UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Andrew Lloyd Webber may seem an unlikely rock god, but he's harnessed anarchic musical liberation for this big-hearted, irresistibly entertaining new show, adapted from the popular Jack Black film. Its success on Broadway looks likely to be replicated here, given its broad appeal, hummable hits and ...

Stephen Mallatratt's ghoulish adaptation of Susan Hill's infamous ghost story has been frightening London audiences for over twenty-five years and embarked on a UK tour in September. Whilst on its travels the classic play has taken up residence for a spell of haunting at Exeter's Northcott Theatre t...

This story of teenage friendship is a funny and touching new play with three fantastic performances from talented young actors....

Gary Naylor sees an ambitious and challenging show that overstretches its resources and that of its audience....

Considered by many to be Shakespeare's most tragic play of all, the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of King Lear has transferred to London's Barbican for its winter season....

Mark Baldwin, artistic director and choreographer of The Creation describes Haydn's oratorio as "perfect dance music". Combined with subject matter no less than the creation of the world, and one begins to understand the gravitas he aims to bring to this piece, a sizeable project for the UK's oldest...

Gary Naylor sees a wonderful tribute to a unique man amongst The Fallen of the First World War, whose story stands for him and for millions more....

Gary Naylor sees a young cast attack a classic play to update for today's world, a venture that succeeds partially, and is never less than interesting....

Beautiful, unknowable Lulu - all things to all men, who has 'never pretended to be anything by what men see in me' - is the chameleon-heroine revealed in Berg's musical mirror. But just as she reinvents herself with each new gaze, so the opera itself morphs and shifts with passing time, reflecting b...

Glass panels, windows and boxes on stage should always be treated with mistrust. There can be no clearer indication of blood to come - a literal trigger warning, a physical spatter alert. Think of the gorgeous glass house of Benedict Andrews's 2011 The Return of Ulysses for ENO just waiting to be sm...

CATS is a strange phenomenon. Despite the fact that there is no real plot, its infectious songs and legendary choreography has meant that it has been playing around the world almost constantly since 1981....

Gary Naylor sees a show about, and I can hardly believe what I'm writing here, the 45th President of the United States of America....

Gender-blind casting has arrived and we'd better get used to it. Correction: it seems we are getting used to it, viz the imminent revival of the Donmar's all-female Shakespeare trilogy. So the headline story of this Old Vic production is not that a woman is taking on the Everest north-face of a role...

Incredibly, it is over two decades since Irvine Welsh's cult classic, Trainspotting, landed on bookshelves and twenty years since Danny Boyle's film impacted on modern culture in a way rarely seen before....

Gary Naylor sees an adaptation of William Leith's book that, for all the skilled work in the production, fails to engage its audience....

Award-winning Scottish playwright Rob Drummond brings the infamous characters Granpaw, Paw and Maw Broon, Hen and Joe, Daphne, Maggie, Horace, the twins and the bairn to life for a Scottish audience in a production filled with laughs, love and comic-strip visuals, all set to a Scottish soundtrack....

Gary Naylor sees an impassioned production of Bach's St John Passion, by and for, the people under the guidance of English Touring Opera...

A revue is a rare theatrical treat these days. In its heyday, the irresistible combination of light comedy, song and dance sketches was incredibly popular. Its golden age lasted from the early 1920s to the late 1950s and for much of that time its greatest practitioner was Noel Coward who wrote and a...

Former Birmingham Royal Ballet and Rambert dancer Alexander Whitley continues an ongoing investigation into relationship between dance and modern technology with Pattern Recognition, seen at Dance Xchange in Birmingham. Performed by two dancers, Julia Sanz Fernandez and David Ledger, Pattern Recogni...

Gary Naylor sees an accomplished, eerie play about a remote Scottish community that doesn't quite have the courage of its convictions....

With the long, dark and cold winter nights upon us, we could all do with a bit of lighthearted comedy to cheer us up! Terry Johnson's 'Dead Funny' originally made its West End debut 22 years ago in the very same theatre where the current run is housed, the Vaudeville Theatre. Set in 1992 it takes pl...

An exciting new partnership between Sadler's Wells, Birmingham Hippodrome and the Lowry Salford is bringing international dance companies to the UK for the very first time, offering financial and creative support to artists who may not otherwise have been able to make the journey. Vamos Cuba, from t...

Gary Naylor sees a slick romcom musical about 90s New Yorkers that impresses but leaves him just a little cold....

Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap truly is a theatrical phenomenon. The enduring popularity of this classic whodunnit story is unprecedented; its mixture of drama, horror, comedy and farce appealing to audiences of all generations, despite changing social conditions and artistic trends. Now a tourist ...

Hot on the heels of the hugely successful summer season comes 'Wonder Noir', Emma Rice's first winter season at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and with it an opening production of John Milton's masque, Comus. A dark reflection of the Wonder Season opener, A Midsummer Night's Dream, it is a tale that t...