mon 13/01/2025

Theatre Reviews

Annie review - a 12-year-old star is born

Matt Wolf

Forty years after Annie swept on to Broadway, brimming with shining-faced optimism amidst wearying times, along comes Nikolai Foster's West End revival of the show to do much the same today.

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On the Town review - triple threat Danny Mac and co are unmissable

David Benedict

On 8 April 1952, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green were chatting to Charlie Chaplin at a party when he started raving about a picture he’d seen the previous night at Sam Goldwyn’s house. It was called Singin’ in the Rain – had they heard of it? “Heard of it? We wrote it!” But then, this dynamic duo had form: five years earlier they wrote On the Town.

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Sand in the Sandwiches, Theatre Royal, Haymarket review - delightful but sanitised

Matthew Wright

Bard of Metroland and scourge of Slough, John Betjeman is, alongside Philip Larkin on parenthood, still one of the 20th century’s most-quoted poets. Hugh Whitemore’s play, part highlights reading and part biographical drama, offers a hugely charming account of a poet who, for many readers, epitomises a nostalgic but conflicted view of England.

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La Strada, The Other Palace review - Fellini's tragicomedy becomes a noisy romp

David Nice

Hitting the essence of a Fellini masterpiece in a different medium is no easy task.

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Killology, Royal Court review – both disturbing and life-affirming

aleks Sierz

The monologue is a terrific theatre form. Using this narrative device, you can cover huge amounts of storytelling territory, fill in lots of background detail – and get right inside a character’s head. But the best monologues are those that interlock with other solo voices, giving different points of view on the same situation.

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Jam review – obsession and resentment in the classroom

Jenny Gilbert

When TV drama tackles Britain’s class divide, the go-to working-class type is the northerner: gritty, blunt of vowel and partial to a deep-fried Mars bar. The first and perhaps only pleasant surprise in Matt Parvin’s debut play Jam, produced by the ever-adventurous Finborough, is that it’s set in Cornwall.

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An Octoroon review - slavery reprised as melodrama in a vibrantly theatrical show

Tom Birchenough

Make no mistake about it, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a playwright to watch.

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Deposit, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs review - capital's housing crisis lands centre-stage

Will Rathbone

Matt Hartley's personal take on London's housing crisis returns to the Hampstead Theatre's studio space downstairs and is sure to hit audiences where, so to speak, they live.

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Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's Globe review - Emma Rice goes out with a bang

alexandra Coghlan

The Globe’s artistic director Emma Rice has made no secret of her desire to go out with a bang, in this, the final season of her brutally truncated tenure at the company.

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The Mikado review - Sasha Regan's all-male operetta formula hits a reef

David Nice

Men playing boys playing girls, women and men, all female parts convincingly falsettoed and high musical standards as backbone: Sasha Regan's single-sex Gilbert and Sullivan has worked a special magic on Iolanthe and The Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore and now The Mikado, not so much. Energetic song and dance are still in evidence.

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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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