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Review: IRON FANTASY, Soho Theatre
In the much-cited 2014 book The Body Keeps the Score, the Dutch psychotherapist Bessel van der Kolk wrote of how the human body can be undone and rewired by traumatic experiences. In Iron Fantasy, comedy duo She-Goat have absorbed this idea into their musical comedy, and explored if and how one can ...
Review: YENTL, Marylebone Theatre
Australian adaptation of the original story, not the film, packs a punch...
Review: MANIC STREET CREATURE, Kiln Theatre
Known for her evocative, folk-infused sound, Manic Street Creature sees Memon take the reins as writer and composer as well as performer, bringing her distinctive voice to a personal story of second-hand trauma. First performed at the Fringe in 2022, it’s now back in a new production at the Kiln.�...
Review: THEATRE FOR ONE, Barbican
The best of Irish playwriting lands at the Barbican in an exciting project. An audience of one steps into a booth blindly for a play they don’t get to choose. Six five-minute one-act shows penned by Enda Walsh, Marina Carr, Mark O’Rowe, Joy Nesbitt, Louise O’Neill and Katie Holly are offered o...
Review: THE BEEKEEPER OF ALEPPO, Richmond Theatre
Christy Lefteri’s 2019 bestseller The Beekeeper of Aleppo is both a powerful and poetic story about the refugee experience. Her story of Nuri and his wife Afra's escape from Syria to England was inspired by time Lefteri spent working in a refugee camp in Athens. Syria may currently be seen as le...
Review: GRIT, GLITTER & GASLIGHT - THE SARAH MCGUINNESS STORY, Circle And Star Theatre
Sarah McGuinness is best known for her work producing whimsical indie documentaries about the standup comedian Eddie Izzard; in her one-woman show, though, there are only passing references to this. To put a finger on what the show is about is no easy task, because it’s a confused jumble of autofi...
Review: TELL ME STRAIGHT and AGGY, Park Theatre
Park Theatre’s latest double bill presents two recent works from an emerging writer, both centring average queer London lives, and the lengths we’ll go to to present the versions of ourselves we want the world to see. Both are somewhat overblown in their execution, but at their best they are ima...
Review: THE HOLY ROSENBERGS, Menier Chocolate Factory
At the Menier Chocolate Factory, the revival of Ryan Craig’s The Holy Rosenbergs arrives with the weight of history attached to it. When it first appeared at the National Theatre’s Cottesloe Theatre in 2011, it was a sharp entry into a conversation about Jewish identity, family loyalty and moder...
Review: IT WALKS AROUND THE HOUSE AT NIGHT, Southwark Playhouse
In spite of being one of the most difficult genres to stage, horror theatre is having its moment. The Woman in Black might have closed at the Fortune three years ago (almost to the day!), but the success of Paranormal Activity at the Ambassadors is proof that audiences are hungry for some spooky dra...
Review: BLINK, King’s Head Theatre
When it premiered at Soho Theatre in 2012, Blink was a whimsical oddity, an ode to two eccentric loners falling in love. In 2026, it takes on a darker tone, with the subtitle “a parasocial love story” foreshadowing things to come....
Review: THE WRONG THEY KNEW, Chickenshed Theatre
Musical set in the late 1950s with a strong message for today...
Review: MARIE & ROSETTA, @sohoplace
Her name may not be widely known today, but Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s musical legacy is felt down the decades. George Brant’s play about her relationship with gospel singer Marie Knight is retelling not just a woman’s life, but the birth of an entire new genre....
Review: PLAYING SHAKESPEARE WITH DEUTSCHE BANK: ROMEO AND JULIET, Shakespeare's Globe
A revival marking twenty years of a remarkable education initiative, Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank: Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe demonstrates accessible theatre at its very best. Directed by Lucy Cuthbertson, this fast paced ninety minute production captures the essence of Shak...
Review: SCOTTISH BALLET - MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, Sadler's Wells
Mary, Queen of Scots, is a remarkable piece of work, offering pointed comment on the place of women in the sixteenth-century court and on the mythology that casts Mary as a martyr. With striking visuals and compositions, it is an original and modern take on a familiar part of history....
Review: OUR TOWN, Starring Michael Sheen, Rose Theatre
Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play, Our Town, marks the first production for Michael Sheen’s Welsh National Theatre. After selling out across Welsh venues, this understated gem of a play moves west to give audiences of the Rose Theatre a chance to see what this exciting new company can do....
Review: BROKEN GLASS, Young Vic
Arthur Miller's later works are usually overshadowed by his earlier masterpieces. Is it time for reappraisal? With rising antisemitism across the world, what can Miller’s 1994 confrontation of anti-Jewish racism tell us in 2025?...
Review: THE COMFORT WOMAN, Omnibus Theatre
Somewhere between 20,000 and 300,000 women, mainly from the Korean Peninsula, were trafficked into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during the Second World War: the so-called ‘comfort women’. Writer-performer Minjeong Kim’s one-woman show tells just one of their stories....
Review: EDUCATING RITA, Reading Rep Theatre
The filter-like haze hits you first. Then the occasional lighting, the tiled ceiling, and the faint whiff of the 80s. But it's the arrival of two extraordinary performances – Madelyn Smedley's fizzing, fearless Rita and Julius D'Silva's weary, cynical Frank – that makes Reading Rep Theatre's Edu...
Review: SEA WITCH, Theatre Royal Drury Lane
Staged at the cavernous Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Sea Witch arrived with the sort of fanfare usually reserved for tried-and-tested crowd-pleasers. Instead, this world premiere exposed the perils of unveiling an unpolished new musical on one of the West End’s most imposing stages....
Review: LAST AND FIRST MEN - NEON DANCE, Coronet Theatre
Sci-fi, like most things, is an acquired taste, and not something you often find related to dance. Enter The Coronet Theatre for once again pushing the boundaries of avant-garde programming.
Last And First Men (2024) by Neon Dance is a multimedia work that definitely gets the brain working in pre-p...
Review: SINEMATIC, Emerald Theatre
It appears Tosca Rivola is back for a sequel of sorts. After last year’s debacle that was Diamonds and Dust - a production she co-created with Dita Von Teese that promised the moon, delivered a pebble, was 'paused' shortly after its press night and then, two months later, quietly cancelled - the A...
Review: THE VILLAGE WHERE NO ONE SUFFERS, Jack Studio
“We’ve died, we’ve been reborn, but we still have our memories,” a character reflects at one point. He’s talking about the years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and this sense of war as existential is everywhere in Ukrainian playwright Polina Polozhentseva’s understated fable....
Review: SPLENDOUR & DEVOTION, LONDON HANDEL FESTIVAL, St George’s Hanover Square
The 2026 edition of the London Handel Festival, which kicked off last week, is running under the theme of From Heavenly Harmony. The five-week event aims to “enrich lives through Handel’s music”, with concerts and recitals taking place in a variety of venues across London - last night saw The ...
Review: THE OPERA LOCOS, Sadler's Wells
If you have ever suspected that opera might benefit from fewer Valkyries and more vaudeville, Opera Locos is here to confirm your prejudice and then sing it at you in Italian....
Review: THE SOUND OF ABSENCE, Omnibus Theatre
The sudden passing of her father kick-starts a profound identity crisis in Lenore. Why didn’t her life dramatically change when he died? She remembers witnessing what the loss of a parent did to a schoolmate when she was younger, that instant transformation into a shell of who she was beforehand. ...
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