UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Nancy Meckler makes her Globe debut with the penultimate show of the season, a well-known tragedy to contrast with recent comedies: King Lear. It casts a darker shadow over the Summer of Love, looking more at familial love and various struggles for power....

Long before the Delorean or the TARDIS ever graced our screens, the story of The Time Machine fascinated the public with the idea of travelling in the fourth dimension. This new musical based on the H.G. Wells masterpiece is not a straight adaptation of the novel, adding in a neat framing device. ...

We have several months to wait to see Peter Capaldi regenerate into Jodie Whittaker, but for those needing a Fringe fix of their favourite Gallifreyan, Any Suggestions, Doctor? An Improvised Adventure in Space and Time is offering up a brand new unofficial episode almost every day of the festival....

Director Katherine Nesbitt leads the UK premiere of Boom, which premiered at the Ars Nova Theatre in New York in 2008. Following huge success in its first run, it became a favourite among producers, and it's not hard to understand why. Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's play is intelligent and apocalyptically f...

Jules Verne's 1873 adventure tale Around the World in 80 Days follows Phileas Fogg and his newly employed valet Passepartout as they attempt to circumnavigate the globe in 80 days on a 20,000 wager (the approximate equivalent of 2 million in 2017)....

Back in 2009, Alexi Kaye Campbell followed up his bold first play The Pride with Apologia, which takes the well-trodden path of a fraught family reunion where past grievances stalk the present. If more conventional, it's still an enjoyable combination of big ideas, sharp comedy and a pervading sense...

Last seen in the West End three years ago at the Dominion Theatre, Bill Kenwright's production of Evita has opened at the Phoenix Theatre for a three-month limited run. Hot off the heels of its most recent UK tour, Emma Hatton and Gian Marco Schiaretti have reprised their roles as Eva Peron and Che ...

The Cunning Little Vixen is a opera favourite but no less fascinating for that, especially in this innovative and engaging production....

Gangsta Granny, Birmingham Stage Company's production of David Walliams' bestselling children's book, has arrived in the West End following a long-running UK tour. Suitable for kids aged 5 and over, the show is a perfect antidote to cries of 'Grannies are boring!'....

Long a star of Wicked, Willemijn Verkaik delivers a splendid one-off concert to her adoring fans....

Thirty years on from its birth at the Royal Court, Jim Cartwright's northern, working-class battle cry returns in a revival from John Tiffany which, though initially stodgy, has an accumulative and undeniable force....

Power, lust and secrecy - are these the ingredients for everlasting romance? Things are more complicated than they seem in Joe Hampson's playwriting debut Rabbits, a sharp, quick-witted and sexually inquisitive dark comedy that explores the domestic struggles that takes place throughout a couple's...

Tony (Lee Knight) and Greg (Jason Nwoga) have been together for five years. Their relationship is safe, secure, and built on the notion that both of them are allowed to have one-night stands out of their flat. But when Tony hires Robert (Tom Lambert) as a cleaner, the couple's balance starts to shif...

A shoddy group of explorers, a threatening butcher, and many extravagant creatures are just some of the wonderful creations we find in The Hunting of the Snark. Based on Lewis Carroll's glorious poem of the same name, the audience is invited into a world of magic, wonder and bravery....

Georgiana Vicary, her whole family and her circle of friends are all waiting for shy Adam Lancaster to propose to her and end her shame of being almost 30 and still unmarried. Her conscience and truthfulness, however, do not make her life with the handsome fiance easy. The first London production o...

Britain's most beloved diarist (give or take a Bridget Jones) comes to London in chamber musical form in a new adaptation created with the late Sue Townsend's blessing. Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary's version, tweaked since its premiere run in Leicester in 2015, should certainly prove popular with s...

Defiantly rejecting the standard jukebox model, Conor McPherson's much-anticipated new work mining the back catalogue of Bob Dylan is labelled 'a play with songs' - or perhaps that should be a play and songs, with two distinct forms of storytelling weaving around one another, reflecting, deepening, ...

The Marriage of Kim K is an innovative melding of musical genres, as three couples find life together more difficult than expected, their lives revealed in a very 21st century style....

Olivia Williams and Olivia Colman are shattering as two warring sisters in Lucy Kirkwood's epic...

Continuing the resurgence of Tennessee Williams plays is the Young Vic's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. This is the popular theatre's first production to make its debut in the West End, in contrast to some recent transfers, with the production running at Shaftesbury Avenue's Apollo Theatre for the next 12 w...

I Loved Lucy returns to the West End with a change in tone, but retaining its charm and its pathos with another incandescent star performance from Sandra Dickinson....

There is much about Charles Dickens' Classic tale Oliver Twist to recommend it to children; the comic pomposity of Mr Bumble, the sinister actions of Fagin, the cheekiness of the Artful Dodger and, of course, the adventures and eventual salvation of poor orphan Oliver....

Tango sensation, Tanguera first premiered fifteen years ago in Buenos Aires promising an authentic take on the provocative and sensual spectacle with a thirty strong ensemble cast. Unlike the frequently seen Tango showcases of recent times, Tanguera tells a story. It sometimes chooses to drop and pi...

A compelling fusion of traditional fairy tales with contemporary society, What We Wished For, by Sheffield People's Theatre, follows the journey of community members in modern-day Sheffield, as they struggle to fight back against a mysterious invasion of Wolves that instil fear and threaten their po...

Matthew Dunster brings some desert sun to a so far patchy summer, with his Mexican inspired production of Much Ado About Nothing. It truly is the beating heart of the Summer of Love, running until the end of the season alongside first Twelfth Night, then King Lear and Boudica....