UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Emma Riches and Lisa Minichiello give committed performances, but the play is short on the narrative drive required to carry its issues...

Ever wanted to experience a sugar rush for nearly two hours straight? Samantha Hurley’s campy dark comedy I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire feels like exactly that. Complete with lipgloss, butterfly clips, and Cosmo mag, it’s a noughties teen fever dream....

Back in the summer of 1994, Disney's latest animation film The Lion King raked in almost $1 billion at the global box office. After several sequels and long-running shows on Broadway and in the West End, the film is now celebrating its 30th Anniversary and the Royal Albert Hall is giving it the ep...

Caribbean landscapes and musical interludes are not typically associated with the monstrous Medea. However, in Medea Gosperia, Thee Black Swan reimagines Euripides’ classic Greek myth through a fusion of diverse musical styles, showcasing the exceptional vocal talent of its ensemble....

It takes its time to warm up. But when this American four hander stretches its dramatic muscles a pummelling emotional workout results...

House of Life is a work of theatre created by Sheep Soup that is, according to its description, “one-part sermon, one-part purge, three-parts party,” or, in simpler terms, a “travelling musical cult.” You are greeted by a bright and glittery backdrop, as well as a table full of instruments a...

Alma Mater is the byproduct of fourth-wave feminism, with faint echoes of David Mamet’s Oleanna flipped on its head and delivered with a sleight of hand. Polly Findlay is back at the Almeida to direct Kendall Feaver’s world premiere, which finally officially opens after a troubled start. The wit...

A curious opera that is beautiful and ugly all at once...

Is this one mnemonic to forget?...

Sometimes a story of the history of the industry, and those who inhabit it, is a needed reminder of the magic behind the experiences and stories which characterise the theatre community. John Lloyd Young’s headline show at the Crazy Coqs is just that – a journey through his impressive career tha...

Fronted by some fresh faces, Jonathan Kent’s cinematic take on the Puccini masterwork Tosca returns for its seventeenth run at Covent Garden. ...

Deadweight Theatre’s The Manikins: A Work In Progress is many things. It is interactive. It is intimate. It is thought-provoking. And, despite the misleading title, it has a polished concept that leaves its audience pondering long after the show ends....

They say you find love when and where you least expect it, but swearing off relationships isn’t just a contemporary manifestation of ennui. It’s 1943 and typical New York actress Sally has decided to focus on her career rather than chase men who don’t give her the time of day. Her colleague an...

The Next Generation Festival continues at the Royal Opera House with Rambert School. The programme includes six new commissions for the third-year, graduate students, and the restaging of three Akram Khan works for the second-years....

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express has now opened in the specially designed Starlight Auditorium at Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre....

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express is possibly one of the world's most bizarre musicals-yes, even more so than Cats. A child's dream-like world where trains compete for races and for each other, all set on roller skates. And yet, this 1984 musical's latest revival will make a new generation fal...

It's a testament to Lin-Manuel Miranda's almost perfect show that even with some performance issues, Hamilton is still a stunning and moving experience. Its impact isn’t diminished even after several viewings, and its themes of love, grief, ambition, freedom, forgiveness and family are always reso...

Bucket List is the first play from Show Don’t Tell Productions, a company dedicated to new writing, recently founded by postgraduate creative writing students at Oxford University....

Debut Sounds: Sound in Motion is the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s annual concert showcasing the LPO’s Young Composers. The concept sees five composers and eight choreographers collaborating to create the final works shown, with the music played by musicians from the LPO Foyle Future Firsts D...

Following a sold-out run at the Donmar Warehouse, Next to Normal arrives at Wyndham's Theatre....

The Next Generation Festival continues at the Royal Opera House with two performances by the BundesJugendBallett AKA German National Youth Ballet. The group was founded by Hamburg Ballet director and chief choreographer, John Neumeier in 2011, and has been directed by Kevin Haigen since its inaugur...

A woman’s story is a valuable thing, the trials of experience typically being viewed as under discussed even within modern literature. Amongst these trials are the very real challenges that come with raising a baby, especially when a single parent....

The Secret Garden, originally published as a children’s book by Frances Hodgson Burnett in the early 1900s, tells the story of Mary Lennox, a spoiled and angry 10-year-old girl who is brought from her home in British India to Yorkshire after surviving a cholera epidemic that kills not only her par...

From the minute Daniel York Loh finished his opening monologue in Kakilang’s The Dao of the Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience, I knew this would be a piece of theatre that wouldn’t allow me to remain comfortable, drift off or stop questioning my own beliefs for a second....

With a cry of “honey I’m home!”, international musical theatre icon Lea Salonga returns to the stage that launched her career over three decades ago....