wed 13/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

Carousel, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - brave rewrite doesn't land

Matt Wolf

You've got to hand it to the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park: this venue never simply dusts off a familiar musical title and plonks it onstage.

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Big Big Sky, Hampstead Downstairs review - a perfectly realised character study

Gary Naylor

Get to Swiss Cottage early because Bob Bailey’s set for Tom Wells's new Hampstead Downstairs play Big Big Sky is a feast for the eyes.

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Anything Goes, Barbican review - an explosion of joy

Matt Wolf

"Times have changed", we're informed in the cascadingly witty title number of the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes, now in revival at the Barbican and bringing with it a pandemic-clearing tsunami of joy.

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Changing Destiny, Young Vic review – an epic literary discovery

aleks Sierz

The Young Vic, led by the inspiring figure of Kwame Kwei-Armah, is back.

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Bagdad Café, Old Vic review - sweet but scattershot

Matt Wolf

A gorgeous song exists in search of a show to match over at Bagdad Café, the 1987 film that gave the world the memorably plaintive "Calling You", which is threaded throughout Emma Rice's stage adaptation of the movie with understandable insistence.

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Oleanna, Arts Theatre review - Mamet on power and tragedy

aleks Sierz

Before seeing this play, I decided to eat a steak. It seemed the right culinary equivalent to David Mamet, one of America’s most provocative and, at times, especially past times, red-blooded writers.

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The Two Character Play, Hampstead Theatre review - tender, poetic and piercingly cruel

alexandra Coghlan

It’s the trivia question no one ever thought to ask: where was the only Tennessee Williams play premiered outside America first performed?

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Lava, Bush Theatre review - poetic writing, mesmerically performed

Helen Hawkins

What’s in a name? In Benedict Lombe’s incendiary debut play at the Bush Theatre, the answer to this question encompasses a whole continent, an entire existential experience - the Black experience, to be exact - though not in the way that "roots" stories often proceed.

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Hamlet, Windsor Theatre Royal review - the age is out of joint

Ismene Brown

So it wasn’t Cinderella but Hamlet who was first out of the post-lockdown starting blocks – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s much trumpeted musical premiere being foiled by a ping at the weekend.

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ANNA X, Harold Pinter Theatre review - lacking in substance

Laura De Lisle

There just isn’t enough there, with ANNA X. Daniel Raggett’s production is the third and final of the RE:EMERGE season at the Harold Pinter Theatre, with Emma Corrin of Lady Di fame in the lead. The graphic design – the brightly-striped faces of Corrin and her co-star, Nabhaan Rizwan, on a dark background – is impeccable. Joseph Charlton’s writing, not so much.

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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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