UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Seven performers individually enter the space and stare. They stare at us for a long while. One of them speaks; then another and so on. They continue this pattern, mixing it up with movement sequences, songs and direct address. It's all systems go in Outbox Theatre's vibrant production, which takes ...

The very stiffest of stiff upper lips is on display at Royal and Derngate in the premiere of Barney Norris's adaptation of The Remains of the Day....

There's something undeniably irrepressible about Kinky Boots - it's a fully sequined, unabashed romp through a true (ish) story of a shoe factory threatened with closure until a radical idea to start producing oh so fabulous boots for drag queens appears....

Cheating Death fails to solve the considerable problems of writing and staging farce in an ambitious show that falls well short of expectations....

Teenager Nicolas (Laurie Kynaston) is going through a difficult phase. He used to be the happiest of kids but everything changed after his parents' divorce (Amanda Abbington and John Light) two years ago. He believes that moving in with his dad Pierre and his new girlfriend Sofia (Amaka Okafor), who...

Written in 1985 and first performed in 1987, Charlotte Keatley's sensitive drama My Mother Said I Never Should is a warm and understated show about the complex relationships between mothers and daughters. The show examines the lives of four generations of women as they live through the changes of t...

Some shows might transfer or extend their run. The cast of Austentatious, however, have commenced a season's residency at the Fortune Theatre, and might thereby hope to introduce their improvised 'Jane Austen novels' to much of London's theatrical society. Their prospects seem favourable....

Taking us back to a world of hideous stonewashed denim, huge hair and even bigger rock anthems, Rock of Agesis on a new national tour. The jukebox musical has been doing the rounds since it first appeared in Hollywood in 2005, but this particular version shows that it has not aged well. The paper...

The Royal Opera House revives its 2016 Cosi with all the mischievous wit and splendid music of Mozart and Da Ponte - but also lets us in on the game within the game - and the price that's paid...

Michelle Zahner lands at VAULT Festival in a flurry of lycra, capes, masks, and different identities. Her first solo show, A Modern Guide to Heroism & Sidekickery takes the superhero trope and applies it to an everyday woman....

A Secretary of State for Health and Social Care requests a white doctor when her daughter is rushed to a hospital. A travel blogger posts a review which leads to the suicide of the venue's owner. The Head of Safeguarding of a prominent aid organisation urges a true apology from the CEO after an insi...

In 1928 Virginia Woolf explored her freedom of identity with her novel Orlando. Coming out of a fierce but heartbreaking affair with Vita Sackville-West, Woolf imagined a young Elizabethan boy who lives for centuries, meeting poets and kings, and delving into sexuality and gender....

Written and performed by Kate Radford and featuring a variety of disciplines, Drought tells the story of Caenis, a character from Ovid's Metamorphosis....

Nuala is a junior osteology archaeologist. She also suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Her life takes a turn when she discovers the remains of a young woman in an unmarked grave and the skull disappears....

Follies begins with a gentle piece of music: warm, slow, romantic, that erupts into a jazz and brass extravaganza. Like the show that follows, it is full of highs and lows, big things and small things, pain and longing and fun....

During her lifetime, Pina Bausch's expansion of German expressionist dance into raw, bizarre but nonetheless affecting spectacle revolutionised contemporary dance. In the decade since her sudden death, her company Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch has restricted itself to performing the back catalog...

ZU-UK finds a new home for their inventive Binaural Dinner Date. Previously hosted at Theatre Royal Stratford East in 2017, the experience is a hilariously intimate rollercoaster....

A piece that could easily feel out dated is anything but as Ned Bennett's production of Peter Shaffer's Equus blasts onto the Stratford stage, before going off on tour with English Touring Theatre. A twisted story of a boy's love for horses, the play asks questions of power, control and the human so...

David Bromley brings Italo Svevo back to life in Howard Colyer's monologue, As A Man Grows Younger, and finds plenty of parallels with the Europe of today....

Aaron and Matty worship Ronnie and Reggie Kray, the criminals who meddled with celebrities and had East London under their thumb in the 60s. They mould their lives around the twins and strive to talk, walk, and dress like them....

Tartuffe, which has just opened at the National, is quick, clever, and frightening.  Going on a new adaptation by John Donnelly, which transplants the action to modern-day London, and a delicious set by Robert Jones - so decadent it chews the actors - this new, politically charged production is ...

For any fan of the Four Seasons, the story that Jersey Boys tells is unmissable. For those who don't know that they are fans yet, a night at the theatre is the conversion that they need....

David Mamet's play, Glengarry Glen Ross, debuted at the National Theatre in London in 1983 to critical acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize the following year, in addition to opening the production on Broadway. The play recently enjoyed a successful run at the Playhouse Theatre in London, directed by...

There's much to admire in Eden, a play that pits town against country, development against conservation, corruption against integrity, love against careers, the big guy against the little guy....

RedBellyBlack Theatre are back at VAULT Festival with a new piece of devised theatre, Tacenda. Elizabeth (Louise Hoare) and Joy (Kate Goodfellow) are stuck in a Groundhog Day predicament of sorts....