mon 08/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

The Son, Duke of York's Theatre review - a piercing drama of depression

Tom Birchenough

A tale of teenage depression and its family resonances, Florian Zeller’s The Son has a devastating simplicity.

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Bartholomew Fair, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - Jonson's chaotic slice of 17th-century life

Veronica Lee

It was a bold choice by director Blanche McIntyre to stage Ben Jonson's seldom performed, sprawling slice-of-life play in the bijou Sam Wanamaker Playhouse rather than Shakespeare's Globe's main stage – even if she has pared down both the script and what seems like a cast of thousands for her modern-dress production.

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Fleabag, Wyndham's Theatre review - superb swansong for modern classic

Veronica Lee

We're saying goodbye to a much treasured friend. Fleabag will live on, of course – other actresses have and will inhabit the role – but Phoebe Waller-Bridge, its creator, has said this short run at Wyndham's Theatre is the last time she will perform the character on stage.

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The Secret River, National Theatre review - turbulent tale of Australia's past

Rachel Halliburton

Neil Armfield’s resonant, turbulent production of Kate Grenville’s classic Australian novel The Secret River sing out from the stage of the Olivier like an epic, with its conflicts, culture clashes, and quest for new territories.

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Appropriate, Donmar Warehouse review - fraught family reunion blisteringly told

Tom Birchenough

You can’t fail to feel the ghosts in Appropriate at the Donmar Warehouse: they are there in the very timbers of the ancient Southern plantation house that is the setting for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s fraught...

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The Doctor, Almeida Theatre review - Robert Icke's long goodbye

aleks Sierz

After six years, associate director Robert Icke bids farewell to the Almeida Theatre. In this time he has pioneered contemporary versions of classic stories, such as 1984, Oresteia, Uncle Vanya, Mary Stuart and Hamlet with Andrew Scott.

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Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: The Red/ Gone Full Havisham

Veronica Lee

The Red Pleasance Dome 

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Edinburgh Fringe 2019 review: How Not to Drown

David Kettle

Urgent, fast-paced, seemingly never pausing for breath, How Not to Drown is a real-life boy’s own adventure, an appeal for compassion towards refugees, and an interrogation of nationality and identity. That’s quite a mix for a show of 100 minutes.

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Once on This Island, Southwark Playhouse review - folkloric Caribbean musical charms

Marianka Swain

As British summer really kicks in (umbrellas at the ready), our thoughts might turn fondly to the sunny Caribbean. Good timing, then, for the return of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s 1990 musical set in the French Antilles.

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Edinburgh International Festival 2019 review: Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation

David Kettle

It’s the end of the world as we know it. At least according to Miles, scientist turned messiah, who lost his son in an accident at a frozen lake, and who experienced visions of an impending apocalypse in his subsequent coma.

He’s established a colony of believers (let’s not call it a cult) in South America, and we’re here to bear witness to the arrival of his estranged wife, intent on reclaiming their daughter back to civilisation.

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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.


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