UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

When Sir John Chilcot stepped up to the mic to deliver his long-awaited verdict on the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he did so calmly, steadily, but with forensic and devastating analytical precision. David Hare's STUFF HAPPENS, which beat Chilcot to the punch by some 12 years, is similarly measured, mixi...

Gary Naylor sees a production that has much to commend it, bringing a little of Athens wooded peace to the hurly-burly of London....

In the mid-west American town of Bomont, a small tight knit community are suspicious of any new-comer, and especially streetwise Chicago teenager Ren McCormack. Ren has moved from Chicago with his mother Ethel after the sudden departure of his dad. Eager to move on from his recent loss and keen to s...

Terence Rattigan's charming, light hearted and rarely revived play is brought to sparkling life, in Paul Miller's excellently directed production. ...

Songs Unseen is a performance that aims to create opportunities for Scottish and Scottish-based composers to have their work seen and ideas developed....

Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan's brilliant adaptation of George Orwell's formidable novel has returned the West End, following international tours and its very successful London run last summer. Perhaps not typical summer-viewing, this production combines the fantastic and too-true to create somet...

The musical - or pantomime? - of the year has arrived at the Prince Edward Theatre. We check it out!...

Gary Naylor sees a big, bold production deliver a tremendous evening's entertainment as a 2013 smash hit is revived to great acclaim....

Comedian Jesse Eisenberg is the latest American star to bring a production to London's West End. Originally an Off-Broadway show, The Spoils, which was penned by and stars Eisenberg, marks Eisenberg's West End debut and features two new British actors who join the original trio, making this a brilli...

Many will remember Sideways as the Academy Award and Golden Globe winning 2004 film based on Rex Pickett's novel. The production now at the St James Theatre is directed by David Grindley and written by Pickett. Sideways is about a pair of middle-aged men drinking their way through California's wine ...

Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford direct Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the penultimate show of the Branagh Company's year long residency at the Garrick Theatre. This well-known cast includes Richard Madden, Lily James, Derek Jacobi and Meera Syal....

In the new, epic book 'Curtain Call: A Year Backstage in London Theatre,' photographer Matt Humphrey and actor/director John Schwab take audiences behind the scenes of 60 of London's best shows in 2015, and uniquely and elegantly capture the electricity that makes live theatre so special....

Gary Naylor sees a play that promised much and delivered for 90 minutes before falling away in a poorly constructed last half-hour....

Gary Naylor sees a show that mixes warm and witty comedy with hard edged physics to create something both mentally stimulating and terribly entertaining....

The synth-laden opening strains of Concord Music Group's AMERICAN PSYCHO (Original London Cast Recording) are appropriately dark and sterile. In crafting the score for the musical adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel by the same title, Duncan Sheik has created a Broadway score that purposefully re...

Nick Payne's latest production Elegy is a short 70-minute piece, which raises complex and emotional issues. Following on from his previous work Constellations, which won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play, Payne's plot focuses on Lorna and her partner Carrie as they struggle with an unnamed di...

Show Boat is recognised as a classic show in the Musical Theatre canon and Daniel Evans does a worthy job of bringing it back with style and class. From the opening chord, the wonderful score sounds better than ever and what could be a clunky revival feels fresh, exciting and polished....

Gary Naylor sees a show that places an actor who is somewhat the worse for wear into Shakespeare's most loved play and then sees what comes of it - the title admirably clear!...

The citizens of suffering, stinking Tromaville need someone to stop toxic waste being dumped in their town - enter Melvin Ferd the Third, an aspiring earth scientist. A mayor on the make sets her goons on him, and after a semantic mix-up they end up chucking him into a vat of toxic waste and trans...

Doctor Faustus is arguably Christopher Marlowe's best-loved and most well known play. What would we give to get whatever we wanted? In Marlowe's production, Faustus literally sells his soul to the devil in order to gain knowledge. However Jamie Lloyd's adaptation gives it a more modern twist....

Scott Alan has been giving music theater performers vividly emotionally and stirring songs to perform ever since 2007. Cynthia Erivo captured the hearts of many as Celie in THE COLOR PURPLE. Oliver Tompsett is best known for playing Fieryo in the West End production of WICKED. The three artists join...

Gary Naylor sees a skilful skewering of politics' favourite son, the blond bombshell Boris, Mayor of London and (maybe) next World King....

Twenty seven years after it was first staged in London at the Royal Court Theatre, Charlotte Keatley's My Mother Said I Never Should is finally back on stage at the St James Theatre. The most performed play ever by a female playwright, it takes the audience on a journey spanning over 40 years, focus...

Leo Butler brings to the stage a day in the life of an aimless, moneyless, seventeen-year-old boy with nowhere really to go. Despite this lack of action, the result is a hypnotic, moving play which lives in both the cavernous scale of London and the tiny circumnavigation of the marginalised Liam....

Gary Naylor sees a play that showcases late Tennessee Williams in an intense examination of a relationship coming towards its natural conclusion....