fri 19/09/2025

Theatre Reviews

Quarter Life Crisis, Bridge Theatre review – slender and superficial

aleks Sierz

Success smells sweet. The Bridge Theatre’s pioneering season of one-person plays continues with sell-out performances of David Hare’s Beat the Devil and Fuel’s production of Inua Ellams’s An Evening with an Immigrant, with both having their runs extended.

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Hermione Lee: Tom Stoppard, A Life review - the last word on a theatrical wordsmith

Matt Wolf

"The older he got, the less he cared about self-concealment," or so it is said of Sir Tom Stoppard, somewhere deep into the 865 pages of Tom Stoppard: A Life, Hermione Lee's capacious (to put it mildly) biography of the British theatre's leading wordsmith.

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Nights in the Garden of Spain & Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet, Bridge Theatre review - potent mix of pain and comedy

Matt Wolf

Stillness works like a stealth bomb in Nights in the Garden of Spain, in which Tamsin Greig further confirms her status as one of this country's finest actresses.

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Playing Sandwiches & A Lady of Letters, Bridge Theatre review - the darkness dazzles, twice over

Matt Wolf

"Getting dark," or so comments Irene Ruddock (a pitch-perfect Imelda Staunton) in passing midway through A Lady of Letters, and, boy, ain't that the truth? Both this monologue, and the one that precedes it (Playing Sandwiches, featuring the mighty Lucian Msamati), find Alan Bennett in fearlessly penetrating, ever-darkening mode.

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Sunnymead Court, Tristan Bates Theatre review - a lovely lockdown romance

Laura De Lisle

The first words of Sunnymead Court, a new play at the Tristan Bates Theatre, are ominous. “We are transitioning from human experiences to digital experiences.” Oof. Thankfully, this isn’t another gloomy lockdown drama about the evils of Zoom quizzes – it’s the story of an unlikely romance between two women who live metres from each other, but have never spoken. 

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An Evening with an Immigrant, Bridge Theatre review – poetic and engaging

aleks Sierz

When the history of British theatre’s response to COVID-19 comes to be written, the names of two men will feature prominently: Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr.

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The Cheeky Chappie, The Warren Outdoors review - entertaining drama about risqué comic Max Miller

Veronica Lee

It’s fitting that there’s another run of Dave Simpson’s terrific play about Brighton’s favourite son, Max Miller (aka The Cheeky Chappie), at this delightful pop-up on the seafront he knew and loved so well.

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The Shrine & Bed Among the Lentils, Bridge Theatre review - loneliness shared, with wit and melancholy

David Nice

Monologues and duets rule the stage right now. We can only dream of the day when theatre steps up to the classical music scene’s boldness and manages to have more performers gathered together, albeit suitably distanced (not so easy when the drama needs physical contact, though there are plenty of plays that don’t).

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The Outside Dog & The Hand of God, Bridge Theatre review - gems of frustration and disquiet

Rachel Halliburton

For some of us, it doesn’t take a lockdown to imprison us in our own hellish little world. Since his first series of dramatic monologues, broadcast on the BBC in 1988, Alan Bennett has taken a scalpel to the mindsets of those who have battled life’s disappointments and disillusionments by creating their own, often equally destructive, realities. 

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Rose, Hope Mill Theatre online review - a performer at her peak

Matt Wolf

Solo plays and performances are, of necessity, the theatrical currency of the moment, whether across an entire season at the Bridge Theatre or last week at the Old Vic in the too briefly glimpsed Three Kings, starring a rarely-better Andrew Scott.

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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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