sat 02/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

The Thunder Girls, The Lowry, Salford review - all-girl solidarity

Robert Beale

An all-girl rock group from the 1980s meet again, 30 years after an acrimonious break-up brought their shared stage career to an end … and the sparks fly as old resentments resurface and the bitterness of life’s blows emerges. Will their one-time all-girl solidarity overcome their pain and regrets? Will the show end with them back together, belting out their iconic anthem?

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Two Ladies, Bridge Theatre review - Cvitešić and Wanamaker really rock

aleks Sierz

Are first ladies second-class citizens? Do they always have to stand behind their husbands? What are they really like as people? Questions such as these have inspired Irish playwright Nancy Harris to explore the relationship between two fictional first ladies, each of which bears an uncanny resemblance to a real-life figure. One is clearly based on Melania Trump, the other on Brigitte Trogneux, better known as Mrs Macron.

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Blood Wedding, Young Vic review - inventive, poetic if over-stretched revival of Lorca's rural tragedy

Heather Neill

Earthiness, lyricism, fatalism, the undeniable force of passion, of ecstatic attraction, known as "duende": these are the familiar ingredients of Lorca's plays set in rural Spain. Blood Wedding, written in 1932, was the first, followed by Yerma two years later and The House of Bernarda Alba in 1936, the year of Lorca's murder by Nationalists.

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Mother of Him, Park Theatre review – lean domestic drama unsure where it stands

Laura De Lisle

Mother of Him was written a decade ago, but its most prescient moment happens in the first five minutes of Max Lindsay's production at the Park Theatre.

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Youth Without God, Coronet Theatre review - the chill control of nascent Nazism

Tom Birchenough

The only novel by the Hungarian dramatist Ödön von Horváth, Youth Without God was written in exile after he fled Anschluss Vienna and published in 1938, shortly before his death.

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The Permanent Way, The Vaults review – devastating resurrection of play tackling corporate greed

Rachel Halliburton

The Permanent Way first roared its way into the national consciousness in 2003 when, after a triumphant opening in York, it toured the UK before transferring to the National Theatre.

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Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, Wilton's Music Hall review - klezmer revue is moving and inventive

Tom Birchenough

Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s “refugee musical” – now there’s a phrase you don’t expect to write – is a treat.

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Big the Musical, Dominion Theatre review - sweet if wildly overstretched

Matt Wolf

The work isn't finished on Big, if this stage musical of the beloved 1988 Tom Hanks film is ever to, um, make it big.

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Faith, Hope & Charity, National Theatre review - a grim compassion

Tom Birchenough

Alexander Zeldin continues his devastating analysis of modern Britain in this culminating play of a (very loose) trilogy that started with 2014’s Beyond Caring, followed by LOVE two years after that.

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Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of), Bristol Old Vic review - Jane Austen as shallow romcom

mark Kidel

It is a truth perhaps not quite but almost universally accepted that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, beloved of GSCE English Lit examiners, and often adapted for the screen, is a part of the canon, waiting to be re-interpreted according to the fashions of the day.

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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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