sun 03/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury review - dazzling Disney rewrite

Gary Naylor

Bedknobs and Broomsticks has always suffered from not being Mary Poppins, the movie delayed in development and released in 1971 (it is a Sixties film in tone and technology) and always seeming to appear later on the BBC’s Christmas Disney Time programmes, after a bit of Baloo boogieing and a spoonful or two of sugar. It was probably more liked than loved.

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Edinburgh Fringe 2021: Screen 9

David Kettle

The popcorn on offer as you enter the Pleasance’s performing space at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre quickly fills the air with its rich, sugary scent. It’s a smell that sets the scene nicely for a show set in a cinema, but also an aroma that takes on increasingly heavy, cloying, sickly – and inescapable – connotations as Screen 9 progresses.

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Edinburgh Fringe 2021: Still

David Kettle

Ageing Mick wakes up on Portobello beach with two gold rings in his pocket, and embarks on the bender to end all benders in order to work out what or who they’re for. Young Gilly has a poorly pug named Mr Immanuel Kant, but can’t face having it put down. Gaynor has suffered from fibromyalgia for decades, but must put it aside if she’s to see her newborn granddaughter.

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Cinderella, Gillian Lynne Theatre review - a spectacular show that hits and misses

Gary Naylor

Belleville has lost its Prince Charming and, when his statue is graffitied, it loses its long held title as the most beautiful town, too. Its people fear the impact on their livelihoods and soon identify the gobby, gothy girl as the culprit – they go after Cinderella with actual pitchforks!

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Edinburgh Fringe 2021: Fear of Roses / Myra's Story

David Kettle

Fear of Roses Assembly Roxy ★★

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Edinburgh Fringe 2021: Doppler

David Kettle

There’s always a tricky balance to be struck with site-specific theatre. What’s more important: the show itself, or its unusual setting? And to what extent does its location enrich or even impact on the essence of the text?

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2:22 A Ghost Story, Noël Coward Theatre review - unconvincing, sporadically amusing genre play

Gary Naylor

Danny Robins tells us what we’re in for with his title, so we’re warned. And it’s not long before we get the “things that go bump in the night”, the creaking floorboards, the “I know this sounds crazy, but…” because they’re the essential components of the genre. Reviewing a ghost story and complaining about that stuff really isn’t on – like critiquing a pantomime for its audience participation. 

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Edinburgh Fringe 2021: Tunnels / Dandelion

David Kettle

Tunnels Army @ The Fringe ★★

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Constellations, Vaudeville Theatre review - multiple casts continue to shine

Ismene Brown

This week is peak time to test out Nick Payne’s hypothesis of life as a series of accidents, narrow squeaks and near misses. While the Perseids are doing their August explosive thing, go home after the show and look in the night sky with a lover, and see whether both of you see the same shooting star – what are the chances?

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Paradise, National Theatre review - war, woe, and a glimmer of hope

Laura De Lisle

Philoctetes, Odysseus, Neoptolemus: the men’s names in Sophocles’ Philoctetes are all unnecessarily long and weighed down by expectations.

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Pages

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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