UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Performed at the Lyric Theatre, The Smeds and the Smoos is a delightful theatrical treat for families, delivering a charming adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s beloved book. ...

What did our critic think of SONGS OF THE BULBUL at Sadler’s Wells East?...

What did our critic think of MARY POPPINS at Birmingham Hippodrome?...

So, finally, Elvis Evolution has entered the building. ...

As classical performance continues to wrestle with relevance, accessibility and representation, the Proms are under pressure to lead this change. This opening night offered progress in places, but also showed how much further there is to go....

Adapted from Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, director Richard Jones’s glorious Falstaff makes a welcome return to Glyndebourne, losing none of its charm or deft comedy. It is playful, witty and a pure delight....

What did our critic think of SING STREET at Lyric Hammersmith Theatre?...

In Shaan Sahota’s barnstorming National Theatre debut the personal and political are layered on top of each other until they collapse under their collective weight....

Sitting in the grand tradition of the ‘partner swap’ drama, 2015’s Four Play spoke to the LGBTQ+ community post-marriage equality, grappling with the desire to fit in in heteronormative suburbia versus the freedom to explore sexuality in a way that feels authentic. Now, in a new production dir...

Poor Clare, written by Chiara Atik and directed by Blanche McIntyre, tells the story of how Clare (Arsema Thomas) is influenced by fellow Assisi resident Francis (Freddy Carter) to abandon her life of riches and become devoted to God, founding the Order of Poor Ladies as a discipline of the soon-to-...

Meta comedy never settles on its tone nor its focus, and runs out of steam long before the end...

Iain Mackay has devised a successful programme which shows the strength and breadth of the school, its current student body and the legacy that underpins the institution as we know it. ...

In what feels like something of a Blue Peter moment, here comes a play which the departing Rufus Norris made earlier last year. ...

The recent statistics surrounding alcohol consumption in the UK are frankly staggering. Across the four nations, around 80% of adults are regular drinkers, and a significant number of them drink way above the Chief Medical Officers’ low-risk guidelines. The country’s drinking culture is out of h...

Revenge is a dish best served thrice in this staging of the Merry Wives of Windsor....

With Indefinite Leave To Remain, the singular Hersh Dagmarr lifts and shifts the hits of The Pet Shop Boys into a cabaret setting. It is a curious creature of an evening: part musical theatre, part confessional, and lashings of his rambling yet magnetic dialogue. ...

It’s hard to shake the suspicion that this revival of Conor McPherson’s Girl From the North Country is hitching a ride on the gravy train of A Complete Unknown. Forged with songs from Bob Dylan’s back catalogue, it feels less like living, breathing musical theatre that burrows into the heart, ...

Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses has long been something of a YA classic. Rather than dreaming up a sci-fi future, however, this story presents instead an uncanny alternate present – one where discrimination and racial violence are worse than ever, but it's Black people who are the privilege...

There are productions that herald huge amounts of fanfare and and others that creep up and surprise you. Beth Steel's wonderfully human play, 'Till the Stars Come Down, is the latter. A surprise hit at the National Theatre last year, this sharply comic and deeply touching family drama now makes it...

Giant Steps is an hour-long improvisational show with a bit of a twist - it’s not just the comedians who are improvising! Along with the four performers, there is also a live jazz band on stage, improvising along with the actors based on suggestions from the audience....

“Who cares what happened after?” This is the question posed by song cycle 35MM, which takes its structure from a series of photographs, each projected onto the back wall, and giving us a musical insight into a single moment, where nothing beforehand or afterwards matters – a breakup, the tende...

It's a bold move for the Royal Shakespeare Company to slip in a remake of W Somerset Maugham's 1920s lesser-known comedy about infidelity in amongst more serious offerings like King Lear and Timon of Athens....

Fiennes captures the voice and gait of actor-manager Sir Henry Irving and Miranda Raison conveys the intuitive nature of actress Ellen Terry in a superb production by director Jeremy Herrin in Fiennes' new season at Theatre Royal Bath....

Burlesque royalty has come to London in the form of Dita Von Teese and her new show Diamonds and Dust....

The Watermill Theatre may be small, but this Jesus Christ Superstar is epic on biblical levels. Exuberant, dynamic yet intimate, if you’re on the lookout for an alternative stripped back Andrew Lloyd Webber revival this summer, this one is worth taking a holy pilgrimage...