mon 22/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

Hamlet, Royal Exchange, Manchester

Veronica Lee

One of the oddities about theatre is that there can be a gripping performance at the heart of an underwhelming production – and so is the case with Maxine Peake’s Hamlet, directed by Sarah Frankcom. This was a much anticipated production – Peake going home, as it were.

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Ghost from a Perfect Place, Arcola Theatre

aleks Sierz

Few contemporary playwrights have enjoyed as many revivals as polymath Philip Ridley. The first two of his 1990s gothic East End trilogy — The Pitchfork Disney and The Fastest Clock in the Universe — have recently been staged again to great effect and now it’s the turn of the final play in the trilogy, Ghost from a Perfect Place. When it was originally put on at the Hampstead Theatre in 1994 it shocked audiences with its full-on violence.

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Forbidden Broadway, Vaudeville Theatre

David Nice

“It takes a star to parody one,” wrote theartsdesk’s Edward Seckerson, nailing the essence of this immortal spoof-fest’s last incarnation at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Star quality was assured given the presence of Damian Humbley, peerless in Merrily We Roll Along and even the unjustly short-lived Lend Me a Tenor, who’s in this transfer.

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King Charles III, Wyndham's Theatre

Ismene Brown

Prince Charles’s “black spider letters” - his attempts to influence or change government policy - are real, as is the government’s long collusion with Clarence House to keep them from the public, despite the efforts of The Guardian in particular to expose them. This gives Mike Bartlett’s play King Charles III, an imagining of the next king becoming a champion of press freedom, a sharply ironic edge deep below its already very entertaining satire.

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Fully Committed, Menier Chocolate Factory

Marianka Swain

If Chiltern Firehouse is any indication, power in our society lies not in bank balance, postcode or job title, but in being seen nibbling crab doughnuts at the hottest restaurant in town. Becky Mode’s merciless skewering of that particular ego trip first delighted the discerning palates of Menier Chocolate Factory audiences in 2004 and makes a welcome return for the theatres 10th anniversary, now directed by original star and creative collaborator Mark Setlock.

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True West, Tricycle Theatre

Demetrios Matheou

Time doesn’t take any of the edge off Sam Shepard’s rollicking reflection on the dichotomy of America, the tussle between the myth and the dream, represented by two warring brothers trapped with an idea for a bad film in a sweltering California condominium. Written in 1980, it’s still brilliantly strange, raucously funny, rippling with resonance.

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Breeders, St James Theatre

Marianka Swain

There is a moment in Breeders when Ben Ockrent appears to be channelling Dennis Kelly’s chilling Utopia. Never mind the topical issue of homosexual parenting – should we even have children at all? Surely, argues Jemima Rooper’s eco-warrior Sharon, we would simply be bringing more people into a world that we have all but destroyed? Ockrent toys with that arresting darkness, before dismissing it in another droll one-liner.

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The Flouers o'Edinburgh, Finborough Theatre

Heather Neill

There are 15 characters in Robert McLellan's quirky 1948 comedy, but the star is the language most of them speak. To mark the referendum later this month, the Finborough is mounting a season of Scottish work, including a trio of classics, under the title "Scotland Decides 2014/Tha Alba A'Taghadh 2014".

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The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare's Globe

Marianka Swain

It begins sombrely, with the grave recounting of a shipwreck, but such emotive moments are fleeting: as the drama ratchets up, it only serves to fuel the splendid zaniness of Shakespeare's 1594 farce. Granted, it's not his most nuanced comedy – the wordplay is relatively unsophisticated, and there’s a greater reliance on confusion, pratfalls and repetition – yet in Blanche McIntyre’s spirited production, it is, indisputably, an awful lot of fun.

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Little Revolution, Almeida Theatre

aleks Sierz

Dramatic national events such as riots tend to attract verbatim theatre practitioners like smashed shop windows attract looters. In this new play, Alecky Blythe – who specialises in recording ordinary people and editing their words into a humane story – takes to the streets to see what people were saying during the English riots of summer 2011.

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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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