mon 19/05/2025

Theatre Reviews

Dear England, National Theatre review - extra time for stirring soccer classic

Demetrios Matheou

With qualifying about to begin for the soccer World Cup, and England sporting a brand new manager, it’s fitting that James Graham’s Olivier-winning celebration of the previous boss returns to the National

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Weather Girl, Soho Theatre review - the apocalypse as surreal black comedy

Helen Hawkins

Can Francesca Moody do it again? Fleabag’s producer has brought Weather Girl to London, after a successful run at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, mirroring the path taken by Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s creation. But the new show is a much tougher assault on modern mores.

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Clueless: The Musical, Trafalgar Studios review - a perfectly manicured update

Rachel Halliburton

Before there was Barbie: The Movie, before there was Legally Blonde, there was Clueless, the Valley Girl movie that measured out life in designer handbags at the same time as signalling the grit behind the glitter.

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The Habits, Hampstead Theatre review - who knows what adventures await?

aleks Sierz

“The exercise of fantasy is to imagine other ways of life,” says one of the role-players during a Dungeons & Dragons marathon, because “without understanding how others might live, I ask you, how will we ever understand ourselves?” It’s a good question, and writer and director Jack Bradfield, in his enchanting new play The Habits, has a good stab at answering it.

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Farewell Mister Haffmann, Park Theatre review - French hit of confusing genre, with a real historical villain

Helen Hawkins

When Yasmina Reza’s cerebral play Art arrived in London in 1996, we applauded it as a comedy. Now another French hit, Jean-Philippe Daguerre’s Adieu Monsieur Haffmann, has landed, and the genre confusions could start all over again.

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Edward II, RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford review - monarchs, murder and mayhem from Marlowe

Gary Naylor

“Don’t put your co-artistic director on the stage, Mrs Harvey,” as Noel Coward once (almost) sang. 

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One Day When We Were Young, Park Theatre review - mini-marvel with a poignant punch

Helen Hawkins

Nick Payne, the writer of Constellations, has created another 90-minute zinger for two actors. This one is much simpler in structure but poses equally potent questions about the nature of love and how it’s moulded by the passage of time.

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Alterations, National Theatre review - high emotional costs of ambition

aleks Sierz

Plays about the Windrush Generation are no longer a rarity, but it’s still unusual for revivals of black British classics to get the full resources of the National Theatre. Guyana-born playwright Michael Abbensetts, who died in 2016, is often mentioned in books about black British drama, but his plays are infrequently revived.

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A Knock on the Roof, Royal Court review - poignant account of living under terror

aleks Sierz

The war in Gaza has been going since 7 October 2023  that’s about 15 months. But it’s strangely absent from British stages. Of course, it’s a divisive issue, a difficult issue, a painful issue – but isn’t that what contemporary theatre should be about? Instead, we prefer to stage bellicose horrors in plays by ancient Greek tragedians, or mention Palestine in Shakespeare plays, but really…

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The Score, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - curious beast of a play fails to engage

Rachel Halliburton

Why is it so hard to write a decent play about Bach? Maybe, in part, because there are no words that can express anything as eloquently as his music did – about life and death, pain and transcendence, wretchedness or rapture at the simplest aspects of existence.

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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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