UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

A busy week of dance in London is brought to a radiant conclusion by the perfect delicacy of English National Ballet Lead Principal Alina Cojocaru, with support from some esteemed friends. ...

Elyot is a peculiar man. He lives ruled by an eccentric routine, learning new words, and listening to Beethoven and pop tunes from which he's removed all the sung parts. When Laquaya breaks into his house in Peckham, everything changes. His strict pattern blows up as she violently barges into his li...

a?oeExcept for Hydrogen, all the atoms that make each of us up [...] were manufactured in the interiors of a collapsing stara??. But we amount to something more than the simple sum of our atoms, and Perhaps Contraption are proof of it. Their latest work, perfectly titled Nearly Human, is a joyous ce...

Michael Ball and Alfie Boe recently shared the Gielgud Theatre stage as Javert and Jean Valjean respectively in Les Miserables: The Staged Concert. They now return to the stage, in their third UK tour as a double act and launched their 10-date tour in Glasgow this evening....

Grace Campbell's Why I'm Never Going into Politics is a mash-up of political anecdotes, infused with some MEGA gossip from Grace's childhood spent hanging out with the Blairs, Putins and Corbyns....

This year, Network Theatre Company take their audience to an unspecified futuristic time with The Future is Mental, an anthology of six short plays that are heavily recalling of Black Mirror. Written and directed by Rosie de Vekey, the pieces are smart and precise, and don't conceal their external i...

Kate Prince is known for her unique blend of joyous, feel-good street and contemporary dance. She and the endless energy of her dance troupe, ZooNation, are responsible for West End hits such as Some Like It Hip Hop and Into the Hoods, which means it's no problem getting on board with new ideas - e...

As part of the 243rd season of the iconic ballet company, several productions by the Bolshoi Ballet are again being broadcast on cinema screens across sixty countries. As one of seven of these ballets, Swan Lake is surely the most iconic, having debuted at the Bolshoi theatre in 1877. Tchaikovsky's...

Barn Theatre's production of Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense stopped off at the Tacchi-Morris Arts Centre in Taunton, Somerset, for two nights during its UK tour. Based on P. G. Wodehouse's book The Code of the Woosters, Andrew Ashford (Jeeves) and Matthew Cavendish (Wooster) have big shoes t...

Three strippers are working in a decadent venue in London. Among sleazy men, weirdos, and abuse, they're all trying to survive in a changing business. The theme and core idea have potential, but the execution is, unfortunately, a trainwreck....

Same-sexual relationships of any kind are illegal in Nigeria. Legal and social action is taken to any member of the LGBTQ community, with death by stoning as maximum punishment. As the political climate heats up and the country becomes more and more dangerous, Babatunde is visiting his best friend R...

After you have seen Antoinette Nwandu's Pass Over, you might give a second thought to the next street beggar you see and, probably, ignore....

This show, by the company of ex-Principal dancer at The Royal Ballet, Carlos Acosta, gives the audience a mixed bill, as up close as the title suggests, with as much Cuba as you would find in a hand-rolled cigar....

Croatian writer and performer Danaja Wass brings her latest project Notch to VAULT Festival directed by Madelaine Moore. While the piece still needs to smooth out some of its crinkles, it's a precise exploration of emigration, homelessness, and people's hypocrisy....

After a triumphant presence at Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year, Rosa Hesmondhalgh has taken Madame Ovary back to London for what's looking like another bewilderingly successful run....

Martin Crimp's blisteringly raw version of Cyrano de Bergerac has been a great success so far during its run at The Playhouse Theatre in London's West End. After screening over 80 theatre productions in the last ten years, NT Live are now screening this theatrical masterpiece all over the world....

Back in 2002, when Caryl Churchill's A Number premiered at the Royal Court, genetics was the hot new topic. The Human Genome Project was on the verge of being completed and a few years earlier Dolly the sheep had been cloned, leading to very real discussions about whether or not humans could end up ...

While it's fun to re-live 80's fashion in the workplace and bop along to the renowned “9 to 5” tune, this cast album explores the tough emotions and issues that give voice to women who didn't have the visibility, as more current social movements have allowed....

It's safe to say that Be More Chill's journey to the major stages has been decidedly unconventional. After its New Jersey commission in 2015 and the subsequent limited run and cast recording release, fans started to spread the word thanks to the power of the internet....

The first mixed programme of 2020 from the Royal Ballet sees Cathy Marston's much anticipated and arguably long overdue first work for the main stage at Covent Garden. Renowned for her lucid and atmospheric storytelling, most recently in The Suit (Ballet Black) and Victoria (Northern Ballet), she no...

Born out of the celebrations for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in 2016, Ben Elton's sit-com Upstart Crow went on to have three series and multiple Christmas specials. It follows William Shakespeare, who's by now rather well-known in London, as he attempts to write his notorious body o...

Lucie Jones has certainly earned her musical theatre stripes in the past few years. Stints in Rent, Legally Blonde, and more recently Waitress, have cemented her as one of our most accomplished musical theatre actresses. And last night during Lucie Jones Live at the Adelphi, as theatreland came toge...

COLAB Theatre have woven another thrilling adventure: the company strikes gold with the Peaky Blinder infused Crooks 1926. London is held in the grip of the Sabini family, but the McDonalds are plotting to take over. After their patriarch's death, brothers Charles a?oeWaga?? (Angus Woodward) and Wil...

Founded in 2009, OperaUpClose's mission is to create 'innovatively staged, unintimidating, and crucially high quality English Chamber re-imaginings of well known work and premieres of new operas'. With 29 operas to date, a mix of classics and contemporary work, and an Olivier Award in 2011, there's...

Produced by The Old Vic, in association with Bristol Old Vic, Oliver award-winning A Monster Calls is making its way around the UK on tour, and has just closed its appearance at Chichester Festival Theatre....