UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Satire bites even today, but a little more sympathy in the characters would strengthen its appeal...

Mark O’Halloran’s Irish Times Award-winning play follows a woman’s sexual escapades over the course of a year. Protected by anonymity, she and her bed guests drop their guard alongside their clothes, demanding nothing more than each other’s body. Being shrouded in mystery allows for a profou...

Following a sell-out run at the Royal Court, the play everyone is talking about is transferring to the West End. John Lithgow reprises his role as Roald Dahl in the West End transfer of Mark Rosenblatt's critically acclaimed play. Directed by Nicholas Hytner, The Royal Court's production of Giant is...

In a pitch-perfect production by Max Webster, the RSC nails the futility of violence which resonates with audiences today....

A virtuoso, multi-skilled, bilingual cast pick away at issues too often comfortably swept under the carpet - by us Brits...

It’s 1983 and beloved author Roald Dahl is about to release The Witches. Snobbish and short-tempered, he’s currently under scrutiny for the antisemitic language he used in a book review that spoke against Israel’s murderous invasion of Lebanon. Collected in his childhood kitchen are Dahl, his ...

On the eve of July 4th in the Hamptons, Elena Solness, a publishing magnate, is preparing to throw a party to celebrate her architect husband, Henry Solness, as he unveils his latest masterpiece. Their already vulnerable union is shattered by the unexpected arrival of Mathilde, a former student of H...

Tambo and Bones are trapped in a minstrel show. Tambo and Bones have taken the world by storm with their rap music. Tambo and Bones are the leaders of the revolution. Are Tambo and Bones real? Or are they simply characters in a play? Written by Dave Harris and directed by Matthew Xia, Tambo & Bones ...

From its opening moments, Nic Sampson: Yellow Power Ranger has quite the fun concept - Sampson, who played the Yellow Mystic Ranger, Chip Thorn, in the fourteen season of Power Rangers, is at a fan convention, preparing for the “Cast Reunion Panel” of the Power Rangers Mystic Force team....

'If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.' In Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice (revived at Donmar Warehouse on its 30th anniversary), it is increasingly hard to tell who around the table isn’t a sucker....

Enticingly watchable, Dizzy O’Dare in a solo performance for The Dynamo Show tour, who emits enough joy and warmth to fill the giant balloon during the renowned The Giant Balloon Show....

Michael Grandage's My Master Builder is billed as a reinvention of Ibsen's play of almost the same name through a modern, female lens. A rich story with themes of control, power, and the search for validation, featuring a host of stars of stage and screen. What could go wrong? Quite a lot as it h...

Swapping out ballet for circus is a bold move but maybe that’s just what the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival is all about as it sets off on a mission to present orchestral music in a new light. ...

Former Donmar Warehouse artistic director Michael Longhurst swaps war for Italian football in a new, exuberant Royal Shakespeare Theatre adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. The latest in a line of theatrical fixtures – including James Graham's award-winning Dear England and Tyrell Williams' Red ...

It is now a rather incredible twenty five years since Ridley Scott's Gladiator came to our cinema screens, making a star of Russell Crowe and cementing the soundtrack's reputation as one of most captivating of its time. As such, it seems fitting that the Royal Albert Hall has included it in its wond...

'A strong cast cannot lift a play that promises more than it delivers...

After running at the RSC's Swan Theatre last year, Erica Whyman's quietly captivating production of Mark Ravenhill's play Ben and Imo now makes its way south to the Orange Tree Theatre....

One might expect a hard-hitting, intellectual look at homophobia in Singapore. This, however, is something both more profound and more tender, a look at queer attitudes towards domesticity and community through the lens of two middle-aged Singaporean lives....

The grieving family of a prominent Shakespearean actor gathers at the location where he was due to perform before his sudden demise. The late Henry Elder, however, wasn’t willing to let anything get between him and the celebrations for his career-defining one-man show. Hamlet at the Elsinore Shake...

It’s difficult to say at which exact point during Susie Wang’s Burnt Toast I noticed that my jaw had dropped and stayed dropped. If Sarah Kane’s Blasted had been set in Fawlty Towers, it may have turned out something like this....

When physical items take over your life, what space is left for real people? Personal Values, the debut play from Chloe Lawrence-Taylor, seeks to answer this question, digging through boxes and bags to examine family, grief, and memory. What it uncovers is intriguing, but doesn’t quite hold togeth...

There's a party going on at the London Coliseum this summer. Unfortunately, it's one of those parties that you eagerly look forward to, only to wish you had stayed at home and read an improving book instead....

In the intimate space of Soho Theatre, All the Happy Things unfolds as a poignant exploration of grief's distorting mirror. Dramaturg Somebody Jones crafts a narrative that refuses to conform to conventional representations of loss, instead offering a raw, sometimes disorienting journey through the...

All great plays have a moral dilemma buried at the centre. Loyalty, truth, justice, et cetera. The greatest playwrights narrow down these big juicy themes and shape them into a story, making the personal universal and challenging the audience by turning their views against them – it’s a difficul...

Walking into the dimly lit room in a black suit and glittery top, David Rhodes somewhat resembles a funereal mirrorball. ...