wed 30/07/2025

Theatre Reviews

The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare's Globe

Matt Wolf

The Taming of the Shrew celebrates its own rumbustious, raucous (mis)behaviour, so why shouldn't Shakespeare's comedy be granted a production that follows suit? From an opening gambit involving bodily fluids sprayed in the direction of the groundlings to a food fight later that would put the bad boys of Posh to shame, Toby Frow's directorial debut at Shakespeare's Globe turns up the volume to consistently giddy effect.

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Dandy Dick, Theatre Royal Brighton

bella Todd

"I can’t live without horse flesh, if it’s only a piece of cat’s meat on a skewer.” So declares Patricia Hodge’s gung-ho racing fanatic Georgina in this straight-down-the-line revival of Pinero’s 125-year-old caper, which requires cast and audience to subsist on the theatrical equivalent of the latter.

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The Prophet, Gate Theatre

aleks Sierz

The Arab Spring has arguably been the most important international event after the credit crunch, yet it seems to be of little interest to British playwrights. Parochial, obsessed with writing only what they know, they have been put to shame by Hassan Abdulrazzak, an Iraqi playwright who was born in Czechoslovakia and now lives in London, working as a scientist.

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Julius Caesar, BBC Four/Match of the Day Live, BBC One

Jasper Rees

“Let slip the dogs of war.” Somewhere in the bowels of Kiev’s Olympic Stadium, a football coach will have said something along these lines around the half seven mark. Meanwhile, over on the clever-clever channel, an alternative meeting between England and Italy took place.

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Democracy, Old Vic

Sheila Johnston

You might not think that a drama about German parliamentary politics in the 1970s would be of great urgency today. But when Democracy, Michael Frayn's play about Willy Brandt and the Günter Guillaume spy scandal, first opened in 2003, Brits swiftly discerned links with another charismatic politician, the first left-wing leader in decades, while across the Atlantic the womanising German Chancellor looked very much like Bill Clinton.

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LIFT 2012: The Coming Storm, BAC

Carmel Doohan

You know that feeling when you start telling a story in the pub only to realise that no one is listening? You look up to see that that two people at the end have started a new conversation among themselves and the rest are laughing about something someone else said earlier? You falter a little, try to catch someone’s eye and wonder if you should just plough on or give up. This could be what Forced Entertainment's new show The Coming Storm is about, but it's hard to tell.

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The Last of the Haussmans, National Theatre

aleks Sierz

When does an urgent new trend become a theatre cliché? Over the past couple of years, the idea of generational conflict between the have-it-all baby boomers and the have-nothing-but-debts youngsters has appeared in plays such as James Graham’s The Whisky Taster and Mike Bartlett’s Love, Love, Love. Now the South Bank flagship, in a production starring national treasure Julie Walters, enters the fray with actor Stephen Beresford’s first play, which opened last night.

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Mary Shelley, Tricycle Theatre

aleks Sierz

Mary Shelley and all her works have dogged the footsteps of contemporary theatre — in a way that’s a bit reminiscent of her most famous creation. Last year, there was Frankenstein at the National and this year a revival of Howard Brenton’s Bloody Poetry (about the Shelley/Byron ménage) on the fringe. Now, following the success of their Brontë, Shared Experience theatre company are back in London with a new Mrs Shelley docudrama.

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Twelfth Night/The Tempest, RSC, Roundhouse

alexandra Coghlan

The RSC’s Twelfth Night dumps its audience unceremoniously onto the shores of Ilyria in the thump and beat of waves. While Viola struggles from the (very deep and very real) water, asking “What country friends is this?”, we by contrast find ourselves in familiar territory. Like this season’s opener, A Comedy of Errors, both Twelfth Night and The Tempest take their birth in the water.

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Globe to Globe: Henry V, Shakespeare's Globe

Demetrios Matheou

Henry V is a play with so many layers, and such ambivalence, that it can suit a multitude of purposes. When Laurence Olivier made his film version in 1944, it was as a propagandist rallying cry, a reminder of what was at stake in a war that was far from won; 60 years later, Nicholas Hytner’s modern-dress production at the National Theatre was a bullish anti-war statement, lent potency by the country’s then current excursion into Iraq.

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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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