UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

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...

When the soft, glowing lights hit the stage at the Almeida Theatre, we're taken back to 1964, during the height of the civil rights movement....

Emphasising monochromatic melancholy with singers who do their best despite swimming in an ocean of drab uniforms....

Nederland Dans Theater, one of the premiere dance venues in Europe, makes its first return to Sadler's Wells since 2018 bringing together three very different pieces which go from the dream-like to the very real and heart-rending....

What did our critic think of NO I.D. at Royal Court?...

Samson Hawkins’s play is great fun, but it’s a complex one. This good-hearted comedy cum moral whose identity is defined by precise British sit-com humour (with all the good and bad that comes with it) is threatened by a sense of inauthentic working class ideals. However, if we give in and welco...

Midnight Circle Theatre finally gets an opening night....

Josie Rourke's new production has much about it to admire, but has little to say on the changes in Ireland since the play's first incarnation on the South Bank in 1990...

Family Tree directed by Matthew Xia is about Henrietta Lacks; a woman who made one of the greatest medical contributions after her cells were taken from a cervical-cancer biopsy. “HeLa” cells became the first immortal human cell line to reproduce infinitely in a lab. The piece teaches us about...

Swindle drives a practical narrative that avoids storytelling in order to preserve the naked truth and honour those who lost their lives with such brutality. But this is, ultimately, entertainment and we’re not sitting in a lecture hall. The lack of sordid details is refreshing, but the production...

Striking Irish shopworkers become unlikely (and problematic) heroes in a crowd-pleasing dramedy...

Here it is, opera's answer to A Little Life: Kaija Saariaho's Innocence follows the aftermath of a school shooting and the emotional destruction felt by those connect to the event. An elegant but devastating meditation on the nature of violence and collective guilt....

Directed by Michael Cottrell, it’s a rabid episode of Black Mirror wannabe. It’s #MeToo on steroids afflicted by a dearth of analytical depth. The script stalls too much, avoiding any critical exploration of the issues it’s supposedly about....

Raw, brutal, twisted, and full of rich wordplay, this play makes its political points and highlights a relationship which uses regret, mistakes, and teasing to hide what is really happening at its core. It is less the star-crossed young lovers of Shakespeare than the smack-stained children of a mode...

What’s in a name? That which we call William, Hamlet or Anne still smells as sweet when we see their historical origins in this adaptation by Lolita Chakrabarti of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel....

Are you a fan of gory history facts? Do you love theatre? Do you enjoy a nice boat ride down the River Thames? If you answered yes to these questions, Terrible Thames may be the tour for you....

Katie Mitchell breathes dangerous life into Rebecca Watson's disarmingly experimental novel...

The title of Circa’s Humans 2.0 has a double meaning: as well as being a new iteration of their 2017 show Humans, it explores on what could be the saving future graces for our benighted species: trust, community and incredibly fit bodies....

Fine performances and a good helping of laughs, but the violence throws a wet blanket over the fun...

A gem of 17th century Spanish theatre gets the David Lynch treatment in Cheek By Jowl's latest show...

The theme song to Nickelodeon's super-popular animated series SpongeBob SquarePants encourages you to tune in 'if nautical nonsense be something you wish', and nautical nonsense is definitely what's on offer in this madcap but good-natured musical....

Vardy V Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial brings a social media nightmare to a shocking and amusing reality. This adaptation of a well-known cultural phenomenon is an autopsy of the intricacies behind existence as a partner of one of England’s highest profile footballers....

This new adaptation is a playful and charming take on a classic story, but its complexity may not be suitable for very young children...

An arduous deep dive into the moral murkiness of alcoholism and grief...

Touring production of play that explicitly warns of the dangers of politics as practised today loses focus by adopting a curious set of priorities...