sat 06/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

Decade, Headlong at Commodity Quay, St Katherine Docks

David Nice

Ten years on from 9/11 and the polyphony of reactions will not, and should not, be stilled. Creative artists have had to tread carefully in what they amass, and how they present it.

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The Kitchen, National Theatre

Sam Marlowe

It may not serve up all that much to get your teeth into, but Bijan Sheibani’s production of this 1959 play by Arnold Wesker looks fantastic on the plate. Giles Cadle’s saucepan-shaped set is framed by a giant chalkboard, scrawled over and over with daily specials in faded lettering; beyond...

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The Tempest, Theatre Royal Haymarket

Matt Wolf

Memo to William Shakespeare: could we have more, please, in The Tempest of the anxious, angsty Prospero, the mortality-minded magus played in his most riveting theatre performance in years by Ralph Fiennes?

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Truth and Reconciliation, Royal Court Theatre

aleks Sierz

Can an ordinary wooden chair be an instrument of torture? Of course, every brute investigation makes use of such furniture, whether as a place to tie the victim down, or as a weapon to attack them with.

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The God of Soho, Shakespeare's Globe

Matt Wolf In God we trust (or not): Phil Daniels plays The Big God opposite Miranda Foster as the Missus

It's grin and bear it - even on occasion bare it - time at Shakespeare's Globe, which closes its 2011 season not with a bang but with a wearyingly facetious whimper. A nice idea that in differing ways evokes such previous Globe newbies as Helen and The Frontline while paying homage to the Bard's own penchant for many and varied couplings, Chris Hannan's latest aims for a giddy, carnival atmosphere that it only fitfully achieves. As for its apparent obsession with scatology...

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The Faith Machine, Royal Court Theatre

Sam Marlowe

A monolithic slab, like a giant incarnation of a Biblical tablet of stone, dominates Mark Thompson’s set for Jamie Lloyd's production of the third play by Alexi Kaye Campbell. Nothing else is so solid in this big, weighty work, which wrestles with abstract notions of faith, the human soul and the myths and narratives by which we choose to live.

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South Pacific, Barbican Theatre

David Nice Washing that Frenchman right outta her hair: Samantha Womack's Nellie Forbush takes a shower with her fellow nurses

"Whoring after the public taste" is how Ingmar Bergman described some rather funny hanky-panky in one of his most singular films. It's what showbusiness thrives on, and it's fine if done well. Yet a decade ago Trevor Nunn crowned the National Theatre's trio of keenly observed Rodgers and Hammerstein stagings with South Pacific characters of flesh and blood, as its creators had surely envisaged. Here, despite strong delivery of a string of hits and fluid, evocatively lit designs,...

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theartsdesk MOT: Dreamboats and Petticoats, Playhouse Theatre

Matt Wolf

It's one of the distinctions of the London theatre to be at once highbrow and middle-of-the-road, to offer up esoterica from Ibsen and Schiller while allowing audiences elsewhere the chance to rock out to the...

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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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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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