Theatre Reviews
Absolute Hell, National Theatre review - high gloss show saves over-rated classicThursday, 26 April 2018
Rodney Ackland must be the most well-known forgotten man in postwar British theatre. His legend goes like this: Absolute Hell was originally titled The Pink Room, and first staged in 1952 at the Lyric Hammersmith, where it got a critical mauling. The Sunday Times’s Harold Hobson said that the audience “had the impression of being present, if not at the death of talent, at least at its very serious illness”. Read more... |
The Prudes, Royal Court review - hilarious but frustrating sex showWednesday, 25 April 2018
Playwright Anthony Neilson has always been fascinated by sex. I mean, who isn’t? But he has made it a central part of his career. In his bad-boy in-yer-face phase, from the early 1990s to about the mid-2000s, he pioneered a type of theatre that talked explicitly about sex and sexuality. Read more... |
Strictly Ballroom: The Musical, Piccadilly Theatre review - largely naffWednesday, 25 April 2018
A much tinkered-with show needs to go back to the drawing board, if this latest iteration of Strictly Ballroom: The Musical is any gauge. Read more... |
Kathleen Turner: Finding My Voice, The Other Palace review - a familiar name in freshly exciting formWednesday, 25 April 2018
A one-time Martha and Maggie the Cat in the theatre, and a screen siren of the sort they don't make any more, might not be the first person you expect to see swaggering on to a London stage in a dark pantsuit ready to offer up two hours of song and chat. Read more... |
Rasheeda Speaking, Trafalgar Studios review - unsettling comedy, thorny racismSaturday, 21 April 2018
Conflict and comedy can be unpredictable bedfellows, and Chicago playwright Joel Drake Johnson’s 2014 play occasionally risks overstretching itself in its attempts to reconcile the two – although its immediate context, the world of office politics, has a rich history of showing humanity at its worst, and... Read more... |
Bat Out of Hell, Dominion Theatre review - the Meat Loaf musical returns, batty as everFriday, 20 April 2018
Back by feverishly popular demand, Jim Steinman’s mega-musical is no longer in danger of alarming unsuspecting opera-goers. Read more... |
Tina, Aldwych Theatre review - new Tina Turner bio-musical is simply OKWednesday, 18 April 2018
It is, perhaps, a tale that suffers from overfamiliarity. Tina Turner’s rags-to-riches story – from humble beginnings as little Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, to her discovery, reinvention and sickening abuse by husband and manager Ike Turner, and finally her rebirth as a solo rock'n'roll star – is the stuff of showbiz legend. Read more... |
Instructions for Correct Assembly, Royal Court review - Jane Horrocks in Middle England 'Westworld'Monday, 16 April 2018
There’s a whole universe which British theatre has yet to explore properly – it’s called the sci-fi imagination. Although this place is familiar from countless films and television series, it is more or less a stranger to our stages. Read more... |
The Moderate Soprano, Duke of York's Theatre review - love and opera with a flinty edgeSaturday, 14 April 2018
"What could be more serious than married life?" asked Richard Strauss, whose operas became a surprising pillar of Glyndebourne's repertoire some time after the early days dramatised in David Hare's play. Read more... |
Chicago, Phoenix Theatre review - baggy revival picks up later paceFriday, 13 April 2018
Chicago has been on, in one form or another, for a very long time. Read more... |
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★★★★★
‘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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