Theatre
Inter Alia, National Theatre review - dazzling performance, questionable writingMonday, 28 July 2025
Rosamund Pike is back. For her first stage appearance since 2010, when she played Hedda Gabler in Adrian Noble’s production for Bath Theatre Royal, the Hollywood superstar has chosen Inter-Alia, Suzie Miller’s follow up to her smash hit Prima Facie... Read more... |
A Moon for the Misbegotten, Almeida Theatre review - Michael Shannon sears the night skyThursday, 24 July 2025
Michael Shannon's long legs reach to the stars – or perhaps one should say the moon – in the Almeida's hypnotic revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten, the late Eugene O'Neill play that hasn't been seen in London since Kevin Spacey and Eve... Read more... |
Burlesque, Savoy Theatre review - exhaustingly vapidWednesday, 23 July 2025
"It all starts with a snap," or so we're told early in the decidedly un-snappy Burlesque, which spends three hours borrowing shamelessly and tediously from far-superior sources to arrive at an artistic dead end.Preceded by acres of press heralding... Read more... |
Don't Rock the Boat, The Mill at Sonning review - all aboard for some old-school comedy mishapsTuesday, 22 July 2025
Now 45 years in the past, its dazzling star gone a decade or so, The Long Good Friday is a monument of British cinema. Its extraordinary locations, caught just before London’s Docklands were transformed forever, speaks to a past world. But the... Read more... |
The Estate, National Theatre review - hugely entertaining, but also unconvincingSunday, 20 July 2025
The first rule for brown people, says the main character – played by BAFTA-winner Adeel Akhtar – in this highly entertaining dramedy, is not to let white people know how badly non-whites treat each other. This provocative statement comes towards the... Read more... |
Poor Clare, Orange Tree Theatre review - saints cajole us sinnersFriday, 18 July 2025
What am I, a philosophical if not political Marxist whose hero is Antonio Gramsci, doing in Harvey Nichols buying Comme des Garçons linen jackets, Church brogues and Mulberry shades? It’s 1987 and I do wear it well though…Chiara Atik’s comedy... Read more... |
That Bastard, Puccini!, Park Theatre review - inventive comic staging of the battle of the BohèmesThursday, 17 July 2025
Before Luigi Illica wrote the libretti for Puccini’s Tosca and Madama Butterfly, he had joined the composer as the librettist in a race to stage the first production of La Bohème. The race was against Ruggero Leoncavallo, a composer Illica had once... Read more... |
Till the Stars Come Down, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - a family hilariously and tragically at warMonday, 14 July 2025
The 2024 play at the National Theatre that put writer Beth Steel squarely centre-stage has now received a West End transfer. Its title taken from an Auden poem urging people to dance till they drop, it’s probably the most passionate show in that... Read more... |
Nye, National Theatre review - Michael Sheen's full-blooded Bevan returns to the OlivierFriday, 11 July 2025
The National Health Service was established 77 years ago this month. Resident doctors are about to strike for more pay, long waiting lists for hospital treatment and the scarcity of GP appointments continue to dog political conversation, while the... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Ravenna Festival 2025 - Cervantes, Beethoven and Byron transfiguredThursday, 10 July 2025
Anyone seeking local genius in an international festival should look no further than the annual Ravenna concerts from Riccardo Muti – Neapolitan by birth, Ravennate by adoption – with his Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra. Well, maybe a little further... Read more... |
Girl From The North Country, Old Vic review - Dylan's songs fail to lift the moodThursday, 10 July 2025
Well, I wasn’t expecting a Dylanesque take on "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" as an opening number and I was right. But The Zim, Nobel Prize ‘n all, has always favoured The Grim American Songbook over The Great American Songbook and writer/director... Read more... |
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare's Globe review - hedonistic fizz for a summer's eveningThursday, 10 July 2025
Shakespeare’s Prince Hal may have rejected Sir John Falstaff as a symbol of his misspent youth, but the real-life monarch Queen Elizabeth I couldn’t get enough of him. Accounts vary of who precisely commissioned The Merry Wives of Windsor – or as... Read more... |
