Theatre
The Habits, Hampstead Theatre review - who knows what adventures await?Thursday, 13 March 2025
“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... Read more... |
Farewell Mister Haffmann, Park Theatre review - French hit of confusing genre, with a real historical villainWednesday, 12 March 2025
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.This is a story... Read more... |
Edward II, RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford review - monarchs, murder and mayhem from MarloweMonday, 10 March 2025
“Don’t put your co-artistic director on the stage, Mrs Harvey,” as Noel Coward once (almost) sang. Tamara Harvey took no heed and Edward II sees her RSC compadre, Daniel Evans (pictured below, kneeling centre), back on stage after 14 years and... Read more... |
One Day When We Were Young, Park Theatre review - mini-marvel with a poignant punchWednesday, 05 March 2025
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.In Park... Read more... |
Alterations, National Theatre review - high emotional costs of ambitionSunday, 02 March 2025
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... Read more... |
A Knock on the Roof, Royal Court review - poignant account of living under terrorFriday, 28 February 2025
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... Read more... |
The Score, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - curious beast of a play fails to engageFriday, 28 February 2025
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... Read more... |
The Ferryman, Gaiety Theatre, Dublin review - Jez Butterworth's Northern Irish epic comes close to homeThursday, 27 February 2025
Dublin theatregoers have been inundated with Irish family gatherings concealing secrets or half-buried sorrows, mixing “bog gothic” with very real horrors. Clearly they’re willing to try again with Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, because its run has... Read more... |
Richard II, Bridge Theatre review - handsomely mounted, emotionally mutedSaturday, 22 February 2025
Screen stardom is generally anointed at the box office so it's a very real delight to find the fast-rising Jonathan Bailey taking time out from his ascendant celluloid career to return to his stage roots in Richard II.His director, Nicholas Hytner,... Read more... |
Backstroke, Donmar Warehouse review - a complex journey through a mother-daughter relationshipSaturday, 22 February 2025
The theatre director Anna Mackmin has written and directed an extraordinary play about a mother and daughter relationship: extraordinary because it puts the audience inside the maelstrom of these characters’ lives, forcing us to focus on how we... Read more... |
Otherland, Almeida Theatre review - a vivid, beautifully written take on the trans experienceFriday, 21 February 2025
“Who’d be a woman?... Who in their right mind would choose all that?” The question comes towards the end of a conversation where two former lovers are comparing notes on their tumultuous recent past.One of them, Jo, has just had a baby. The other,... Read more... |
Much Ado About Nothing, Theatre Royal Drury Lane review - this shamelessly hedonistic production is a triumphThursday, 20 February 2025
Over the last few months, celebrity-driven West End productions have suffered some inglorious crashes. So there was a certain degree of trepidation at the opening night for this star vehicle for Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell. For five... Read more... |
