UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Annie Get Your Gun delivers wonderful, uncynical entertainment, the romance studded with some of the finest songs ever written for the theatre....

Jam, Matt Parvin's first play, shows promise but cannot overcome its structural and narrative problems to deliver its full potential....

The very survival into the 21st century of an unfinished play written by a 23-year-old in 1836 is an extraordinary thing, made more extraordinary by the grimness of its subject. Even to call Georg Buchner's text a play - 'the world's first working-class tragedy' - is a bit of a stretch....

The Mikado is as much as ever in this all male version that showcases the great songs with some fine voices....

An Octoroon is a person who has one-eighth black heritage. In 1850s Louisiana, that meant they are automatically unclean and, ultimately, a slave. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins radically reimagines Dion Boucicault's 1859 play based upon a tragic and rather melodramatic love story between white plantation o...

Robert Hastie's debut at Sheffield Theatres features some electrifying scenes as it sets Julius Caesar in the present-day....

This seems to be the year of Twelfth Night, with the National Theatre's production recently closing and several other touring companies taking it on. But what better place to bring it to life than the Globe, in Emma Rice's 'Summer of Love'? It now plays alongside Daniel Kramer's Romeo and Juliet, ma...

Having premiered on Broadway in 2005, The Color Purple was first seen on the London stage back in 2013 at the Menier Chocolate Factory. The production, directed by John Doyle, subsequently transferred to Broadway, launching British actress Cynthia Erivo to international stardom....

Othello's extraordinary tapestry of human vulnerabilities, brilliantly woven in Richard Twyman's brutal production, remains as relevant today as ever....

Peter Darney brings back his highly acclaimed and disturbingly honest 5 Guys Chillin' to King's Head Theatre. After an original run in 2005, the show has touched audiences at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and the SoHo Playhouse in New York. The play challenges the uncomfort...

Five people face the shame that comes with being exposed in the digital age: a woman dealing with her younger sister's sex tape being published; a father coming to terms with his daughter's sexuality and his relationship with porn; a scorned woman's revenge on an ex-boyfriend; an app developer's fa...

Teeth 'n' Smiles is an early work by Sir David Hare, tracking a punk band's disastrous night playing Jesus College Cambridge's 1978 May Ball....

Lettice Douffet (Felicity Kendal), a tour guide at Fustian House, has inherited her mother's penchant for theatricality. This inclination leads her to filling the gaps in the boring history of the stately home with embellishments and imaginative stories. Her dismissal by her supervisor Lotte Schoen ...

A musical adaptation of 1993's Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray and written by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis may not seem like the most plumb choice for Broadway. However, the show's score and lyrics by Tim Minchin will make audiences reconsider any doubts they may have had....

From The Sound of Music to Gareth Malone's The Choir, the redemptive power of choral singing has provided a wealth of feel-good stories. The discipline, the communal spirit, the beauty of the music bring out the best in everyone. Just not the 17-year-old pupils of Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, a ...

Since its first publication as a comic strip in 1938, The Addams Family has seen many incarnations, but did not become a musical until it launched on Broadway in 2010. Now the quirky comedy based on Jersey Boys writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice's book, combined with Tony Award nominated Andre...

Greg Hicks' Richard III twists and turns his evil until he's left with nobody to hate, screaming for a horse and escape....

A timely revival of the Brecht epic continues the 2017 Young Vic season with a vengeance. Joe Wright directs a wholly modern production, which also features music composed by Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers....

From humble beginnings in a pub in Islington, when a group of LAMDA graduates first conceived Mischief Theatre, the company has gone from strength to strength and following an award winning run in the West End, their first commercially successful comedy offering, The Play That Goes Wrong has recentl...

There seem to be something consistently appealing about the music of the 1980s; acts such as Rick Astley and Bananarama seem to attract more concert-goers today than they did in their heyday. It makes sense, therefore, for a revival of a musical featuring such classic hits as 'Holding Out For A Hero...

The first in a series of film concerts dedicated to the massively successful Harry Potter film franchise is currently making its way around the world, stopping off for a few days at the historic Royal Albert Hall. It is an experience like no other, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra onstage and ...

110 In The Shade is both old-fashioned and bang up to date, full of pleasing songs, fine performances and a heartwarming message of love and hope....

In a zombie-raided Scotland, best friends Paul (Paul Thirkell) and Rob (Finlay Bain) have found refuge in an abandoned flat. Out of luck, they managed to surround themselves with all kinds of comforts, so they've accustomed to a shielded, secure life in their sanctuary away from the horrors of the r...

Occupational Hazards portrays the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq through the eyes of Rory Stewart, who was there and who tried....

Salome, that dancing seductress who demanded the head of John the Baptist, has been reclaimed by Yael Farber in this new feminist interpretation (the RSC stages Oscar Wilde's more familiar take next month). Or at least that's the intention, but Farber's production sacrifices the personal for the myt...