wed 23/07/2025

Theatre Reviews

Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare's Globe review – a perfect piece of escapism for our uncertain summer

Rachel Halliburton

Lucy Bailey’s joyous, visually ravishing Much Ado About Nothing opens on a sombre note. On stage there is laughter and merriment as people prepare for a party in the sprawling grounds of an Italian estate, but then a lone soldier enters the auditorium, his head wrapped in a bandage, and the tension becomes palpable.

Read more...

Jerusalem, Apollo Theatre review - Mark Rylance blazes in this astonishing revival

Mert Dilek

At long last, the giant has come back. Over a decade after its critical apotheosis on both sides of the Atlantic, Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem returns to London in an astonishing revival starring Mark Rylance as the high priest of its proceedings. With the renewed intensity of its vision of an England in crisis, Butterworth’s infinitely rich play is proof that legends age well. 

Read more...

Prima Facie, Harold Pinter Theatre review - Jodie Comer sears the stage

Mert Dilek

National statistics tell us that, in the year ending September 2021, 41% of rape victims in England and Wales eventually withdrew their support for prosecution. That justice is not always blind may have something to do with this.

Read more...

Punchdrunk's The Burnt City, One Cartridge Place review - thrilling, discombobulating vision of an ancient world

Rachel Halliburton

Punchdrunk’s latest epic undertaking may be inspired by the legend of Troy, but this is nothing less than a dark journey into a mythological underworld. The company has brought its thrilling discombobulating vision to a venue that sprawls across 100,000 sq ft of two former ammunition factories in Woolwich; the result, appropriately, is theatrical dynamite.

Read more...

Marys Seacole, Donmar Warehouse review - frustrating yet unflinching

Matt Wolf

Inspiration jostles irritation in Marys Seacole, Jackie Sibblies Drury's Off Broadway hit from 2019 that has arrived at the Donmar as part of a banner season of late for Black American writing in the capital (cf. "Daddy": A Melodrama at the Almeida and Is God Is last year at the Royal Court).

Read more...

The Corn Is Green, National Theatre review – Nicola Walker teaches a life lesson

aleks Sierz

Let’s talk repertoire. Over the past decade the range of British plays, especially those from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, has shrunk in state-subsidized theatres. You can no longer easily see work by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Restoration rakes or Georgian comics. George Bernard Shaw is in hiding. English 19th-century problem plays are invisible.

Read more...

Lava, Soho Theatre review - silences, secrets and lies

Tom Birchenough

The title of James Fritz’s play is allusive, oblique even. I assume it refers to how, in the aftermath of a catastrophe such as an erupting volcano, it’s the lava that spreads outwards, changing the form of the surrounding landscape. It’s not the epicentre of the disaster, but its adjoining regions, where the impact of what has happened can begin to be assessed.

Read more...

Bonnie & Clyde, Arts Theatre review - great songs, but plot fires too many blanks

Gary Naylor

One of the more irritating memes (it’s a competitive field, I know) is the “Name a more iconic couple” appearing over a photo of Posh and Becks, or Harry and Megan, or Leo and whoever. I’ve always been tempted to close the discussion down with a photo of Bonnie and Clyde, because couples do not come more iconic than they are. 

Read more...

For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy, Royal Court review - Black joy, pain, and beauty

Laura De Lisle

The title is so long that the Royal Court’s neon red lettering only renders the first three words, followed by a telling ellipsis. But lyrical new play For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy lives up to its weighty name.

Read more...

Scandaltown, Lyric Hammersmith review - Restoration-comedy-style take on 21st Century shamelessness

Rachel Halliburton

If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, then Boris Johnson has played the whole sodding orchestra. Between the parties, the lying, the enabling of Russian financial interests and the record European Covid death-toll he has not just traduced Pitt, he has tap-danced on Churchill’s grave in his narcissistic attempt to assert gravitas.

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... ...
Album: Paul Weller - Find El Dorado

Paul Weller occupies a strange place in the cultural sphere. Especially since he was adopted as an elder statesman of Britpop in the mid 1990s, he...

BBC Proms: McCarthy, Bournemouth SO, Wigglesworth review - s...

It started like Sunday afternoon band concert on a seaside promenade, a massive ensemble playing it light. But while there were several too many...

theartsdesk Q&A: writer and actor Mark Gatiss on 'B...

Having played Sherlock Holmes’s politically involved older brother Mycroft in the BBC’s hit crime series Sherlock...

Ballard, Prime Video review - there's something rotten...

Following the success of its screen version of Michael Connelly’s veteran detective Harry Bosch, starring Titus Welliver,...

Don't Rock the Boat, The Mill at Sonning review - all a...

Now 45 years in the past, its dazzling star gone a decade or so, The Long Good Friday is a monument of British cinema....

Blu-ray: The Rebel / The Punch and Judy Man

Comedian Tony Hancock’s vertiginous rise and fall is neatly traced in the two films he completed in the early 1960s. The warning signs were...

Bookish, U&Alibi review - sleuthing and skulduggery in a...

As a sometime writer of Poirot, Sherlock and Christmas ghost stories,...

Album: Spafford Campbell - Tomorrow Held

Guitarist Louis Campbell and fiddle player Owen Spafford started playing together as teenagers in the National Youth Folk Ensemble when Sam...

The Estate, National Theatre review - hugely entertaining, b...

The first rule for brown people, says the main character – played by BAFTA-winner Adeel Akhtar – in this highly entertaining dramedy, is not to...