) signs her up for a reality show with the aim of losing weight and she meets Hot Boy (Ewan Pollitt), an entitled D-list celebrity....

Chloe Moss's funny and moving new play explores the relationship between two sisters over four decades....

Not even the threatening pandemic managed to keep Cheek by Jowl to introduce the Babican Theatre to the brilliant company of Milan's Piccolo Teatro. Declan Donnellan is directing his first Italian show, presenting Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy in a bold, unabashed, sexy extravaganza of p...

Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years has come back to London after a stint in the West End in 2016 as an intimate and exceptionally touching production directed by Jonathan O'Boyle. The iconic musical follows Cathy and Jamie's five-year relationship through all the highs and lows of a natural, d...

Trainers is one of those shows that have their public gaping at the stage. It's a political and radical experience. The title is an entire microcosm in itself: Trainers Or The Brutal Unpleasant Atmosphere Of This Most Disagreeable Season: A Theatrical Essay. The website of the Gate Theatre forewords...

Josh Azouz's play The Mikvah Project was a great success when it formed part of the Orange Tree's Directors' Festival last summer. It now returns in excellent form to explore the tentative and problematic relationship between two male characters in the setting of North London Judaism....