Theatre Reviews
Mrs Doubtfire, Shaftesbury Theatre review - bold musical makeover of the hit comic filmFriday, 23 June 2023
The heart sinks (mine does, anyway) as the latest film-to-musical adaptation rolls into town, all with similar sound-worlds, exemplary hoofing and lively stagings. They are handy audience-bait, oven-ready stories. People go to see how the creative team are going to render the film’s main achievements, though not to be that surprised: the show must go on as it did before, with all the familiar tropes. Read more... |
Dear England, National Theatre review - filtering the national narrative through sportWednesday, 21 June 2023
"Is everything loss?" the great Oliver Ford Davies once asked on the National's Olivier stage, in the closing moment of David Hare's masterful Racing Demon. That question informs another masterful play, James Graham's Dear England, newly opened in the same space. Read more... |
School Girls, Lyric Hammersmith review - an African Mean Girls with added biteTuesday, 20 June 2023
The alternative title of Jocelyn Bioh’s 2017 play School Girls, The African Mean Girls Play, might indicate that it’s a super-bitchy account of high-school rivalries, here with a west African accent. Which it is. But it’s much more besides. Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Almeida Theatre review - muscular action interspersed with moments of telling stillnessMonday, 19 June 2023
Rebecca Frecknall’s Romeo and Juliet burns like ice, paring back and tightening the script so that love and death are constant bedfellows. She underscores her vision with a thrilling, furious physicality, interspersing explosive fight scenes with steely dance sequences heightened by Prokoviev’s immortal Montagues and Capulets. Read more... |
Happy Days, Landmark Productions, Cork Opera House - to the end of the earthMonday, 19 June 2023
Siobhán McSweeney is to be loved as a person for her speech when she received a BAFTA for Best Female Performance in a Comedy Programme earlier this year, bringing up the way Derry people had weathered the “indignities, ignorance and stupidity of your so-called leaders in Dublin, Stormont and Westminster” (typically, the BBC cut that bit). Read more... |
The Crucible, Gielgud Theatre review - outstanding National Theatre transferSaturday, 17 June 2023
Whining Donald Trump and snivelling Boris Johnson claim that they are victims of witch-hunts, although all the evidence suggests otherwise. In 1953, haunted by the iniquitous McCarthy trials that were designed to purge the US of communism, Arthur Miller turned to a real travesty, that of the Salem witch-hunt of 1692. Read more... |
Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image The Musical, Phoenix Theatre review - more crude than cruelFriday, 16 June 2023
There are flashes during Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image The Musical of the old mordant humour from the show's heyday, when you could see Maggie the dominatrix, grey John Major eating his peas with his pants over his trousers and wee David Steel sitting in the pocket of David Owen. But today’s Spitting Image is more crude than cruel. Read more... |
42nd Street, Sadler's Wells review - musical extravaganza will knock your socks offThursday, 15 June 2023
There are better musicals in town, but can you find me a more spectacular show in a more comfortable theatre? I doubt it. Not that Jonathan Church's new production at Sadler's Wells is flawless. Read more... |
We Will Rock You, London Coliseum review - the Queen musical returns, as ludicrous, dense and dreadful as beforeTuesday, 13 June 2023
Twenty-one years ago, critics were alarmed by Ben Elton’s deranged musical We Will Rock You. But, despite the "staggeringly awful" reviews, the show somehow went on to have 12 long (and painful) years of West End success. So, here we are again. The car crash of a show is back for a summer run at the London Coliseum. But has it made any progress in its nine-year hiatus? Sadly not. Read more... |
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Southwark Playhouse Elephant review - superbly performed folksy musicalTuesday, 13 June 2023
The short story F Scott Fitzgerald wrote as a challenge, of a man born 70 years old whose body gets younger as the years pass, has already been blown up into a lengthy film of the same name starring Brad Pitt (and lots of CGI). Jethro Compton decided a bare-bones musical for six multi-instrumentalists and no special effects was what it needed to be, and how well it works. Read more... |
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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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