fri 12/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

No Dogs, No Indians, Brighton Festival review – poor production shoulders too big a task

bella Todd

A whacking great story has gone largely untold in British theatre: the legacy of colonialism in India, including the cultural ghosts the British left behind. With the 70th anniversary of Indian independence just round the corner this summer, poet and playwright Siddhartha Bose has set out to address this "historical amnesia".

Read more...

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.


latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Presteigne Festival 2025 review - new music is centre stage...

If you were a devotee of Dmitri Shostakovich whose only opportunity to attend some live performances marking this year’s 50th anniversary of his...

Islands review - sunshine noir serves an ace

From its ambiguous opening shot onwards, writer/director Jan-Ole Gerster’s Islands is a tricksy animal, which doesn’t just keep...

A Single Man, Linbury Theatre review - an anatomy of melanch...

Mind, body, body, mind. Medical science confirms the powerful two-way traffic between emotional and physical health. Nonetheless the idea of...

theartsdesk Q&A: actor Sam Riley on playing a washed-up...

You won't find Sam Riley lying at the pool in a holiday resort – unless it's for work. "I'd rather stay home to be honest", says the...

Album: Motion City Soundtrack - The Same Old Wasted Wonderfu...

Everyone’s favourite angsty pop-punk nerds are back, balancing new with nostalgia and synths with guitars, this is exactly what fans have been...

Cow | Deer, Royal Court review - paradox-rich account of non...

I love irony. Especially beautiful irony. So I’m very excited about the ironic gesture of staging a show with no words at the...

Album: Baxter Dury - Allbarone

Quite why Baxter Dury isn't already a national treasure is a mystery to me. Not for his nepo connections but...

Lammermuir Festival 2025 review - music with soul from the h...

One piece that you’re unlikely to hear at the Lammermuir Festival is Lucia di Lammermoor. As co-director James Waters explained during a...

Album: Yasmine Hamdan - I Remember I Forget بنسى وبتذكر

A lot is going on during Yasmine Hamdan’s third solo album. Despite all ten songs of I Remember I Forget بنسى وبتذكر drawing from the...