wed 17/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

The Last of the Duchess, Hampstead Theatre

aleks Sierz

Is it nostalgic to constantly revisit the history of the royal family? In this new play by Nicholas Wright, which opened last night, we travel back in time to 1980 when the aged Wallis Simpson - widow of the abdicated King Edward VIII - lived as a recluse in a mansion in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. Despite the fact that a national treasure (Sheila Hancock) is starring in the play, is this a subject worth looking at again?

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27, Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

graeme Thomson

Abi Morgan is on something of a multi-platform roll right now. Between writing the Beeb's enjoyably hokey The Hour and scripting The Iron Lady, the Margaret Thatcher biopic which will be hitting our screens shortly before Christmas with all the force of a jet-propelled handbag, comes a new play for the National Theatre of Scotland.

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13, National Theatre

aleks Sierz

Spooky coincidences make good drama. Mike Bartlett’s epic follow-up to his highly successful 2010 play Earthquakes in London begins with a mind-bogglingly weird situation: every morning in the metropolis, dozens of people wake up and they’ve all had the same disturbing dream. The play, which opened last night, then goes on to examine what happens when citizens rise up to challenge the system in an era of foreign war and economic austerity.

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Death and the Maiden, Harold Pinter Theatre

aleks Sierz

At the newly renamed Harold Pinter Theatre (formerly the Comedy), the inaugural show is a special tribute to the Nobel Prize-winning playwright, who died in 2008. The subject matter of Ariel Dorfman’s play, which won an Olivier Award on its first outing in 1991, is a powerful reminder that Pinter was a human rights activist. He was also a friend of Dorfman so this revival, which stars Thandie Newton and opened last night, is an inspired choice of production.

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The Village Social, National Theatre Wales

Dylan Moore

As autumn turns to winter and we enter “the dark half of the year”, National Theatre Wales opens its second season with a 16-show tour of village halls around the Principality.

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Jumpy, Royal Court Theatre

aleks Sierz

“Why does anyone ever have kids?” By the time a character in April De Angelis’s new comedy utters this exasperated exclamation, there are many in the audience - whether parents or children, or both - who must have had the same thought. And more than once in the evening. For this exceptionally hilarious and perceptive play, which opened last night, not only tickles the insides of your arm, but also lights up the senses and then gives you a quick cuddle, too.

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A Round-Heeled Woman, Riverside Studios

Veronica Lee

Sharon Gless is best known for her role as Detective Christine Cagney in Cagney & Lacey, and then to another generation in the American version of Queer as Folk and currently in the drama Burn Notice.

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Inadmissible Evidence, Donmar Warehouse

aleks Sierz

John Osborne was the great founding father of contemporary new writing for the theatre. In 1956, his Look Back in Anger changed British drama for ever, and his subsequent work explored the subjects of failure and national identity in language that is both highly rhetorical and at the same time feels as if it is torn from the gut. His 1964 play about the washed-up London solicitor Bill Maitland, which opened last night in Jamie Lloyd’s revival, is one of his masterpieces.

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Jerusalem, Apollo Theatre

Sheila Johnston

So it's back, then. Garlanded with awards, lionised in London and on Broadway, Jerusalem starring Mark Rylance returns to the West End for a limited run, in the same production and with many members of the earlier cast(s). Is this an opportunistic, irrelevant, premature revival? On the contrary.

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The Queen of Spades, Arcola Theatre

David Nice

Russia’s Shakespeare, Alexander Pushkin, has enjoyed imaginative treatment on the British stage and screen. Brighton Theatre’s now-legendary Vanity conjured the world of the verse-novel Eugene Onegin vividly with three actors and minimal props. More folk will remember the cinematic Queen of Spades, with Anton Walbrook’s crazed gambler terrorising the ancient Countess of Edith Evans to death for her secret of three winning cards.

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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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