sat 19/04/2025

Theatre

All the Happy Things, Soho Theatre review - deep feelings, but little drama

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Or words to that effect. This quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost seems apt when thinking about the prevalence of mental health issues in current new writing for...

Read more...

Manhunt, Royal Court review - terrifyingly toxic masculinity

Are we really in “a new era of male anger, societal discontent and rage”? This is what Royal Court artistic director David Byrne claims in the programme of Manhunt, Robert Icke’s new documentary play about Raoul Moat. Weak thought, because surely...

Read more...

Ghosts, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre - turns out, they do fuck you up

A single sofa is all we have on stage to attract our eye - the signifier of intimate family evenings, chummy breakfast TV and, more recently, Graham Norton’s bonhomie. Until you catch proper sight of the room’s walls that is, which are not, as you...

Read more...

Shanghai Dolls, Kiln Theatre review - fascinating slice of history inadequately told

The writer Amy Ng has made a sterling effort in digging up the true story behind her new play at the Kiln, Shanghai Dolls, but sadly has not yet found the best way to project this interesting material. The Dolls are two women who meet in...

Read more...

Midnight Cowboy, Southwark Playhouse - new musical cannot escape the movie's long shadow

It seems a bizarre idea. Take a pivotal film in American culture that reset the perception of The Great American Dream at this, obviously, pivotal moment in American culture in which The Great American Dream, for millions, is being literally swiped...

Read more...

Thanks for Having Me, Riverside Studios review - snappily performed comedy with a lightweight core

Keelan Kember’s play Thanks for Having Me may look like a vehicle for Kedar Williams-Stirling (Sex Education, Red Pitch), but it’s more accurately a showcase for the comedic talents of Keelan Kember, a former OUDS performer with a TV pilot to his...

Read more...

Rhinoceros, Almeida Theatre review - joyously absurd and absurdly joyful

Is the theatre of the absurd dead? In today’s world, when cruel and crazy events happen almost daily, the idea that you can satirize daily life by exaggerating its latent irrationalities seems redundant. For this reason, perhaps, revivals of plays...

Read more...

The Importance of Being Oscar, Jermyn Street Theatre review - Wilde, still burning bright

It’s a greater accolade than a Nobel Prize for Literature – one’s very own adjective. There’s a select few: Shakespearean; Dickensian and Pinteresque. Add to that list, Wildean. That’s all the more remarkable in the light of Oscar Wilde’s...

Read more...

Stiletto, Charing Cross Theatre review - new musical excess

That friend you have who hates musicals – probably male, probably straight, probably not seen one since The Sound of Music on BBC 1 after the Queen’s Speech in 1978 – well, don’t send them to Charing Cross Theatre for this show. But that other...

Read more...

Apex Predator, Hampstead Theatre review - poor writing turns horror into silliness

Motherhood is a high stress job. Ask any woman and they will tell you the same: sleepless nights, feeding problems and worry. Lots of worry. Lots and lots. Writer John Donnelly, who has also experienced the stresses of parenthood, devotes his new...

Read more...

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Musical, Theatre Royal Bath review - not a screaming success

In Italy, they did it differently. Their pulp fiction tales of suburban transgression appeared between yellow covers on new stands and spawned the influential Giallo movies of the Sixties and Seventies, gory exercises in an offbeat, highly stylised...

Read more...

Wilko: Love and Death and Rock'n'Roll, Southwark Playhouse review - charismatic reincarnation of a rock legend

Resurrecting the origins of old rock stars is becoming quite the thing, After cinema’s Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Bob Dylan and upcoming Bruce Springsteen films, theatreland has staged Tina, A Night with Janis Joplin and MJ, and the Kinks musical...

Read more...
Subscribe to Theatre