UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

The Italian Theatre Festival begins its swansong bringing one of Italy's most distinguished performers to the Coronet stage. Giuseppe Battiston takes on the role of Winston Churchill in Carlo G. Gabardini's play Winston vs Churchill....

"Summertime" has just about arrived in the UK and Grange Park Opera continue their 2019 season with George and Ira Gershwin's Porgy & Bess. The audience are whisked away from West Horseley Place's idyllic setting to Charleston, South Carolina in this production directed by Jean-Pierre van der Spuy....

Swapping the Coliseum for the vastness of the unique space at London's Royal Albert Hall, English National Ballet's Summer blockbuster is billed as their 'biggest production to date'. Christopher Wheeldon's Cinderella was first created for Dutch National Ballet in 2012 and first seen in the UK in...

After the female-led kick-off, the Italian Theatre Festival at The Coronet centres the attention on the United Kingdom's favourite writer, Shakespeare. Fabrizio Gifuni dissects and disassembles Hamlet in an intimate examination of the character through voice and music....

Force Of Nature gives us an unprecedented up close and personal insight of the work of Royal Ballet Principal, Natalia Osipova, but leaves us wanting to know more about the woman who animates the dancer....

The Italian Theatre Festival is back at The Coronet Theatre for their second edition. After a less than overwhelming first experiment last year, the Italian Cultural Institute start their new program with a moving and culturally aware kick-off....

YouTuber Arthur Moses has unexpectedly gone on to win an Olivier Award and delivered the most offensive acceptance speech in the history of the ceremony. It's time for his publicists Gracelyn (Joan Potter), Ruchi (Natasha Patel), and Danica (Maisie Preston) to clean up his mess....

In 1607 Francis Beaumont was about to premiere his new play The Knight of the Burning Pestle, the pastiche that was set to change British comedy forever. It sees a bunch of audience members taking charge and invading the stage, dissatisfied with how the show they're watching is developing. Cheek By ...

A theatrical experience of dance, movement and spoken word. Performer Okwui Okpokwasili tells the story of her childhood experience of growing up in the Bronx....

Education, Education, Education presses a lot of nostalgia buttons to generate laughs, but leaves its strongest storyline relatively unexplored....

'What do you do with a BA in English?' What is 'Schadenfreude'? How does one find their 'Purpose' in life? The hit musical comedy Avenue Q comes to Brighton Theatre Royal as part of a new UK tour....

A somewhat disengaged staging is saved by wonderful music played wonderfully well and a distressing coup de theatre brothel scene....

Sam (Michelle Fox) has been trying to deal with her traumatic past for most of her life. When another 13-year-old girl is kidnapped the same way she'd been, her coping mechanisms blow up and she goes down a spiral of obsession and angst. While her brother Scotty (Nima Taleghani) indulges her fixatio...

Premiering at the Kiln Theatre, Samuel Adamson's 'Wife' is a retelling of Henrik Ibsen's 'A Doll's House' that focuses on four generations of lovers....

The European stage premiere of Khaled Hosseini's spiritual sequel to The Kite Runner....

Adapted by Freedom Studios from Adelle Stripe's critically acclaimed novel of the same name, Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile is a fictionalised account of Dunbar's brief but turbulent life. Adapted by screenwriter Lisa Holdsworth and directed by Kash Arshad, the play is performed by an entirely fe...

The audience couldn't get enough at Main Men of Musicals, a concert at Cadogan Hall last night featuring West End stars Luke Bayer, Ben Forster, Trevor Dion Nicholas, Liam Tamne, and some very talented young choral performers....

Country Music starts in 1983. Jamie and Lynsey are in a car, barely 18 years old, driving away after he's committed a crime. While he's convinced that this won't have any effect on the future he dreams for them, the young women isn't so sure. The audience then meets him twice over the years, his lif...

Prasanna Puwanarajah's revival of Venice Preserved brings the look of the show right up to date - its narrative is very 21st century, so needed nothing....

As the United Kingdom waits to see who will be the next prime minister, a production focusing on the relationship between PM and the Queen could not be more perfectly timed....

We haven't seen a lot of Smetana's The Bartered Bride in the UK recently. Bohemia's best-loved opera is rapidly becoming one of the repertoire's best-kept secrets, which is a shame because it's an enchanting comedy, whose colourful, folk-filled score might be propelled by exotic polka rhythms, but w...

It happens every now and then that a reputation becomes so prominent, it's hard to see the person inside of it. Sergei Polunin, the Ukrainian ballet dancer, is dwarfed by two gigantic reputations: he is the “next Baryshnikov” according to everyone, except to those who call him a homophobic, fatp...

Tennessee Williams's first success The Glass Menagerie lands at Arcola Theatre in an exciting and tremendously thought-provoking production directed by Femi Elufowoju jr. It's 1937 in St Louis. Amanda Wingfield's (Lesley Ewen) hopes that her two children will lead a more stable life than hers grappl...

A decade after originating the lead role Off Broadway, Matthew Broderick returns to Kenneth Lonergan's play to make his West End debut. His devotion to the material is certainly understandable, as the part is tailor-made for his signature brand of self-effacing deadpan - a placid mask covering exist...

Kate Budgen's production of The Importance of Being Earnest at The Watermill Theatre is laugh-a-minute funny. The audience are chuckling out loud throughout and it's a lovely experience to be a part of that collective joy....