fri 05/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

Richard III, Tobacco Factory, Bristol

mark Kidel

Performing Shakespeare in a former cigarette factory in South Bristol has become something of a ritual for Andrew Hilton and his close-knit company. Any act of ritual requires a dedicated space and the red-tiled floor on which the drama unfolds on this most intimate of stages has taken on a certain aura.

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If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep, Royal Court Theatre

aleks Sierz

Is this the most poetic title in London theatre today? Anders Lustgarten’s new play joins a ragged march of work, from David Hare’s The Power of Yes (2009) to Clare Duffy’s Money: The Gameshow (currently at the Bush Theatre), which attempts to tackle the global financial meltdown. Unlike these other shows, however, it’s USP lies in its claim to offer a solution to the pains and penalties of economic austerity.

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A Chorus Line, London Palladium

Edward Seckerson

Even singular sensations grow older - yet A Chorus Line, which coined the phrase, seems ageless, so sure is it of its place in musical theatre history, so locked now into our theatrical consciousness.

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Rutherford & Son, Viaduct Theatre, Halifax

philip Radcliffe

“Work, more work and six foot of earth in the end. That’s life,” says John Rutherford. That single-minded work ethic is what drives him on and drives his family to despair and desertion. As head of the century-old family glassworks business going through hard times (the banks won’t lend money), he bullies his way out of a changing world that threatens his control (“I’ve a right to be obeyed”).

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Rhinocéros, Barbican Theatre

David Nice

I laughed quite a bit going round the exhibition to which the Barbican’s latest theatre events are tied, The Bride and the Bachelors. Pioneer Marcel Duchamp’s 1921 “Readymade” Why Not Sneeze, Rrose Sélavy? is funny in itself: a metal birdcage containing marble sugarcubes with a cuttle bone and a thermometer stuck through the bars.

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Dear World, Charing Cross Theatre

David Nice

It's odd that Jerry Herman merits only a passing mention in Stephen Sondheim's two-volume autobiographical take on Broadway words and music, Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat. In a couple of subjects Herman chose no less daringly than the master.

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The Vortex, Rose Theatre Kingston

Veronica Lee

Noël Coward's 1924 play must have been thought very daring at the time, dealing as it does with a young man's cocaine addiction - no wonder it has been called the jazz age's Shopping and Fucking. But young composer Nicky Lancaster's penchant for nose candy wasn't the social transgression being examined - his real addiction is not drugs, but men.

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Spades, Roundhouse

alexandra Coghlan

You don’t so much watch a Robert Lepage show as surrender to it, and his latest project sees Canada’s most innovative theatre-maker in full assault. It’s hard to think of another director whose response to the Iraq War would involve an Elvis impersonator, menopause as a major plot point and a visual cadenza for twelve perspex chairs, but that’s the love/hate thrill of Lepage. Spades is the first in a planned tetralogy of plays each themed around one of the suits of cards.

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Desolate Heaven, Theatre 503

Laura Silverman

In a draining first work, Ailís Ní Ríain infuses a coming-of-age saga with Irish folklore. The outline sounds gripping enough: burdened with caring for their ill parents, two teenage friends run away to the Irish coast. But then come cultural threads that weave uncomfortably into the canvas, plus surreal overtones that suggest the story is not so straightforward.

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The Stepmother, Orange Tree Theatre

Matt Wolf

When's the last time you encountered a play with a hissable anti-hero and a young heroine who radiates charity, decency, and all things good?

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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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