Theatre Reviews
Gundog, Royal Court review - tedious and inconsequentialThursday, 08 February 2018
First the goats, and now the sheep – has this venue become an urban farm? Rural life, which was once so central to our English pastoral culture, is now largely absent from metropolitan stages. And from our culture. Read more... |
Long Day's Journey Into Night, Wyndham's Theatre review - Lesley Manville hits ecstatic, fatal highsWednesday, 07 February 2018
Eugene O’Neill’s 1945 play Long Day’s Journey Into Night is famously a portrayal of the hellish damage that a sick person can wreak on their family, closely based on his own family. Read more... |
Collective Rage, Southwark Playhouse review - a rollicking riotWednesday, 07 February 2018
“Pussy is pussy” and “bitches are bitches” but Jen Silverman’s Collective Rage at Southwark Playhouse smashes tautologies with roguish comedy in a tight five-hander smartly directed by Charlie Parham. Read more... |
Paines Plough Roundabout, Orange Tree Theatre review - too brief to really rockMonday, 05 February 2018
Hype is a dangerous thing. It often raises expectations beyond the reasonable, and disappointment inevitably follows. It also prioritises PR over artistic activity, putting the publicity cart before the creative horse, sucking energy away from plays to feed the marketing machine. Read more... |
Booby's Bay, Finborough Theatre review - a bit fishySaturday, 03 February 2018
Carry on out of London past the Finborough Theatre and you hit the A4. Follow it east as it becomes the M4, take a southern turn at Bristol for the M5 and you’re in the West Country. Bude and Bodmin, Liskeard, St Austell, Padstow, Mousehole, Newquay and Newlyn. Read more... |
Julius Caesar, Bridge Theatre review – blood, sweat and bulletsFriday, 02 February 2018
All hail! Shakespeare’s Roman drama may be enjoying something of a resurgence at present, but it rarely proves as vital and arresting in performance as this. Read more... |
The Open House, The Print Room review - razor wit, theatrical brioMonday, 29 January 2018
The American family has seldom looked more desperate. Will Eno’s The Open House depicts a gathering of such dismal awfulness that it surely sets precedents for this staple element of American drama. Read more... |
The Believers Are But Brothers, Bush Theatre review - a gimmick in search of a storySaturday, 27 January 2018
Do boys never leave the playground? Just when I was reasonably sure that the crisis of masculinity was an old-fashioned trope – I mean, so very 1990s – along comes a one-man show that investigates how lonely young men, seething with resentment, surf the internet, attracted like flies to shit by tech-savvy extremist groups of both secular and religious persuasions. And boy are they persuasive! Read more... |
Mary Stuart, Duke of York's Theatre review - superb teamwork from Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams in Schiller's thrillerFriday, 26 January 2018
Casting decisions do not usually make gripping theatre. But in Robert Icke’s version of Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 political thriller, newly transferred from the Almeida to the West End, settling the question of which of two actresses will play the title role and which her nemesis, Elizabeth I, is an edge-of-the-seat moment night after night. Heads or tails? Before the entire assembled cast, the... Read more... |
John, National Theatre review - in for the long haul?Thursday, 25 January 2018
On their return home from Ohio to New York, young couple Jenny and Elias (Anneika Rose and Tom Mothersdale, main picture) make a detour to Gettysburg for a few days’ sightseeing. Elias has been fascinated by the town and its bloody history since he was a young boy; Jenny is ambivalent, and in the throes of an incapacitatingly painful period. Read more... |
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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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