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Review: JETTE PARKER ARTISTS: TALES OF LOVE AND LOSS, Royal Ballet And Opera
Ana Inés Jabares-Pita's set feels familiar and clearly defines time and place: The Departure remains in the 1960s; Making Arrangements moves into the 1970s, where a woman could choose to live independently; Four Sisters is in the materialistic 1980s, where 'greed is good'.
The changes of style in ...
Review: THE LAST BLACK MESSIAH, Jack Studio Theatre
Emeka Agada's new play has much to say, but would benefit from an edit down to an hour...
Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Shakespeare's Globe
A few scenes into Emily Lim’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Globe stage undergoes a transformation. Austere statuary gets wheeled away, the columns are swathed in plastic flowers, and Michael Grady-Hall as Puck blows bubbles to make more flowers emerge from the floorboards. The effec...
Review: CONTEH, Liverpool's Royal Court
Written by Aron Julius and directed by Mark Womack, Conteh is a powerful and emotive drama about the life of one of Liverpool’s sporting icons. Julius stars as boxer John Conteh, who at 24 years old became the light heavyweight champion of the world. Julius’ script tells Conteh’s story, both i...
Review: GRACE PERVADES, Starring Ralph Fiennes & Miranda Raison
Following a sell-out run at Theatre Royal Bath, David Hare's play, Grace Pervades, is a love letter to theatre, following the professional and personal partnership of legendary Victorian theatrical duo Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. Together they performed over 27 years, changing the face and sta...
Review: CHAT NOIR, The Lost Estate
A band of bohemians pitching up in Kensington would normally have the locals reaching for a bottle of smelling salts. Happily, the only thing being upended here is expectation, as Lost Estate’s Chat Noir slips its latest slice of elegant decadence discreetly into this West London enclave....
Review: MASS, Donmar Warehouse
At the end of Mass, currently celebrating its world stage premiere at London's Donmar Warehouse, my visibly moved son says, 'That's the best play I'll see this year.' And he's absolutely right. Director Carrie Cracknell's incredible interpretation of American actor-turned-writer Fran Kranz's stage s...
Review: UCCELLINI (LITTLE BIRDS), The Coronet Theatre
Ghosts, death, and the local fauna join the living in a house in the middle of the woods. When Luka takes his girlfriend to his childhood home to spend her birthday relaxing in solitude, she’s suddenly met with the weight of Luka’s family dynamics. Secluded in the damp darkness of the trees, Luk...
Review: HEARTSINK, Riverside Studios
Heartsink, a bittersweet medical comedy by Unequal Productions that's premiering at Riverside Studios, is a little gem. In only 85 minutes (no interval) writer Farine Clarke, a former GP, deftly deals with weighty issues such as an overstretched NHS, technology versus humanity, racism, assisted dyi...
Review: FIREWING, Hampstead Theatre
For a play ostensibly about wildlife photography, we don’t actually see too many photographs in Firewing. Instead, this is a story about truth: our relationship to it, how we represent it, and what it can cost us....
Review: THE PRICE, Marylebone Theatre
Much like All My Sons, the virtuosic Arthur Miller tragedy revived in the West End earlier this year, Miller’s lesser-known 1967 play The Price holds a mirror up to the American Dream and finds people varying degrees of broken by their desire to succeed. “I want money,” declares a character e...
Review: TWO HALVES OF GUINNESS, Park Theatre
Zeb Soanes captures the voice perfectly to give us the life and times of a huge figure in 20th century acting on stage and screen...
Review: DON QUIXOTE, Sadler's Wells
Carlos Acosta’s favourite ballet full of Spanish sun and slapstick humour is a very silly story. But with an audience who’ve braved tube strike misery Don Quixote (Don Q) is just the ticket for a bit of carefree escapism, transporting us to an exotic and colourful land and danced with great reli...
Review: HOWIE THE ROOKIE, Cockpit Theatre
Two technically brilliant performances illuminate a play interesting in form and content , but can't quite rescue its outdated approach to its key issues...
Review: PLEASE PLEASE ME, Kiln Theatre
The Beatles' first manager flies too close to John Lennon's sun and falls to earth...
Review: THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI, starring Mark Gatiss
A corrupt lot steeped in scandal puppeteers the economy. Unreasonable taxes are plaguing the people. Violence is rampant. All the while, a megalomaniac is gaining more traction by the day. Did we turn on the news, or are we watching Bertolt Brecht’s merciless satire? Seán Linnen transforms the al...
Review: THE WAVES, Jermyn Street Theatre
Virginia Woolf isn’t the easiest author to adapt for the stage, and her lesser-known 1931 experimental novel The Waves presents a particularly interesting dramaturgical challenge. Six friends meet at school, and undergo the typical trials of a bildungsroman, all within an ambitious stream of multi...
Review: MANAGED APPROACH, Riverside Studios
First seen at last year's Edinburgh fringe, Jules Coyle's semi-verbatim play, Managed Approach, now comes to Riverside Studios for a short, but important run. Between 2014 and 2020, a local government initiative in Holbeck, Leeds allowed sex workers to operate under certain regulations and was know...
Review: BETWEEN THE RIVER AND THE SEA, Royal Court Theatre
“I’m just here to talk about my divorce,” says Yousef Sweid right after a preamble about the reception of political productions. He and Isabella Sedlak write a poignant reflection on how beliefs and birthplaces raise us and shackle us at once. Between The River and The Sea approaches the Pales...
Review: WAYNE MCGREGOR: ALCHEMIES, Royal Ballet And Opera
Sir Wayne McGregor was appointed Resident Choreographer of the Royal Ballet in 2006, the first from a contemporary dance background, and here we are 20 years later acknowledging that fact with a triple bill of his work for the company called Alchemies....
Review: NAYATT SCHOOL REDUX, The Coronet Theatre
If you like your theatre to be undeniably avant-garde, then trot along to Notting Hill's Coronet Theatre and see The Wooster Group's Nayatt School Redux. Baffling and bewildering – but never boring – this experimental, multi-media production from a New York company that's been going for over 50 ...
Review Roundup: AVENUE Q Returns to The West End
On Avenue Q, puppets and people intermingle in this show about the trials and tribulations of life as a grown-up: love, sex, money, race, and how to tell your roommate he’s gay. After two decades, the three-time Tony Award-winning musical Avenue Q has returned to the West End in all its glory. ...
Review: INTERNATIONAL DRAFT WORKS 2026, Royal Ballet And Opera - Linbury Theatre
The Linbury Theatre at the Royal Ballet and Opera felt transformed last night for the opening of International Draft Works 2026 - but not always by the choreography....
Review: AVENUE Q, Shaftesbury Theatre
The puppet show pumped full of profanity is back. Jason Moore's outrageous Avenue Q premiered in the West End two decades ago, bringing issues such as racism, the housing crisis and youth identity crisis to the stage in a unique and incredibly clever format. Oh yes, and there is explicit puppet se...
Review: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST starring Giles Terera, The Old Vic
Superb ensemble cast and inspired staging puts us on the hook for an unspoken oppression...
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