UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

There is a lot that works here; an obvious and careful attention to detail being one. The meticulous recreation of James Brown's stage catsuit, event posters and haircuts feels thoughtful.  The three-day music festival that featured James Brown, Miriam Makeba and Celia Cruz showcases some brillia...

The show is generally delightful, but one can’t shake the feeling that there’s so much more to explore. Simpson-Pike crafts a beautiful revival that ends with an adorable moment that ties the community together, but the script seems to forget the main reason the two boys connected in the first p...

Liparit Avetsiyan lends emotional weight to an opera that veers a little too close to pantomime on occasion...

What JRR Tolkien would have thought of Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers is anyone’s guess but one suspects that the Oxford don would rather have enjoyed the live concert treatment at the Royal Albert Hall....

Loosely based on the article The Ivory Highway, Lynn Nottage’s (MJ The Musical) eye-opening drama first made its Off-Broadway premiere in 2018. Now setting its sights in London’s Kiln Theatre, her powerful message on the impact of corruption and greed still remains as urgent as it did five years...

Directed by Roy Alexander Weise, the project is structurally disruptive but ultimately too meandering and overlong. A narrator (Rochelle Rose) lays the tropes bare with bitter observations. She amplifies the intentional faux pas, but the framework gets a bit stodgy by the second round of narrative r...

Deftly balances psychological thrill with morality as murky as the North Sea...

If burying the lede was an Olympic sport, Eun Me-Ahn’s Dragons would be in serious medal contention....

There are vanity projects, and then there are Vanity Projects. This is a Vanyaty Project of exquisite substance that reconfirms Andrew Scott is one of the finest performers of his generation. A production years in the making, Simon Stephens’s one-man adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s human tragedy U...

Probably one of the finest bands most people have never heard of, quite why Bourgeois & Maurice aren't widely recognised as national treasures is something of a mystery....

Stephanie Mohr’s new production of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist novella The Yellow Wallpaper is described as a “genre-defying production blending theatre, dance, live video and sound” - no pressure then! ...

Sondra Radvanovsky, Brian Jagde and Etienne Dupuis lead a wonderful cast and orchestra in a near-overwhelming production that fully justifies its four hours running time...

Anne Rabbitt plays the British movie star who burned out too soon in the cauldron of Hollywood's casting couch environment of the 60s....

Second World War stories seem to be in vogue at the moment (though did they ever really go away?), with Christopher Nolan’s juggernaut Oppenheimer emotionally draining cinema audiences across the globe, and Operation Mincemeat continuing to entertain audiences at the Fortune Theatre. Alan Brody’...

A tale of transformation, coersive control and eventual female empowerment performed by two of our best stage actors should be a guaranteed hit. However, Richard Jones' revival of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion fails to pack the expected punch....

It maintains the opera’s timeless charm, strong wit, and with a cast that never takes itself seriously, leads to an evening that has the audience roaring with laughter....

It’s tough humour, not always politically correct nor consistently hilarious. All aspects of their personal lives and careers are ammunition. On-set misdemeanours, past scuffles, sexual escapades - everything. It’s somewhat of a potboiler for the easily pleased punters and industry professionals...

A cerebral thriller that puts its humanity front and centre, anthropology is a strong start to Hampstead's new season...

The project has been a top hit in its native Austria since it opened in 2006, garnering a steady following across the world and subsequent runs in Asia and Europe. The original is fabled to feature incredible sets and a sumptuous staging - it’s a shame those elements haven’t transferred. ...

The US police force perhaps isn’t the most obvious subject for a comedy musical, but Police Cops: The Musical turns an unlikely premise into a undeniable hit. Fresh from a hit run at the Edinburgh Fringe, this slick satire of the US eighties is enjoying yet more success in London. From the minds o...

A celebration of the power of art and one of the most loved of all Sondheim / Lapine collaborations...

Nobody can deny the humanitarian force of what unfolds on stage even if the artistry doesn’t hit the mark....

Returning to the stage with a splash, The Old Man & The Pool is his latest solo show, written and performed by Mike Birbiglia, it follows the success of his previous shows including My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend....

First opening in 2022, Anupama Chandrasekhar's (When the Crows Visit) debut play for The National Theatre, The Father and The Assassin . One of India’s most prominent and taboo-busting playwrights, her historical epic returns to the Olivier stage, now with Olivier winner Hiran Abeysekera (Life Of...

Based on the Sunday Times best-selling autobiography by Henry Fraser, The Little Big Things is a new British musical that has now opened in London's @sohoplace theatre....