That sound you may be hearing most evenings toward the lower end of St Martin's Lane is likely to be the roof being blown off the Tom Stoppard Theatre (formerly the Duke of York's), where Luke Sheppard's altogether astonishing revival of Rent has taken up occupancy for a tenancy that, by rights, should be very long-lasting indeed,London has had a chequered history with this iconic Broadway title from 30 years ago, which famously saw its creator, Jonathan Larson, die age 35. That was before Larson ever saw a single performance of his triple-threat creation (he did the book, music, and lyrics Read more ...

Older women, even middle-class women, are living with unbearable stress. Don’t believe me? Well, look around you. The stress of living up to slogans about “having it all”; the stress of divorce and selling the family home; the stress of looking after the kids; the stress of looking after older relatives; the stress of finding a good job when you’ve taken time out to have children. Not to mention housework, the menopause and flexible working from home. Okay, now we’re in the world of Helen Edmundson’s new play, Some Woman, at the National Theatre, and guess what, it’s our world too. A world of Read more ...

Ibsen's powerful study of hypocrisy gleams and bristles in the close-up intimacy of the bijou Jermyn Street Theatre. Richard Eyre's version, first seen at the Almeida in 2013, presents the play, its heart and guts, in 90 relentless, interval-free minutes. Here the audience shares, as if in their very drawing room, the anguish, the unravelling secrets of Helene Alving, her son Oswald and those around them.Helene (Flora Montgomery) is celebrating the opening of a children's home named in memory of her dead husband. She has maintained his reputation as a pillar of society, despite his infidelity Read more ...

I have to confess I was deeply sceptical that Haruki Murakami’s 1985 magical realist novel would work on stage. The plot, after all, which splices together cyberpunk and fantasy, takes us through scenarios which include unicorns that turn gold in the autumn, a sinister Gatekeeper who amputates people’s shadows, and a hidden laboratory in the Tokyo Sewer System. True, 22 years ago, I was utterly beguiled by Complicité’s hypnotic production of Murakami’s short story collection, The Elephant Vanishes, at this very same venue. Somehow they had managed to snare the essence of Murakami’s Read more ...

Every day, on the first day of the seventh lunar month, the Gates of Hell open and ghosts are allowed to return to our world. Because the souls of those people who have suffered a violent or unhappy death, or not received the correct funeral rites, cannot rest, they become driven by passion, greed or malice. So when they return to the world of the living, they are hungry ghosts, searching for food – or desperate to deal with unfinished business. Okay. This is the premise of Mei Leng Yew’s debut drama, The Hungry Ghost, currently playing in the studio at the Bush Theatre. Oh, and it stars My Read more ...

Into the Woods, let's dare to state it, is the most perfect music-theatre creation of the last 40 years. Sondheim's sense of timing, equal to Puccini's, and his unprecedented meshing and deconstructing of fairy-tales, with James Lapine, don't require more than making a clear path on the director's part, responding to the magic and the scariness in the designs/lighting, and a cast that can truly sing across the board, not just deliver the patter. It gets all of these in Jordan Fein's production for The Bridge Theatre, now happily transferred to St Martin's Lane.There have been plentiful cast Read more ...

There’s a sinister edge these days to men dressed all in black, marching in step. They used to be quite funny (in this country anyway) and often still are, but the Roderick Spode aspect is fading and the Oswald Mosley element is gaining ground.So it’s no wonder that Celia joins the banished Rosalind fleeing Duke Frederick’s black-shirted fascistic court and the two cousins, always thick as thieves, make off to the Forest of Arden, in this production located in Wales, which isn't much of a stretch.(On press night, and unlike Birnham Wood, this forest refused to move, the set stuck for an hour Read more ...

The title is a portmanteau word, one that hardly stretches one’s sleuthing capacity to decipher, which proves, unlike much else in a very curious two hours, to be well-chosen for what morphs into a portmanteau play about the toxicity of affluence.We open on a busy set (that gets busier and busier, with some frankly terrifying prop work required from the cast) that speaks of late 90s wealth. Charlie Corcoran’s smart decision to hang a couple of faux Rothkos either side of the living room space, is a rare nod to subtle storytelling in a production that favours the loud (literally so in its Read more ...

The first thing I saw on entering just about my favourite theatre was a mic on the end of a lead, centre stage. I’d come a long way, so I didn’t quite turn around and go home, but the thought did cross my mind. I’d become complacent about that fad after seeing none of it so far in 2026, after a slew of it in 2024 and 2025 - but it was back.Reimaginings don’t quite send the same shiver down my spine as the dreaded microphone. Laura Lomas's The House Party (based on Miss Julie) at this very venue and Alexander Zeldin's The Other Place (based on Antigone itself) at the National Theatre were two Read more ...

"German sounds a thoroughly respectable language, and indeed, I believe is so, " pronounces Wilde's Lady Bracknell. She may, in Gerald Barry's operatic setting of The Importance of Being Earnest, have composed her own patter version of Schiller's "Ode to Joy", but you know she wouldn't have a moment's patience with Oscar's prison rant, whether auf Deutsch or in English. Image Jens Harzer, in Berliner Ensemble Artistic Director Oliver Reese's staging of an exceptional German translation by Mirko Bonné (English subtitles either side of the Read more ...

As we know now, but did not in 2013 when Bull was first staged, reality TV, like social media, kills people. You can argue the nuances of that statement but too many smoking guns have piled up on studio floors for the assertion to be gainsaid. Whether The Apprentice has blood on its hands, I neither know nor care, as it is pretty much the Grandaddy of the genre and still limps on into 2027, piling up the cliches amidst the faux sheen of a 1980s upmarket advert.Mike Bartlett’s horrid, if weighty and often funny, play looks back to that show’s early days and looks forward to some hiring Read more ...

Confession is a crazy critter. Isn’t it? I confess that the last time I saw a show at this venue was a year ago: it was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, a stage adaptation of a book whose film version memorably starred Richard Burton. Now I’m here again watching a stage play whose film version likewise starred Burton – and Elizabeth Taylor. Giving this confessional drama their all this time it’s superstars Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup, in a terrific revival directed by Marianne Elliott. No need to confess that this is an exhilarating evening, despite some mild reservations.First staged Read more ...