fri 26/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

Come From Away, Phoenix Theatre review - a necessary corrective to our traumatic times

Matt Wolf

Against the grimmest of backdrops, generosity and even grace can be possible.

Read more...

Agnes Colander, Jermyn Street Theatre review - Naomi Frederick shines in 'new' Granville Barker

Heather Neill

Remembering meeting Harley Granville Barker when casting him as Marchbanks in Candida, Shaw described the 23-year-old as, "altogether the most distinguished and incomparably the most cultivated person whom circumstances had driven into the theatre at that time." He judged his performance as the romantic poet "perfect".

Read more...

9 to 5 the Musical review - Dolly Parton's film returns as retooled version of a Broadway flop

Matt Wolf

A musicals-intensive season gets off to a wan start with 9 to 5, a retooled West End version of a 2009 Broadway flop based on the beloved 1980 film that proffered a sisterhood for the ages in the combo of Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin.

Read more...

The Lady from the Sea, Print Room at the Coronet review - freedom to choose?

Katherine Waters

Ellida (Pia Tjelta) has a choice to make, the outcome of which will bind her future to her past or her present, each represented by a man. On the one hand, there is the tempestuous seafaring Stranger (Øystein Røger) to whom, long ago and in a fit of delirium, she pledged herself; on the other, there is her devoted and rational doctor husband Wangel (Adrian Rawlins).

Read more...

Berberian Sound Studio, Donmar Warehouse review – improves the original

Rachel Halliburton

Two men called "Massimo" face the audience, one very tall, one very, well, minimo. The tall Massimo (Tom Espiner, pictured below) sports wavy shoulder length blond hair and an exuberant pearl rosary, the minimo Massimo (Hemi Yeroham) has dark hair, a beard and glasses, and intense stare.

Read more...

The American Clock, Old Vic review - Arthur Miller's musical history lesson drags

Marianka Swain

This year’s unofficial Arthur Miller season – following The Price and ahead of All My Sons at the Old Vic and Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic – now turns to his 1980 work, The American Clock, inspired in part by Miller’s own memories of the 1929 Wall Street Crash and subsequent Great Depression.

Read more...

All About Eve, Noel Coward Theatre review - less a bumpy night than an erratically arresting one

Matt Wolf

Women spend a lot of time gazing at themselves in the mirror in the Belgian auteur director Ivo van Hove's latest stage-to-screen deconstruction, All About Eve, which is based on one of the most-beloved of all films about the theatre: the 1950 Oscar-winner of the same name.

Read more...

The Price, Wyndham's Theatre review - David Suchet stands supreme

Tom Birchenough

There’s a rather sublime equilibrium to Arthur Miller’s 1968 play between the overwhelmingly heavy weight of history and a sheer life force that somehow functions, against all odds, as its counterbalance.

Read more...

The Good Person of Szechwan, Pushkin Drama Theatre, Barbican review - slick Russian Brecht

David Nice

"In our country the capable man needs luck," belts out Shen Te, the Good Person of Szechwan in the most powerful song of Brecht's epic "parable play" of 1941.

Read more...

Blue, Chapter Arts Centre review - heartbreak in the family home

Owen Richards

What's worse than grieving? That all-consuming loss. For those that have experienced it, nothing really comes close. It starts to bug Thomas (Jordan Bernarde, main picture second right) during his visit to the Williams household. Recently bereaved himself, he senses the fragility in the air but no-one seems to give a straight 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... ...
Mariah Carey Is Still 'Here for It All' After an E...

One of the great moments of Private Eye magazine’s fustiness in recent years was putting Mariah Carey in Pseud’s Corner, for the quote about how...

Joanna Pocock: Greyhound review – on the road again

Joanna Pocock’s second full-length book, Greyhound, tells the story of a single journey made and remade. In 2006, after the death of her...

Entertaining Mr Sloane, Young Vic review - funny, flawed but...

Playwright Joe Orton was a merry prankster. His main work – such as Loot (1965) and What the Butler Saw...

Helleur-Simcock, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester r...

Rachel Helleur-Simcock’s first appearance with the Hallé after appointment as leader of its cello section was auspicious – she became the soloist...

Tosca, Royal Opera review - Ailyn Pérez steps in as the most...

Forget Anna Netrebko, if you ever gave the Russian Scarpia’s former cultural ambassador much thought (theartsdesk wouldn’t). It should be...

iD-Reloaded, Cirque Éloize, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury revi...

It was the absence of performing animals that defined it in the 1980s, but contemporary...

Bacchae, National Theatre review - cheeky, uneven version of...

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...

Album: Solar Eyes - Live Freaky! Die Freaky!

Solar Eyes are an indie dance two-piece from Birmingham’s Hall Green. With a sound that binds together psychedelic guitars, foot stomping beats...