thu 14/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

Insignificance, Arcola Theatre review - once-iconic play feels overwrought

Will Rathbone

Terry Johnson's award-winning 1982 play Insignificance hasn't been seen in London since the playwright directed a 1995 revival at the Donmar (though Sam West staged his own production a decade later in Sheffield).

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Young Marx, Bridge Theatre review - fast-moving but over-complicated

aleks Sierz

Given the rather uneven record of the National Theatre at the moment, there’s already a certain nostalgia for the days, which came to an end two years ago, when it was run by the two Nicks: Nick Hytner and Nick Starr. Together, they transformed this flagship theatre, offering the world some gloriously entertaining and mega-successful plays, from War Horse to One Man, Two Guvnors.

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The Lorax, Old Vic Theatre review - a sage tale for young theatre goers

Katie Colombus

With mentions of Theresa May, cricket jumpers and DMs, Trump slurs and a host of characters with Northern accents, The Old Vic's return version of Dr Seuss' The Lorax, proves itself to be poles apart from the recent, popular Universal Pictures movie.

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Witness for the Prosecution, London County Hall review - favourable verdict on Agatha Christie classic

aleks Sierz

Some site-specific theatre feels like a really good fit. You could say, in this case, that it seems like poetic justice.

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Of Kith and Kin, Bush Theatre, review - comic but confused gay surrogacy drama

aleks Sierz

A new baby is like an alien invasion: it blows your mind and it colonises your world. For any couple, parenthood can be both exalting and devastating, with the stress hugging the relationship so tightly that eventually all its lies pop out.

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The Lady from the Sea, Donmar Warehouse review - Nikki Amuka-Bird luminous in a sympathetic ensemble

David Nice

What a profoundly beautiful play is Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea. It stands in relation to the earlier, relatively confined A Doll’s House, Ghosts and Rosmersholm as Shakespeare's late romances do to the more claustrophobic tragedies. And with what apparent ease, art concealing art, do director Kwame Kwei-Armah, the Young Vic’s next Artistic Director, and the diamantine new...

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The End of Hope, Soho Theatre review - initially bold but not quite enough

Katherine Waters

In David Ireland's new hour-long two-hander  a co-production between Soho Theatre and west London's Orange Tree  two strangers, Janet and Dermot, meet for a casual hook-up arranged over the internet.

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Venus in Fur, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - pain and pleasure in a starry two-hander

Marianka Swain

A hit on Broadway, David Ives’s steamy two-hander now boasts Natalie Dormer and David Oakes, well-known for their screen work, in its West End cast, with Patrick Marber on directing duties.

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Albion, Almeida Theatre, review – Victoria Hamilton’s epic performance

aleks Sierz

Prolific writer Mike Bartlett is the most impressive penman to have emerged in British theatre in the past decade. The trouble is that his work is so uneven.

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A Woman of No Importance, Vaudeville - Eve Best is superb as a woman scorned

Veronica Lee

In a rather clever wheeze, Dominic Dromgoole, former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe – who therefore knows a thing or two about historically accurate stagings – has established Classic Spring, a new company dedicated to celebrating work by “proscenium playwrights” and staging their plays in the theatres they were written for.

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★★★★★

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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