Theatre Reviews
King Lear, Almeida Theatre review - Danny Sapani dazzles in this spartan tragedyThursday, 22 February 2024
Less than three years after her magnificent Macbeth, Yaël Farber returns to the Almeida with another Shakespeare tragedy. Her take on King Lear (main picture) offers a full-bodied, slow-burn version of this devastating drama, where Danny Sapani’s masterful performance as Lear sears the stage. Read more... |
Hadestown, Lyric Theatre review - soul-stirring musical gloriously revamps classical mythsThursday, 22 February 2024
Doom and gloom, we are told, may have abounded in the classical underworld, but Hadestown suggests otherwise. Returning to London five years after its run at the National Theatre, this time with a slew of Tony Awards, this bracing musical proves its mettle as a heart-warming and atmospheric feast of deeply soulful tunes. Read more... |
An Enemy of the People, Duke of York's Theatre - performative and predictableWednesday, 21 February 2024
Real life is a helluva lot scarier right now than you might guess from the performative theatrics on display in the new West End version of An Enemy of the People, which updates Ibsen's 1882 play to our vexatious modern day. Read more... |
Double Feature, Hampstead Theatre review - with directors like these, who needs enemiesWednesday, 21 February 2024
It’s awards season in the film world, which means that we’re currently swamped by hyperbolic shows of love and respect – actors and their directors gushing about how each could simply never have reached their creative heights without the other. Of course, it’s not always like that; there is plenty of hell unleased on a movie set. Read more... |
Turning the Screw, King’s Head Theatre review - Britten and the not-so-innocentSaturday, 17 February 2024
David Hemmings was, by his own later admission, a knowing and bumptious boy when Britten cast him as the ill-fated Miles in his operatic adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. The upheaval Hemmings wrought in Aldeburgh’s Crag House when Britten and his life-partner Peter Pears were living there has potential for a similar ambiguity to the opera’s carousel of what’s innocent and what’s “depraved,” and Kevin Kelly has realized the essential drama in it. Read more... |
The Hills of California, Harold Pinter Theatre - ladies' night for Jez ButterworthSaturday, 17 February 2024
Art makes for unexpected bedfellows, and so it proves in Jez Butterworth's moving if meandering The Hills of California. Read more... |
Dear Octopus, National Theatre - period rarity is a real pleasureFriday, 16 February 2024
Sisters are doing it for themselves, just as families as a whole are, too, on the London stage these days. Dear Octopus follows Till the Stars Come Down and The Hills of California as the third domestic drama I've seen in the last 10 days and in some ways the most surprising. Read more... |
Just For One Day, The Old Vic review - clunky scenes and self-conscious exposition between great songsThursday, 15 February 2024
So, a jukebox musical celebrating the apotheosis of the White Saviour, the ultimate carnival of rock stars’ self-aggrandisement and the Boomers’ biggest bonanza of feelgood posturing? One is tempted to stand opposite The Old Vic, point at the punters going in and tell anyone within earshot, “Tonight Thank God it’s them instead of you”. Read more... |
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - inventive rollercoaster of a revampWednesday, 14 February 2024
Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novella The Picture of Dorian Gray has given the world a trope built for flattery, along the lines of: “You look so young, you must have a portrait growing old in your attic”. But how many who use this line have read the text itself? Read more... |
Ragnarok, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh review - moving miniature apocalypseTuesday, 13 February 2024
In terms of conveying monumental events using small-scale means, Edinburgh’s Tortoise in a Nutshell visual theatre company has form. Their 2013 Feral, for example, depicted the social breakdown of an apparently idyllic seaside town using puppetry and a lovingly assembled miniature set, to quietly devastating effect. 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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