UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Sir Lenny Henry's hugely affecting debut play opens at the Bush Theatre...

Vortices and abstract expressionism: easy-breezy inspo for the Russell Maliphant Dance Company (RMDC) then. But definitely not a problem for me. I’ll take experimental over formulaic any day. And this isn't a new trend for the RMDC, as they’ve been taking a similar approach since their 1996 ince...

Ulla! Martians, music and mayhem: who could ask for more from an immersive show? Layered Reality has taken HG Wells classic story, scored It with Jeff Wayne’s much-loved album, added some very effective VR and placed it inside a dedicated space in the City of London....

Following an acclaimed run at Edinburgh Fringe, Maltese co-writers and activists Davinia Hamilton and Marta Vella’s Blanket Ban is now home at the Southwark Playhouse for the next month....

What did the critics think of Jack Thorne's new play The Motive and the Cue, which has now opened at the National Theatre? ...

A wildly thrilling clash of theatrical titans becomes a love letter to the art form...

That uncomfortable feeling when you really want something to be good and it just isn't. That's how the opening night of A Festival Of Korean Dance 2023 (its sixth year) at The Place felt....

For what it's worth, I think Emily Brontë would probably love this new production of her then controversial 19th century novel, Wuthering Heights. ...

Featuring a work which doesn’t even last an hour, this was never going to be an ordinary evening for the English National Opera but, even from the off, history was being written....

The longtime secret story of the double-life of one of Italy's favourite sons is brought to the stage in a bold new musical...

Far from being the meaty two-hours-45-cum-interval, it chases its own tail in an exhausting, exasperating, overlong, and overblown production directed by Emma Jude Harris. It’s genuinely difficult to see the point of the play....

Katie Mitchell's climate change wake-up call is a cold, hard slap in the face...

“I am determined to prove a villain, and hate the idle pleasures of these days.” There is no pretence between Richard III and his audience; he sets out his manifesto from the very beginning of the play, and we are left to watch in horror as he sees it through – deed by bloody deed. ...

Ryan Calais Cameron follows up the runaway success of For Black Boys... with a very different play that goes to the weighing of principles and pragmatism in a dysfunctional society...

Love Talk, a new play written and directed by Emma Gueye, follows a couple over ten years; from their first meeting at a party through key points during their relationship. As they approach their fifth wedding anniversary, past feelings encroach in a devastating way....

Supernova doesn't feel like a debut play. Neads not only writes with emotional intelligence and psychological tact, she also has a knack for crafting realistic, magnetic dialogue. She draws the audience in, making them care irreparably for her characters. “In the scheme of things, I don't remotely...

A smash hit in theatres including The King’s Head, The Vaults and Edinburgh Fringe, his drama comedy now returns in an updated version at the Waterloo East Theatre....

Close your eyes. Imagine a rock opera based on the life of prime minister Tony Blair and his ten years at number 10. Throw in some generic rock ballads and there you go. You have TONY! (The Tony Blair Rock Opera), as predictable as it is self-aware as it is schmaltzy....

Jules and Jim is Stella Powell-Jones’s first production since taking over the artistic direction of Jermyn Street Theatre, and it certainly sets the mood for what could be....

Mary (Brid Brennan) is coming home to Yorkshire after a six-month prison sentence. As her daughters and granddaughter try to make her welcome, we slowly find out what dark secrets are being hidden within the paper-thin, gauzed walls of this ordinary house. Deborah Bruce's script is frank, funny, an...

Polka Theatre’s spring season continues with another new musical for families. Based on the book by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris, The Lost Spells celebrates children’s connection to the ever-diminishing natural world. Following its premiere at Watford Palace Theatre, the actor-musician p...

A confident production of a conceptually flawed opera....

Jon Bradfield (script) and Josh Hepple (original story alongside Bradfield) pen a relatable tale of love and lust in the digital age, putting disability centre-stage in all its complicated frustrations. They don’t shy away from bleak comedy and pitch-black wit, presenting an excellent piece of soc...

For an eighty-year-old play about the perils of capitalism and human-nature born kicking and screaming amongst the political turmoil of Weimar Germany, it neither looks nor feels like it has aged a day....

An 18th century insurance case inspired one black man to tell the world of the horrors of the slave trade and, more than two hundred years later, another to do the same thing...