fri 15/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

Peter Pan: The Audio Adventure review - the perfect bedtime story

Laura De Lisle

The blurb for Peter Pan: The Audio Adventure, Shaun McKenna’s new adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic, tells us, with a...

Read more...

Dick Whittington, National Theatre at Home review - colourful and amiable entertainment

Veronica Lee

In a much-depleted and truncated pantomime season that withered on the vine, the National Theatre's debut production of Dick Whittington lasted only four performances before the show was cancelled; it has now released this recording, which will be available throughout the current lockdown.

Read more...

Best of 2020: Theatre

Matt Wolf

"Goodbye": The single word lingered heavily in the air last March 16, as the scripted closing both of the terrific Southwark Playhouse revival of The Last Five Years and as an ancillary farewell to live theatre.

Read more...

Living Newspaper: A Counter Narrative, Royal Court online review – the news, but better

Laura De Lisle

Edition 2 of Living Newspaper: A Counter Narrative, an experimental new piece of online theatre from the Royal Court, doesn’t mess around.

Read more...

A Christmas Carol, Old Vic online review - the bells have it once again

Matt Wolf

As proof that you can't have too much of a good thing, consider the return of Matthew Warchus's buoyant production of A Christmas Carol, now marking its fourth year at the Old Vic (with a lauded Broadway run last Christmas included,...

Read more...

Pantomimes 2020 round-up: what's available online

Veronica Lee

Cinderella ****

I did worry that pantomime – that most audience-driven of theatrical pursuits – might not work through the tube, but Nottingham Playhouse's warm and funny show dispels any doubts. Pandemic jokes abound (the audience must be smelly because they're sitting far apart, for instance) in writer-director Adam Penford's inventive romp.

Read more...

Troy Story, RSC online review - biting off more than it can chew

Laura De Lisle

At just under five hours, Troy Story, the RSC’s adaptation of as many tales from Greek myth, takes about a third as long as it does to recite the whole of the ...

Read more...

A Christmas Carol, Dominion Theatre review - brash and bustling and snowy, too

Matt Wolf

The twelve days of Christmas have nothing on the flotilla of Christmas Carols jostling for view this season, each of which is substantially different enough from the next so as to give Dickens's 1843 story its prismatic due.

Read more...

The Comeback, Noël Coward Theatre review - frantic farce with touches of vaudeville

Veronica Lee

Ben Ashenden and Alex Owen together form The Pin, a sketch duo who have won much critical acclaim and full houses in the Edinburgh Fringe shows. They have also added a huge social media following in 2020 with their lockdown skits spoofing the new Zoom age. Now they move into theatre with – what is it?

Read more...

Overflow, Bush Theatre review – fear, fury and fun

aleks Sierz

Travis Alabanza is black, trans, queer and proud. And they’ve got a lot to be proud about. In 2016, they were the youngest recipient of the artist in residence post on the Tate workshop programme, and two years later starred in Chris Goode’s wildly overblown adaptation of Derek Jarman’s Jubilee.

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... ...
Alien: Earth, Disney+ review - was this interstellar journey...

Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie from 1979 was an all-time sci-fi/horror classic, and even an endless stream of sequels and spin-offs...

Unmoored review - atmospheric Swedish noir set on Exmoor

“When have you ever gone off alone?” scoffs Magnus (Thomas W Gabrielsson) when his wife, Maria (Mirja Turestedt), expresses the wish to go to...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: Kinder / Shunga Alert / Clean...

Kinder, Underbelly, Cowgate ★...

Album: Tom Grennan - Everywhere I Went Led Me To Where I Did...

Who’d have guessed that a dude who first came to attention a decade ago guesting on a cheesy Chase & Status drum & bass track would likely...

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, RSC, Stratford review - not qui...

I have two guilty secrets about the theatre – okay, two I’m prepared to own up to right here, right now. I quite enjoy some...

Orpheus and Eurydice, Opera Queensland/SCO, Edinburgh Intern...

There’s a lot to shout about in this Orpheus, especially the way it looks. In a thin year for staged opera at the Edinburgh International...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Eric Rushton / Bella Hull

Eric Rushton, Monkey Barrel ...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: The Horse of Jenin / Nowhere

The Horse of Jenin, Pleasance Dome ...

Beating Hearts review - kiss kiss, slam slam

Andrew Garfield was 29 when he played the teenage Spiderman and Jennifer Grey was 27 when she took on a decade-younger-than-her character called “...