Theatre Reviews
The Wedding, Gecko Theatre, Barbican review - eccentric, ebullient exploration of our contract with societyFriday, 10 June 2022
You never forget your first Gecko production. I experienced mine almost 20 years ago at the Battersea Arts Centre, when the company performed Tailors’ Dummies, its ingenious surreal show about obsession. This had all the hallmarks that would make Gecko one of our most distinctive physical theatre companies; gravity-defying choreography, a quasi-acrobatic exploration of concepts of the body, and scenes that were as elliptical as they were absurd. Read more... |
The Glass Menagerie, Duke of York's Theatre review - memories flare and fadeWednesday, 01 June 2022
The stage is cluttered with objects; a pianola sits stage left; a large cabinet, soon to be revealed as a display case for tiny glass ornaments, dominates the centre. A man, gaunt, in his 40s perhaps, wanders among this stuff. Read more... |
Girl on an Altar, Kiln Theatre review - machismo, murder and motherhood in mesmerising mythSaturday, 28 May 2022
Playwrights return to classical myths for two main reasons – to shine a light on how we live today and because they're bloody good yarns. Read more... |
Henry VIII, Shakespeare's Globe review - unashamedly vulgar take on our last split with EuropeFriday, 27 May 2022
Boris Johnson was of course not the first British leader to engineer a split with Europe for personal gain. This strikes you with full force halfway through this production. While there are no photos of Johnson rushing around at a Downing Street party wearing an erect golden phallus, we are living in a world where – as Peter Pomerantsev has said of another leader – "nothing is true and everything is possible". Read more... |
Legally Blonde, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - a joyous Gen-Z musical makeoverWednesday, 25 May 2022
The 2001 Reese Witherspoon-starring film Legally Blonde, upon which Heather Hach, Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin’s peppy Broadway musical is based, was something of a Trojan horse: a bubblegum-pink comedy with a feminist spine. Read more... |
Bliss, Finborough Theatre review - bleak but tenderWednesday, 25 May 2022
When Bliss, a new play adapted from an Andrei Platonov short story by Fraser Grace, made its debut in Russia in early 2020, Cambridge-based company Menagerie were told that their production was “very Russian”. Read more... |
Lotus Beauty, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs review – uneasy mix of comedy and tragedyMonday, 23 May 2022
Theatre is slowly recovering from the effects of the pandemic, and many shows which were cancelled because of the first lockdown are now finally getting a staging. The latest is Satinder Chohan’s Lotus Beauty, her loving portrait of a Punjabi family-run beauty parlour in west London’s Southall, which is now being staged in the Hampstead Theatre’s Downstairs studio space. Read more... |
My Fair Lady, London Coliseum review - tasteful revival powered by stirring performancesSaturday, 21 May 2022
First staged in 2018, Bartlett Sher’s Lincoln Center Theater production of My Fair Lady is London’s latest import from Broadway, coming here hot on the heels of Oklahoma!. In returning to the city where its story is set, Lerner and Loewe’s iconic musical from 1956 receives a dashing treatment from a cast and creative team in their top form. Read more... |
The Father and the Assassin, National Theatre review - Gandhi's killer puts his case in a bold, whirlwind productionFriday, 20 May 2022
The young Indian man stepping towards us on the vast Olivier stage is unremarkable enough, slight and boyish in manner. When he speaks he is direct, even cheeky: he wants us to like him. But this is Nathuram Godse, Gandhi's blood-stained murderer. He surely has a tough task ahead if he is going to persuade his listeners that he had the least justification for brutally killing the father of his nation (Bapu to his followers), the universal byword for peaceful protest. Read more... |
The House of Shades, Almeida Theatre review - Anne-Marie Duff blazes in Beth Steel's excoriating new dramaWednesday, 18 May 2022
Anne-Marie Duff blazes across the stage like a meteorite in Beth Steel’s excoriating drama about the changes sweeping through a Northern mining town over the course of five decades. As Constance Webster, a frustrated miner’s wife, her angry energy simultaneously lights up every room she appears in and sets it on fire; the more strongly she tries to escape her world, the closer she comes to destroying it. 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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