UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Pinocchio at the Globe Theatre is a radiant and heartfelt triumph which transforms a much loved story into a richly imaginative new musical. The atmosphere is electric, with the standing audience filling the lower space, with a striking set emblazoned with giant letters spelling PINOCCHIO framed by ...

Following last year’s production of Treasure Island, the OT Young Company returns with Chinonyerem Odimba’s inventive and charming new version of Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Endless adaptations have been made of the story of the little girl falling down a r...

There is a particular kind of contemporary British play that believes proximity to the dinner table equals profundity. Or human connection. Or a direct line to our stomachs, if not our hearts. It’s never really clear. Sam Grabiner’s Christmas Day (his first play since his Olivier-winning Boys on...

Oh, Mary! is an uproariously dark comedy about a miserable, suffocated Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Unrequited yearning, alcoholism, and suppressed desires abound in this 80-minute one-act play that finally examines the forgotten life and dreams of...

Theatre is, of course, a window on another world, often glitzier and brighter than our own, sometimes a reflection that can comfort or discomfit us and sometimes a portal into what it is to be human at all. It is an escape - and who can deny that we need such refuges more than ever - but it can be s...

Perfect medicine for the winter blues...

London, 1970s. The media explode: a vampire roams the streets of Highgate. Bag of Beard Theatre bring their own brand of dark humour to one of London’s most baffling 20th-century frenzies. They reimagine the events, teaming up a bishop and a tobacconist – purity and sin – in a crusade against ...

Twenty or so dancers parade before an oversized Art Deco clock, to the familiar strains of ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ from a brass band offstage. In other words, the stage is set for a reassuringly old-fashioned taste of the Golden Age of movie musicals....

The Royal Opera House’s Turandot has now been running so long it feels less like a revival and more like a listed structure. You don’t attend it so much as pass through it, like a familiar corridor or a particularly grand roundabout. With close to 300 performances under its belt and two runs in ...

And now, the end is near and Phantom Peak will soon face its final curtain at their Canada Water site. Wipe away the tears, though: a new location is apparently in the works for this hilarious slice of immersive theatre....

There has been much hype about Cole Escola's comedy play, Oh, Mary!, spoofing the lives of a former US President and his wife Mary in the days leading up to his assassination. Its Off-Broadway run was extended twice, moved to Broadway where it is still playing and now lands in the West End. So does ...

Indian Ink is not among Tom Stoppard’s greatest plays. The tale of a literary darling moving to 1930s India is awkwardly structured and hamfisted in its messages about Indian identity. Yet this revival breathes new life into the lesser-known work....

“And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.” Following rave reviews, the RSC’s most recent production of Twelfth Night finally makes its way to London as part of the Barbican’s winter season. Directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, it sees Samuel West, Freema Agyeman, Michael Grady-Hal...

James and Lou move from Chicago to London to escape their past, but they soon discover that places aren’t haunted, people are… Inspired by the iconic, terrifying film series, Paranormal Activity is a new story live on stage. What did the critics think?...

London is a city built on ghosts. Romans, plague pits, abandoned Tube stations and the collective memory of audiences who still shudder about The Woman in Black. There’s even a theatre supposedly inhabited by a ghost dolphin called Flipper....

It's an unlikely alliance – JS Bach, hip-hop, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and kids from Acland Burghley School in North London. But Olivier award-winning choreographer Kim Brandstrup deftly unites these disparate elements in invigorating and heart-warming Breaking Bach....

Little Bulb’s The Nutcracker arrives in the West End as a celebration of imagination, music and collective joy. This Olivier Award nominated production proves why the company is so beloved by family audiences, offering a festive adventure that is both wildly silly and deeply thoughtful. With its h...

Unicorn Theatre’s festive offering this season is a wonderfully eccentric Santa-based delight. How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney? transforms Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s much loved picture book into a piece of bold physical theatre , which celebrates curiosity, imagination and joyful nonsense....

Part-panto, part-pastiche, an affectionate and funny homage to genres past and present...

Written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, Christmas Carol Goes Wrong sees the return of Mischief’s beloved Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, which was first seen by audiences in The Play That Goes Wrong over ten years ago. The show actually picks up where the last “Goes Wrong”...

Rollerskates, Elaine Page, ducks, puppets, corpses, puppet corpses, and a DJing Andrew Lloyd Webber. Evita Too is worlds away from the Jamie Lloyd hit that swept London this summer, but it has just as much to say, if not more....

Co-Artistic Director of the RSC Daniel Evans brings to life one of Roald Dahl’s most darkly beloved children’s books in an utterly thrilling adaptation by Tom Wells. ...

There are many museums dedicated to disaster, but only Britain could create one in which the exhibits are victims of its own fiscal policies. Museum of Austerity, revived at the Young Vic, is a cool, technologically-slick indictment, a moral subpoena served directly to your eyeballs through augmente...

If your festive wish-list includes being whisked away to a land of shimmering magic and charming story-telling, ENB have the ideal antidote to the winter drizzle outside with the first revival of their version of Nutcracker that debuted last year. Aaron S. Watkin and Arielle Smit bring a welcome ch...

What happens after Happily Ever After, after all? In Sondheim and Lapine’s beloved musical retelling of the Grimm classics, a parade of familiar folktale figures find their way “Into the Woods” and try to get home before dark—under the guidance of Mark Lamos, who dazzled us with A Little Nig...