sun 13/04/2025

Theatre Reviews

theartsdesk MOT: The Railway Children, Waterloo Station

Fisun Güner

This warm-hearted production of E Nesbit’s most famous novel premiered to glowing reviews at its site-specific venue last summer.

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The Globe Mysteries, Shakespeare's Globe

David Nice

From 69 hours of King James Bible reading over Easter Week to this racy evening of adapted medieval pith as we head towards Assumption Day, the word they tell us is God moves in fluid if not necessarily mysterious ways around the Globe. “Mysteries” refers to the guilds that put on these popular street shows in the Middle Ages, real enough for the company...

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Edinburgh Fringe: Dana Alexander/ A Sentimental Journey/ Dog-Eared Collective

Veronica Lee Dana Alexander: the Canadian makes good comedy out of her Jamaican/American/British family

After 12 years in the business, Dana Alexander, an ebullient and instantly likeable presence on stage, is still the only black woman on the Canadian comedy circuit. Not that her ethnicity is Alexander's pre-occupation – it most definitely isn't – but it does play a part in her act.

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Anna Christie, Donmar Warehouse

aleks Sierz

The talented Mr Jude Law is back on stage in what must be the hottest ticket in the West End. Although not everyone warmed to his 2009 Hamlet, the mere presence in central London of one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars is enough to bring a touch of sunshine to a wintry summer. My main anxiety was that, as a reaction to the riots sweeping the capital, the Government would call a curfew and close the show, which was due to open last night. I needn’t have worried. It opened on schedule.

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Crazy For You, Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park

Matt Wolf

"Drop that long face," we're urged during the end of the giddy Regent's Park revival of Crazy For You, and if ever there were a time for such sentiments, it came during the lockdown that London remained under during the all too aptly cloud-filled evening that saw the Open Air Theatre not quite full.

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theartsdesk MOT: Journey's End, Duke of York's Theatre

Sam Marlowe

“There’s nothing worse than dirt in your tea,” opines one of the stoic officers in RC Sherriff’s First World War drama. It’s a pronouncement, emitted from beneath a stiff upper lip, of courageous cheeriness in the face of circumstances so brutal, so horrifying, so obscenely soaked in blood and suffering and futility, that taking refuge in mundane routine is one of very few available comforts.

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Double Feature: Edgar & Annabel/The Swan, Nightwatchman/There is a War, National Theatre

David Benedict 'Edgar & Annabel': Trystan Gravelle and Kirsty Bushell play freedom fighters in a house wired for sound

It’s not much of an exaggeration to suggest that new plays by up-and-coming talents are something of an Achilles heel at the National Theatre. Even Mike Bartlett’s much lauded Earthquakes in London was a far more exciting production than it was a play, while ...

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Blue Surge, Finborough Theatre

aleks Sierz

Rebecca Gilman is an American playwright who once made a big splash in London. After having work such as The Glory of Living, Spinning into Butter, Boy Gets Girl and The Sweetest Swing in Baseball staged at the Royal Court Theatre in the first five years of the new millennium, she then disappeared from view.

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The Syndicate, Chichester Festival Theatre

bella Todd

Halfway through Sean Mathias’s gripping new production of The Syndicate, Ian McKellen’s Don Antonio Barracano reaches for his hat, stick and gloves and heads out through the olive groves to "make [a man] an offer". He looks and sounds like a nice old gent setting out for an afternoon stroll. Unless, of course, you’re passingly acquainted with The Godfather.

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theartsdesk MOT: The Mousetrap, St Martin's Theatre

alexandra Coghlan

A blackout, a snowstorm, a scream, and there you have it – the longest-running play of all time. The mystery of The Mousetrap is legendary, preserved by a code of silence that bonds all those who have performed and watched this classic whodunnit. Yet greater even than this is surely the enigma of how so generic, so unassuming a play should come to endure so persistently.

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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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