UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

The annual spectacular pantomime at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh has built a reputation for being one of the best in the country, and this year's production of Jack and the Beanstalk does not disappoint. From start to finish, it is a feast of laughter, music, colour and fun, and is sure to deligh...

Making the European premiere of Peter and the Starcatcher the not-panto Christmas show in Northampton's Royal Theatre may well have been an inspired move by the powers-that-be at Royal and Derngate. There are no soap stars, celebrities or Britain's Got Talent competitors here, but it does feel like ...

This revival of Sam Shepard's apocalyptic 1978 play has gained resonance since 2016's most apocalyptic political development - namely, Donald Trump cynically harnessing Midwestern anger and disillusionment. The latter is on display in heightened, American Gothic form in this Pulitzer Prize-winning ...

The Belgrade Theatre in Coventry has teamed up again with Imagine Theatre and panto veteran Iain Lauchlan this year to create a brand new production of Dick Whittington - a very popular title choice in the Midlands this year it seems! Remarkably busy for a school night, there was a very good mixture...

James Graham's political masterpiece makes its long-awaited West End transfer after runs at the National Theatre in 2012-13 and Chichester Festival this September. It takes over from the Branagh Theatre Company at the Garrick for a timely, yet limited, season....

Hosted in the ambiguously small The Hope Theatre, decked in ruby velvet and rather decadent furniture for the occasion, this 25th Anniversary production of Bryony Lavery and directed by Matthew Parker, Her Aching Heart is funny, energetic, and deliciously overdramatic....

Gary Naylor sees a show soar, like Peter, beyond expectations - a delight for all the family....

Gary Naylor sees a long-running West End haunted house mystery and revels in its unabashed theatricality...

Gary Naylor sees a magical Christmas show that sets up the festive season even for an old Bah Humbug! man like him....

Gary Naylor sees a show that he should like more than he does, possibly because it owes more to performance art than it does to theatre....

Gary Naylor sees a diverting, if not wholly convincing, revival of a dark comedy-thriller set in a 1920 GP practice in Glasgow....

It couldn't have been better timed. When Gerald Barry started work on his latest project - an operatic take on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - the world was still rotating smoothly on its axis, business as usual. But fast-forward a year to the European premiere and we find ourselves in a topsy-tu...

Theatre503 sees the world premiere of Sleeping Trees' new pantomime, Scrooge and the Seven Dwarves. After the huge success of Cinderella and the Beanstalk, the award-winning trio comes back with a brand new, original, muscles-aching-from-laughter show....

After the Harold Pinter Theatre had its final Sunny Afternoon in October, it is now home to Nice Fish for a limited run. Coming over from a sold-out season at New York's St Ann's Warehouse, the play is a unique collaboration between Mark Rylance and Louis Jenkins, an American prose poet....

Gary Naylor sees a pantomime that pushes all the traditional panto buttons without distracting gimmicks....

Three sixty-something retired scientists talk to one another in a remote seaside cottage for two hours. It doesn't sound like theatrical gold, but in Lucy Kirkwood's deft hands, an unassuming premise becomes transformed by a quiet dramatic alchemy. The Children isn't a play that shouts, but it's one...

Gary Naylor sees a serious but rewarding take on one of Shakespeare's late plays that raises questions about power and control....

'Inmates, coming through.' That's our introduction to Phyllida Lloyd's landmark trilogy, as the homogenised prisoners are steered through the audience by prison officers. But this extraordinarily empathetic project, developed with Clean Break, gives those inmates individual voices and means of expre...

In the sparkling new-staging revisitation of Baddies: The Musical, the antagonists are simply too bad to exist, so in order to keep doing their jobs in our beloved stories, they need some good ol' rebranding. However, the risk is colossal. In a world where there are no villains at all, how will we k...

Whilst Simon Russell Beale's return to the Royal Shakespeare Company after a twenty year long absence has been met with justified excitement, the most hotly anticipated aspect of Gregory Doran's new production of The Tempest is the innovative use of digital technology. ...

Gary Naylor sees a piece of new theatre that has its roots in farce but gives it a contemporary twist with a young cast and first time creatives....

Gary Naylor sees a brilliantly executed musical spoof of the 70s disaster movie genre that needs to find a home in the West End soon....

London has had to bide its time in waiting for the premiere of Akram Khan's Giselle. With it's first warmly received performance back in Manchester in September, fans have had to be patient but this captivating take on the romantic classic is more than worth the wait....

This Sixties Tommy Steele vehicle is joyfully reborn in another Chichester Festival Theatre musical triumph, now comfortably ensconced in the West End. The unstoppable George Stiles and Anthony Drewe have seamlessly renewed and added to David Heneker's original score, and Julian Fellowes has done th...

After a successful world tour that saw over 75 artists with over 150 acts touch the hearts of more than twenty-five cities in both hemispheres, La Soiree comes back home where they started off their adventure eight years ago. The show graces the atmospheric setting of the Spiegeltent at Christmas in...