thu 18/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

Loserville the Musical

Matt Wolf

If all of Loserville were as arresting and witty as its design, the West End would finally have what it hasn't offered playgoers in years: a buoyant British musical not reliant on a celebrated back catalogue or penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber and his various writing partners over time.

Read more...

Red Velvet, Tricycle Theatre

aleks Sierz

Wow, what a lot of debuts. Adrian Lester (Hustle, Bonekickers, Merlin) makes his Tricycle Theatre debut in this new play about a black actor in Regency London, and it’s written by his wife, the actress Lolita Chakrabarti. The play is her first substantial piece, and it’s also the opener in the new regime of incoming artistic director Indhu Rubasingham, who directs.

Read more...

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, West Yorkshire Playhouse

Steve Clarkson

It’s not easy bringing the Mississippi delta to Leeds city centre – yet here its hanging moss and tea-coloured waters fill out every inch of the expansive Quarry stage. Indeed, all that’s missing from Francis O’Connor’s remarkable set is a hungry alligator or two, though in the drama for which it provides a backdrop – Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic about death, desire and deceit – the human characters are capable of inflicting quite enough damage on themselves.

Read more...

You Can Still Make a Killing, Southwark Playhouse

Carole Woddis

Banking and the financial world may have gone into free-fall, but there are still killings to be made. Particularly personal ones. Nicholas Pierpan’s You Can Still Make a Killing is a morality tale for our time, a revenge tragedy without corpses, except for reputations. And, in the City, reputation – or rather perception - is everything.

Read more...

All That Fall, Jermyn Street Theatre

Sheila Johnston

Samuel Beckett recalled sinking into a "whirl of depression" while writing All That Fall. Audiences at this production - those, that is, who have managed to score a ticket for this short, sold-out run - are unlikely to emerge into Jermyn Street in a similarly gloomy frame of mind.

Read more...

Desire Under the Elms, Lyric Hammersmith

Ismene Brown

Pity the A-level English student: for them the “rarely seen masterpieces” that creep onto the curriculum and into the theatres. Judging from the frequently giggling reaction of the audience last night of around 100 17- and 18-year-olds, Eugene O’Neill’s tricky tragedy Desire Under the Elms isn’t going to be winning too many A*s among them next summer. Which is a pity, because this is a tough, gnarled play which strips human instincts to their bones.

Read more...

Damned by Despair, National Theatre

Matt Wolf

Spain's Golden Age turns unaccountably to dross in Damned by Despair, the Tirso de Molina play that is a good half-hour shorter than the running time given in the programme but won't (in this production, anyway) ever be brief enough for some.

Read more...

This House, National Theatre

aleks Sierz

Over the past few years, the 1970s have made a cultural comeback.

Read more...

Cabaret, Savoy Theatre

Matt Wolf

"All this hatred is exhausting," or so remarks Will Young's ceaselessly grimace-prone Emcee in Cabaret in a comment that encapsulates the evening as a whole. Returning to a show he directed to acclaim on the West End six years ago, the director Rufus Norris has reconsidered John Kander and Fred Ebb's song-and-dance classic with less nudity, stronger voices, and lots of stage business where its bite should be.

Read more...

Lighthearted Intercourse, Octagon Theatre, Bolton

philip Radcliffe

Like several of Bill Naughton’s plays, Lighthearted Intercourse started life as a BBC Third Programme drama. When it was broadcast, in 1963, its title was, less provocatively, November Day. Subsequently, it was rejected for the stage by producer Binkie Beaumont, who apparently tried to get Michael Caine or Albert Finney for the lead role of Joe, considered an “Alfie-size” part by the author.

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... ...
Romans: A Novel, Almeida Theatre review – a uniquely extraor...

OMG! I mean OMG doubled!! This is amazing! Or is it? Can Alice Birch’s Romans: A Novel at the...

Robert Redford (1936-2025)

Somehow both rugged and smooth, embodying American values yet often turning up his collar against them, Robert Redford – who died on 16 September...

Brìghde Chaimbeul, Round Chapel review - enchantment in East...

Hackney’s Round Chapel is an appropriate venue. Scottish...

First Person: Musician ALA.NI on how thoughts of empire and...

I’ve never thought of myself as a political artist. I write...

Robert Redford: remembering All the President’s Men

In the summer of 2005, Robert Redford, who died this week, attended the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, to collect a life...

The Producers, Garrick Theatre review - Ve haf vays of makin...

Unexpectedly, there’s a sly reference to James Joyce’s Ulysses interpolated into Act One (in case we hadn’t caught the not...

Appl, Levickis, Wigmore Hall review - fun to the fore in cab...

Concerts at the Wigmore Hall offer many types of pleasure, but not...

Album: The Divine Comedy - Rainy Sunday Afternoon

Neil Hannon has been recording and touring as the Divine Comedy since 1989 and has tried a fair few flavours along the way, from chamber pop to...

Lammermuir Festival 2025, Part 2 review - from the soaringly...

My colleague Boyd Tonkin visited the Lammermuir Festival for the first time this year. His eyes and ears have been opened to its treasures, but...