UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

An old favourite brings the passion and the pain with beautiful singing and convincing acting...

Gunter is a messy play. Literally. There’s sand, dirt, blood, confetti, and ink all over the actors and the floor. Fringe company Dirty Hare throw absolutely everything at their canvas, in a piece that includes music to projections to microphones, shadow puppetry, and masks. In this rare gem of a ...

The Velveteen Rabbit is a story which needs little introduction, and which retains wide appeal. This retelling by Ben Crompton for balletLORENT pops with life as a man reacquaints himself with childhood toys, notably a beloved rabbit. Aimed at a family audience, this is a delightful way to while awa...

Written and directed by Alex Howarth based on real conversations with kids in care, it’s a shot to the heart. Profoundly moving in its bittersweet playfulness and candid approach to the matter, the production is scrupulously crafted to come off as child’s play. It exquisitely translates the worl...

After two years away, Kyle Dean Massey steps back onto the cabaret stage at London’s Crazy Coqs....

Horne’s Descent features a compact take on religious philosophy and slender social politics, adding a dash of good-natured occult to the mix. It refuses to spell out its contents for the audience, trusting them to connect the dots and draw their own conclusions in an exercise of mental flexibility...

Mix a classic spy novel with the genius of Alfred Hitchcock, add a dash of Monty Python and you have The 39 Steps. With a history spanning over 100 years, John Buchan’s 1915 novel was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock which then went on to become a stage play in 1996, adapted again in 2005 by Patrick B...

Written by Kieran Dee and Grace Millie, who also star as Ellis and Kat respectively, and directed by Harriet Marsh, Insult to Injury tells the story of two content moderators on a famous social media site and how they deal with “misinformation, technology, responsibility, power and eating other pe...

Life With Oscar is an autobiographical monologue written, and performed by Nicholas Cohen that takes the audience on a trip to the darker side of La La Land....

The Emmy, Golden Globe and Olivier award-winning actor Brian Cox, has made his return to the London stage in Jeremy Herrin’s new production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night....

Eugene O'Neill's classic play of family strife has had regular revivals in London (most recently in 2018 and 2012). Set in 1912 and published posthumously in 1956, it remains one of the great American plays. Brian Cox returns to the London stage as James Tyrone, actor, family colossus, and flawed ma...

Lovingly snug, like you’ve been invited to into the warm for a cup of tea and a biscuit on a rainy day....

Holly Spillar: HOLE is, as described by Spillar herself, “a one-woman vagina show” in which she uses only her voice and a loop pedal to tell the story of her journey with vaginismus, an involuntary tensing of the vagina that prevents penetrative sex....

Recently, I was invited to attend a special curator event at Direct from Graceland: Elvis at the Arches London Bridge. The event, hosted by Angie Marchese, Graceland’s Vice President of Archives and Exhibits, gave attendees a backstage look at some of the artifacts Marchese had brought with her fr...

Early in Power of Sail, we learn it’s firmly set in 2019. A mere year later, the world would face a global pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and online misinformation reaching its peak as right-wing have been given bigger platforms to express their hate under the guise of freedom of speech...

A tale for our time - a thought that brings both a disillusioned sense that little has changed in 150 years but also a sense that things can...

Mary O’Connell: Money Princess starts with a bang, as O’Connell emerges from behind the curtains, money guns in hand, spraying money over the audience as “Big Spender” plays. The fun only lasts for a few seconds, however, as the guns quickly run out of money and leave O’Connell standing on...

Pansexual Pirate Pregnancy, a musical created by Eleanor Colville, Ro Suppa, Robbie Taylor Hunt and directed by Taylor Hunt, tells the story of Anne Bonny (Ro Suppa), an 18th-century woman who left her life on land behind to become a pirate....

A pitch-black comedy thriller which gives Franz Kafka a run for his money, Don’t.Make.Tea doesn’t hold back in its excoriating view of modern Britain....

The Divine Mrs S is a load of… silliness. And not in a positive way. Directed by Anna Mackmin, it’s difficult to say what the play means. Its raison d’être could be anything from a bid to have more parts for older actors to an attempt at showing the beginnings of female liberation. Very littl...

There are few things more life-affirming than christenings, orgies and operas. And few works are more life-affirming and cathartic than Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly....

Bear Snores On is a musical adaption of the children’s book by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman, in which a group of animals are hiding from a winter storm in a sleeping bear’s den. The show, written and directed by Cush Jumbo and Katy Sechiari with music and lyrics by Harry Blake, takes audiences ...

A cringy boss, a pricky employee and an annual review that goes rather wrong. Tim Marriott's sharp two-hander, Appraisal, now comes to the Tabard Theatre....

The multi-Tony Award®- winning musical MJ has now opened at the Prince Edward Theatre....

Inger's Carmen is successful in two key ways: firstly it tells the existing narrative of Carmen incredibly clearly, secondly it actually does so with “new resonance' - who'd have thunk it. ...