Theatre Reviews
The Billionaire Inside Your Head, Hampstead Theatre review - a map of a man with OCDSaturday, 27 September 2025
What would it be like to be driven by OCD urges into idolising Elon Musk and aspiring to be one of his tribe of tech bros? In his debut play, Will Lord, who has been diagnosed with OCD himself, has attempted to spell this out, with mixed results. Read more... |
Lacrima, Barbican review - riveting, lucid examination of the forces of globalisation through a dressFriday, 26 September 2025
So often the focus – in the coverage of a royal wedding – is the story of the woman wearing the bridal dress. While every fashion choice she makes will be scrutinised for the rest of her life, it is, nonetheless, she herself who will be mercilessly interrogated as the representative both of a nation’s ideals and its discontents. Read more... |
Entertaining Mr Sloane, Young Vic review - funny, flawed but welcome nonethelessFriday, 26 September 2025
Playwright Joe Orton was a merry prankster. His main work – such as Loot (1965) and What the Butler Saw (1969) – was provocative, taboo-tickling and often wildly hilarious. Read more... |
50 First Dates: The Musical, The Other Palace review - romcom turned musicalFriday, 26 September 2025
About halfway through this world premiere, I realised what was missing. Where is the sinister lift, where are the long corridors and, most of all, WHERE IS MR. MILCHICK? Read more... |
Bacchae, National Theatre review - cheeky, uneven version of Euripides' tragedyThursday, 25 September 2025
The word "after" can be elastic when a modern writer is inspired by a classic. Nima Taleghani here stretches it to breaking point, although, to be fair his piece is also described as a new play. It is not so much "after" Euripides as a celebration of theatre with frequent sideways reference - mostly knowing and comic - to The Bacchae. Read more... |
The Harder They Come, Stratford East review - still packs a punch, half a century onWednesday, 24 September 2025
The impact of great art is physical as much as it is psychological. I recall the first time I saw Perry Henzell’s 1972 film, The Harder They Come. I’d been in the pub and, as we did then with just four channels, slumped in front of the television to see what was on late on a Friday night. Read more... |
The Weir, Harold Pinter Theatre review - evasive fantasy, bleak truth and possible communityMonday, 22 September 2025
Why are the Irish such good storytellers? The historical perspective is that the oral tradition goes way, way back, allied to the gift of the gab. On the psychological level, is it partly an evasion, an escape from telling the truth about oneself? The transition from fantasy to honesty in Conor McPherson’s first play of 1997, so much better than his latest, suggests as much. Read more... |
Dracula, Lyric Hammersmith review - hit-and-miss recasting of the familiar story as feminist diatribeSaturday, 20 September 2025
If a classic story is going to be told for the umpteenth time, there is a good bet it will come with a novel spin on it. So it proves with a new Dracula by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, directed by Emma Baggott. Read more... |
The Code, Southwark Playhouse Elephant review - superbly cast, resonant play about the price of fame in HollywoodFriday, 19 September 2025
Hot on the heels of Goodnight, Oscar comes another fictional meeting of real entertainment giants in Los Angeles, this time over a decade earlier. Michael McKeever’s The Code is a period piece, but one with a resonating message for today’s equivalents of the Hayes Code and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Read more... |
Reunion, Kiln Theatre review - a stormy night in every senseFriday, 19 September 2025
If you ever wanted to know what a mash up of Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson, stirred (and there’s a lot of stirring in this play) with a soupçon of Chekhov, Ibsen and Williams looks like, The Kiln has your answer. Read more... |
Pages
Advertising feature
★★★★★
‘A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.’
The Observer, Kate Kellaway
Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.
★★★★★
‘This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.’
The Times, Ann Treneman
Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.
Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
with no booking fee.
latest in today
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages...
