sun 21/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

Money, Southwark Playhouse online review - ethical dilemmas for the Zoom generation

Rachel Halliburton

To accept or not accept a donation: that’s certainly the burning political question of the moment.

Read more...

Tarantula, Southwark Playhouse online review – spine-tingling love and trauma

aleks Sierz

I think I can safely say that polymath playwright Philip Ridley has had a good lockdown.

Read more...

The Winter's Tale, RSC, BBC Four review - post-war poise colours a solid production

Tom Birchenough

It has been a hard coming for this RSC Winter’s Tale. Erica Whyman’s production was cancelled by the virus days before its premiere last spring, with plans to stage it in the autumn frustrated by the second lockdown.

Read more...

The Importance of Being Earnest online review - Oscar Wilde updated for the Nando's generation

Veronica Lee

Oscar Wilde's fabulous play satirised Victorian England and contained a shedload of quotable quips.

Read more...

A Splinter of Ice, Original Theatre Company online review - Graham Greene and Kim Philby are friends reunited

Tom Birchenough

There’s such a genial feel to the pairing of Oliver Ford Davies and Stephen Boxer in Ben Brown’s new play that there are moments when we almost forget the weighty historical circumstances that lay behind the long-awaited encounter between two old friends, this evening of conversation and drinking,...

Read more...

Romeo and Juliet, National Theatre online review - a triumphant hybrid

Heather Neill

Shakespeare's enduring tale of star-crossed lovers is especially pertinent in a pandemic. The fatal plot twist depends on failed communication during an outbreak of pestilence, and one of the most famous lines is Mercutio's heartfelt, "A plague on both your houses" – clearly no idle curse.

Read more...

Living Newspaper, Edition 3, Royal Court online review – bleak news, sharp words

Laura De Lisle

“The crocus of hope is, er, poking through the frost.” When he uttered that dodgy metaphor back in February, Boris Johnson probably didn’t predict that it would become the opening number of the third edition of Living Newspaper, the Royal Court’s anarchic, hyper-current series of new writing....

Read more...

A Midsummer Night's Dream, SHAKE Festival livestream review - a star turn from Luisa Omielan makes this 'Bottom's Dream'

Tom Birchenough

Just what the Zoom era has brought to theatre – to performers and audiences alike – is something we will no doubt be pondering for some while yet, certainly still in the much-anticipated eventual hereafter when stages in their “traditional” multifariousness are once again standard.

Read more...

Angela, Sound Stage online review - tender and time-shifting

aleks Sierz

Does a subjective theatre piece encourage a subjective critical response? I think it might, especially when it’s a memory play about dementia, so here goes: first I turn off the lights, then I press play. From the darkness comes jaunty music – it’s a dance class.

Read more...

Assembly, Donmar Warehouse online review - the future is coming, ready or not

Laura De Lisle

“Your task is to imagine the future.” That’s what the citizens of Assembly, a new streamed production performed and devised by the Donmar Warehouse’s Local Company, are told.

Read more...

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.


latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
The Weir, Harold Pinter Theatre review - evasive fantasy, bl...

Why are the Irish such good storytellers? The historical perspective is that the oral tradition goes way, way back, allied to the gift of the gab...

Music Reissues Weekly: Sly and the Family Stone - The First...

The remarkable The First Family: Live At Winchester Cathedral 1967 represents the first-ever release of a previously...

Monteverdi Choir, ORR, Heras-Casado, St Martin-in-the-Fields...

35 years ago, persona-now-non-grata John Eliot Gardiner reveealed how performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito...

Dracula, Lyric Hammersmith review - hit-and-miss recasting o...

If a classic story is going to be told for the umpteenth time, there is a good bet it will come with a novel spin on it. So it proves...

Cho, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - finely-focused stormy w...

It was a hefty evening, as it needn't necessarily have been throughout, since Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony can conceal more darkness between the...

Album: Robert Plant - Saving Grace

Robert Plant is magnificently well-equipped to shine as a consummate musical survivor: not only has his voice kept its magic, with a range from...

The Code, Southwark Playhouse Elephant review - superbly cas...

Hot on the heels of Goodnight, Oscar comes another fictional meeting of real entertainment giants in Los Angeles, this time...

Can I get a Witness? review - time to die before you get old

Some time in the not too distant future, there are only two films on offer: Duck Soup, and, if you order the DVD in advance, ...