tue 29/07/2025

Theatre Reviews

Three Sisters, Maly Drama Theatre, Vaudeville Theatre review - a Chekhov of luminous clarity

Tom Birchenough

Lev Dodin has been artistic director of the famed Maly Drama Theatre for some three and a half decades now, over which time the St Petersburg company has earned itself the highest of international reputations.

Read more...

The Light in the Piazza, RFH review - Broadway musical looks good and sounds even better

Matt Wolf

A Broadway show as melodically haunting and sophisticated as it is niche, The Light in the Piazza has taken its own bittersweet time getting to London.

Read more...

Citysong, Soho Theatre review - big writing, big heart

aleks Sierz

Irish playwright Dylan Coburn Gray's new play won the Verity Bargate Award in 2017, and his reward is a fine production of this beautifully written account of one Dublin family over several decades.

Read more...

Napoli, Brooklyn, Park Theatre review - lacking substance

Katherine Waters

According to their mother, Luda (played by Madeleine Worrall, pictured below), each of the three sisters (pictured top) in Napoli, Brooklyn, bears one of their father’s admirable traits. Tina (Mona Goodwin), the oldest, who left school early to earn money for the family in a factory job, has his strength.

Read more...

While the Sun Shines, Orange Tree Theatre review - frothy, yes, up to a point

Matt Wolf

Terence Rattigan completists, and count myself among them, will leap at the chance to see a rare production courtesy the Orange Tree Theatre of While the Sun Shines, a 1943 monster hit for this great English writer that has languished in semi-obscurity ever since.

Read more...

Sweat, Gielgud Theatre review - searing drama of working life

Tom Birchenough

There’s a joke early on in Sweat, Lynn Nottage's superlative drama about American working lives, in which a lively bar-room conversation turns to the seemingly unlikely subject of NAFTA.

Read more...

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bridge Theatre review – gender-juggling romp

Rachel Halliburton

Nicholas Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre is a feat of exuberant brilliance, a gender-juggling romp that takes Shakespeare’s subversive text and polishes it so that it glints and shines like a glitterball at a disco.

Read more...

Bronx Gothic, Young Vic review - fervid intensity

Tom Birchenough

It’s hard, and finally fruitless to attempt to describe Okwui Okpokwasili’s Bronx Gothic in conventional terms of genre: combining elements of dance and theatre, this visceral solo...

Read more...

The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Cheek by Jowl/Pushkin Theatre, Barbican review - theatre satire updated

Tom Birchenough

Director Declan Donnellan has a rich record of working with Russian actors: his previous walk on the Slavic side, the darkly powerful Measure for Measure that came to the Barbican four years ago, was preceded by some...

Read more...

Education, Education, Education, Trafalgar Studios review - politics and pupils, mayhem and music

Katherine Waters

It's the 2nd May 1997, the morning after the night that swept New Labour into power. We’re in the staffroom of a school somewhere in Britain and the teachers are jubilant. They've been glued to their TV sets for the results and have shagged and drunk through the night to crawl in with hangovers and pouchy eyes to face the day with a particular brand of frazzled optimism.

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... ...
theartsdesk at the Pärnu Music Festival 2025 - Arvo Pärt at...

Life-changing? That's how the Pärnu Music Festival felt on my first visit in 2015, alongside the discovery of...

The Winter's Tale, RSC, Stratford review - problem play...

There’s a deal to be made when taking your seat for The Winter’s Tale. It’s one the title alone would have...

Brixton Calling, Southwark Playhouse review - life-affirming...

What a delight it is to see the director, the star, even the marketing manager these days FFS, get out of the way and let a really...

BBC Proms: Batsashvili, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Rya...

This Prom began in sombre and melancholic shades of grey. Then...

Inter Alia, National Theatre review - dazzling performance,...

Rosamund Pike is back. For her first stage appearance since 2010, when she played Hedda Gabler in Adrian Noble’s production for Bath Theatre Royal...

The Waterfront, Netflix review - fish, drugs and rock'n...

You wouldn’t really want to belong to the Buckley family, a star-crossed dynasty who run their fishing business out of Havenport,...

Album: Debby Friday - The Starrr of the Queen of Life

Debby Friday is a Nigerian-Canadian singer-producer who found...

The Fantastic Four: First Steps review - innocence regained

Marvel goes back to its origins, gulping the fresh air of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s first hit comic The Fantastic Four in 1961. Ignoring...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Pale Fountains - The Complete Vir...

The Pale Fountains played their first live show on 12 February 1980 as the support to on-the-up fellow...