mon 21/07/2025

Theatre Reviews

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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Woyzeck, Old Vic review - John Boyega’s thrillingly powerful triumph

aleks Sierz

Welcome back, John Boyega. Less than a decade ago, he was an unknown budding British stage actor, then he took off as a global film star thanks to his role as Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens after his debut in Attack the Block, the comedy sci-fi flick.

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Tristan & Yseult, Brighton Festival review - playful and inventive storytelling

Veronica Lee

Tristan & Yseult has become something of a calling card for Kneehigh, which was founded in 1980 and is now the unofficial National Theatre of Cornwall. Emma Rice, currently artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe in London, created this production in 2003 with writers Anna Maria Murphy and Carl Grose, and it catapulted the company to national recognition.

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The Gabriels, Brighton Festival review - hilarious drama in the shadow of Trump

Nick Hasted

The subtitle of Richard Nelson’s new trilogy suggests an anti-Trump polemic. Instead, its miraculous, almost invisible craft fulfils the President’s most hollow promise. It restores full humanity to a family of lower-middle class Americans who often feel slighted and helpless. As they gather around their kitchen table, the Gabriels talk and live more fully than most media and politicians ever really believe of those they describe and rule.

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Meow Meow's Souvenir, Brighton Festival review – subversive but evocative new song-cycle

bella Todd

Dream palace, cesspit and church; celebrated, mopped (by Marlene Dietrich, no less) and fucked: Brighton’s Theatre Royal has seen a whole lot of history, of both the splendid and the seedy variety. Now it has found a magnificent if unlikely mouthpiece in the form of post-modern cabaret star Meow Meow.

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Richard III review - Greg Hicks gruesomely impressive as power-crazed ruler

Jenny Gilbert

There may never have been a time when Shakespeare’s Richard III did not have contemporary relevance, but surely never more than it does right now.

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Lettice and Lovage, Menier Chocolate Factory review - Peter Shaffer's star vehicle sags

Matt Wolf

You have to hand it to Felicity Kendal: this ever-game actress is fearless about treading in the footsteps of the British theatre's grandes dames. In 2006, she starred on the West End quite creditably in Amy's View, inheriting a part originated on both sides of the Atlantic by Judi Dench.

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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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