UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Days are getting longer, nights are warmer, and we have a brand new musical romantic comedy premiering in East London. Written by the creators of the phenomenon that was the podcast My Dad Wrote A Porno, Jamie Morton and James Cooper, with music by Bryn Christopher and Martin Batchelar, Lovestuck is...

Time to turn that frown upside down: London Clown Festival returns in its typically rambunctious style....

Nick Cope’s vibrant live show, I’VE LOST MY BOBBLE HAT!, is a polished, thoughtful, and musically rich experience that confirms his standing as one of the UK’s most respected musical family entertainers....

La Dormer beams with five star wattage as the doomed Anna...

Somewhere in a massive warehouse in Deptford, a collection is being made of every digital artifact since the birth of the internet in 1983. Every blog, every tweet, every DM. This archive called Storehouse is, unsurprisingly, reaching bursting point. A proposed solution called The Great Aggregregati...

Stereophonic mines the agony and the ecstasy of creation as it zooms in on a music studio in 1976. Here, an up-and-coming rock band recording a new album finds itself suddenly on the cusp of superstardom. The ensuing pressures could spark their breakup — or their breakthrough....

“We’ll do the raffle in about half an hour, but first we’ll play a few songs if that’s alright?” One foot on stage and the mood is set. What would ensue is over two hours and a half of spitfire banter and fire tunes. It’s rare for performers to be found anywhere on nights when their thea...

Even ardent opera fans may struggle to recall the story or the score for Mazeppa. Based on a poem by Pushkin, Tchaikovsky's opera has been unjustly overshadowed by his Eugene Onegin. Last staged at the London Coliseum in 1984, Grange Park Opera have landed a coup by engaging the English National O...

The West End transfer of Stereophonic is a full fat slice of Americana: anyone who dreamt of being in a band might just find those dreams resuscitated....

It was only February when we headed to Stratford-upon-Avon to review Hamlet, so it comes as quite the surprise to head through green fields speckled with sheep for the same play a mere four months later. Elsinore might have been a massive moving ship back then, but it’s receiving an astonishing ov...

It's so refreshing to get a new proposition, and that was the case with The Youth Company of the Finnish National Ballet at the Next Generation Festival at the Royal Ballet and Opera Linbury Theatre. ...

Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland returns for a second block of shows at the Royal Ballet and Opera until June 28. ...

This sultry production from Matthew Bourne unfolds not as a single sweeping story, but as a mosaic of interwoven vignettes, each one a glimpse into the lives of the lonely, the hopeful and the heartbroken....

Out of the Spiegeltent and into the West End, Head First Acrobats’ GODZ sees an assortment of deities descend on Peacock Theatre with a heavenly blend of adult comedy, scintillating circus and enough raw sex appeal to send Magic Mike back to Hogwarts....

King of Pangea at the King’s Head Theatre, London is a striking and inventive one-act 90-minute play, which blends the personal experience of grief with surreal world-building....

A play within a play is not a new concept, but Say It Again, Sorry’s ...Earnest? brings something quite new to the stage. Having come a long way since its premiere at Islington's Pleasance in 2019, the show follows a rather tortuous production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest whic...

Just For One Day brings the iconic Live Aid concert to life....

Last night may have been one of the most English evenings I’ve had since moving to London several years ago. Sitting in a private garden near Hyde Park, sipping on wine and watching as a theatre troupe puts on Shakespeare’s The Taming of The Shrew - it can’t get more English than that! ...

Fancy something sweet? Flumps, the debut full-length play by Essex writer Emma Jo Pallett, has arrived at the Mercury Theatre’s Studio. Originally performed at Colchester Fringe in 2022, Pallett’s dark comedy has since been in development with the Mercury, now becoming their brand-new Studio Ori...

Overheard in a Tower Block at the Little Angel Theatre Studios is a raw and honest insight into young life, parental separation and the experiences of living in a high rise flat. The play is imaginatively crafted from the original poetry of the same name....

Just how much fun can you have at an oratorio about a Old Testament tale of jealousy, madness and death? Well, quite a lot as it happens at the return of Barry Kosky's remarkable production of Handel's Saul. This staging is opera at its most theatrical, with severed heads, a breast-feeding witch, a ...

Grange Park Opera has opened its new season with a crowd-pleaser. Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly remains problematic, with its story of a Japanese teenage geisha, impregnated and cruelly abandoned by an American lieutenant. However, it is still wildly popular, mainly due to its ravishing score....

Walking down into The Crown for Oscar at The Crown makes one feel as though they are entering the bunker of a conspiracy theorist, with photos connected with thread and quotes written on the walls. Turning the corner, audience members are greeted by a quote in glowing yellow - “What a beginning. W...

Martyn Jacques brings his unique sound and sensibility to a wonderful addition to London's panoply of theatres...

Sometimes the Brechtian veers into the over-literal, but there is still clarity and catharsis to be found in a child's newfound understanding of life and loss....