UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Gary Naylor sees a well performed and funny satire on Donald Trump that struggles to be more outrageous than the real thing....

In the theatre it is well known that; no matter what, the show must go on. This sentiment has rarely been portrayed so poignantly as it is in Ronald Harwood's Olivier award-nominated play The Dresser. First performed in 1980, the play returns to the West End in a fabulous revival of the tragic comed...

Somewhere in England is a piece of 1940s war-time nostalgia with a big heart, brought to life in the cosy surroundings of New Wimbledon Studio this week. The show is an escapist and pastoral view of an interesting part of history, when American GIs arrived in England to prepare for the invasion o...

Gary Naylor sees a relationship swell and suffer over 20 years in two plays lit up by linguistic excess....

Further empowering their ethos of preserving 'lost' British theatre, Stage Door Records are releasing their latest cast album, Maddie, with a 20th Anniversary Deluxe edition bumper pack of a CD. Originally developed at Oxford University in 1990 during a Stephen Sondheim masterclass, emerging and amb...

Following a brief Off-Broadway foray in 2013, Murder Ballad makes its UK premiere at the Arts Theatre featuring an all-star cast of seasoned musical theatre performers. It is a 90-minute, sung-through rock musical with dangerous intentions....

As the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death draw to a close, the Birmingham Royal Ballet present the anticipated new creation from David Bintley, The Tempest. The Tempest has fascinated David Bintley for over 20 years. After two decades of research and exploration, he finally...

Gary Naylor sees a brilliantly realised updating of Handel's Xerxes set in the Battle of Britain and featuring an astonishing countertenor voice....

Gary Naylor sees Southend pitch up in Southwark as Tramp Theatre revive a Tennessee Williams slice of life on the margin....

Gary Naylor sees a show that bristles with wit, warmth and wonderful songs and speaks directly to Londoners in 2016....

When Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band premiered Off Broadway in 1968, a year before the Stonewall Riots, it was groundbreaking in its depiction of a community of gay men. The work - later adapted into a film - has since fallen in and out of favour, its frank emphasis on self-loathing and catty, c...

Wilde, Joyce, Shakespeare, Lenin, memory, the morality of war, social systems, and the meaning and purpose of art: Stoppard's dazzlingly intellectual 1974 play really is a life, the universe and everything affair. Thankfully, Patrick Marber's fleet-footed revival is equally attuned to its wit and sk...

The English Touring Theatre/Sheffield Theatres adaptation of DH Lawrence's classic is a tender adaptation with an atmospheric soundscape. Even though it contains full-frontal nudity and sexual themes, the production is sensitive rather than shocking....

When Catherine Malfitano's Tosca debuted in 2010, English National Opera finally had a production of Puccini's classic to rival Jonathan Kent's long-serving version up the road at Covent Garden. Handsome, traditional, revivable - the show is everything it should be. But that extra friction that turn...

Theresa Ikoko's brilliant debut play, Girls, is a visceral portrayal of life for three young girls, kidnapped and held captive by Islamic extremists somewhere in West Africa. As the danger to their lives becomes more apparent, the dynamic between the trio shifts. The friendship is tested by the c...

English National Opera has been having a hard time with Don Giovanni lately. First there was Calixto Bieito's groggy, pastel-coloured nightmare (who could forget the pistachio leather dentist's chair), which paled into adequacy when compared to Rufus Norris's bafflingly unlovely (and just generally ...

Gary Naylor sees an award-winning musical that provides few catchy tunes, but revels in a marriage of music and vocals that lays feelings bare and says much about life today....

Gary Naylor sees a play that wears its heart on its sleeve, but suffers as a result of ill-conceived staging and characterisation....

Gary Naylor sees a remarkable tour-de-force that produces the definitive version of a tricky but utterly compelling piece of musical theatre....

The cult musical, Little Shop of Horrors, has long been a favourite amongst cinema and theatre fans alike. Following an unlikely beginning - a low budget Sci-fi B movie shot in just two days - Little Shop of Horrors was turned into a musical by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, turning this quirky part...

The Libertine makes a return to the London after adaptations for screen and stage, but fails to go out in a blaze of glory...

The Globe is breaking bad. Cymbeline comes to us as Imogen - subtitled Renamed and Reclaimed, properly recognising that Imogen has far more to say than her royal father - but that's just the start of Matthew Dunster's bold, urban revamp. The king runs a coke empire. The exiles have a weed greenho...

Gary Naylor sees a musical packed with agreeable songs but short on characterisation, charm and credibility....

The current racial crisis in America might seem too urgent, too horrific, for us to be constantly seeking historical stories, but Suzan-Lori Parks's play cycle makes a vividly articulate case for the long thread running from 19th-century slavery to 2016 debate over entrenched ethnic hierarchies and ...

Gary Naylor sees a fine production that will delight fans old and new of Jane Austen's immortal tale of unmarried daughters and their suitors....