West End
Unicorn, Garrick Theatre review - wordy and emotionless desireMonday, 17 February 2025
Since when has new writing become so passionless? Mike Bartlett is one of the country’s premiere playwrights and his new play, Unicorn, is about radical sexuality and desire. It’s already made a big splash by being put straight on in the West End,... Read more... |
Elektra, Duke of York's Theatre review - Brie Larson's London stage debut is angry but inertFriday, 07 February 2025
We live in tragic times given over to cataclysmic events that require outsized emotions in return. That may be one reason to account for the uptick, therefore, in Greek drama, which includes not one but two Oedipi, various adaptations of Antigone,... Read more... |
Ben Elton, Duke of York's Theatre review - big subjects, big laughsMonday, 20 January 2025
Ben Elton loves a scrap. The Motormouth of yesteryear, who made his name attacking Margaret Thatcher and her policies (and being attacked by the right in turn) now wades into so many frothing hot topics – gender politics, assisted dying and the age... Read more... |
Oliver!, Gielgud Theatre review - Lionel Bart's 1960 masterpiece is Bourne againWednesday, 15 January 2025
Into a world of grooming gangs, human trafficking and senior prelates resigning over child abuse cases comes Oliver!, Lionel Bart’s masterly musical. Is its grim tale of workhouses, pickpockets and domestic violence an awkward fit with today’s... Read more... |
Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Donmar Warehouse review - a blazingly original musical flashes into the West EndWednesday, 18 December 2024
Broadway shows sometimes hit the West End like, well, like a comet, burning brightly but briefly (Spring Awakening, for example), while others settle into orbit illuminating Shaftesbury Avenue with a neon blaze every night for years.So it might be a... Read more... |
The Devil Wears Prada, Dominion Theatre review - efficient but rarely inspiredWednesday, 11 December 2024
It's second time only quasi-lucky for The Devil Wears Prada, the stage musical adaptation of the much-loved Meryl Streep film from 2006 that nosedived in Chicago a few summers ago and has resurfaced on the West End to see another day.Refitted with a... Read more... |
Dr Strangelove, Noël Coward Theatre review - an evening of different partsWednesday, 30 October 2024
Even by Stanley Kubrick’s standards, Dr Strangelove went through an extraordinary evolutionary process. After starting it off as a serious film about nuclear war based on the 1958 novel Two Hours to Doom, he decided to turn it into a comedy with the... Read more... |
Juno and the Paycock, Gielgud Theatre review - a shockingly original centenary revival of O'Casey's tragi-comedyMonday, 07 October 2024
"Captain" Jack Boyle is a fantasist, a mythmaker, a storyteller. He relishes an audience – usually his sidekick, Joxer. There is a theatricality in his part as written by O'Casey, but in Matthew Warchus's hands this is made an explicit element of... Read more... |
Waiting for Godot, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - humanity in high definitionTuesday, 24 September 2024
Modernism is us. Today. For the past two decades plays by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter – which once upon a time bewildered their audiences and gave critics apoplexy – have become big West End hits. The avant-garde is now commercial. The... Read more... |
Shifters, Duke of York's Theatre review - star-crossed lovers shine in intelligent rom-comFriday, 23 August 2024
Pete Waterman, responsible (some might prefer the word guilty) for more than 100 Top 40 hits, said that a pop song is the hardest thing to write. Boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy gets girl back – all wrapped up in three minutes. Benedict Lombe’s... Read more... |
The 39 Steps, Trafalgar Theatre review - return of an entertaining panto for grown-upsThursday, 22 August 2024
Before the Plays That Went Wrong and the multi-role six-hander Operation Mincemeat, there was Patrick Barlow’s adaptation of The 39 Steps: four actors on a collision course with feasibility.Barlow is a comedy hero for creating the National... Read more... |
The Fabulist, Charing Cross Theatre review - fine singing cannot rescue an incoherent productionWednesday, 21 August 2024
On opening night, there’s always a little tension in the air. Tech rehearsals and previews can only go so far – this is the moment when an audience, some wielding pens like scalpels, sit in judgement. Having attended thousands on the critics’ side... Read more... |
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