West End
theartsdesk
London is the theatre capital of the world, with more than 50 playhouses offering theatrical entertainment. From the mighty National Theatre to the West End, the small powerhouses of the Donmar Warehouse and the Almeida and out to the fringe theatres, it's hard to know which to turn. Our guide is here to help you sort the wheat from the chaff. Below is our selection of the best plays on in London right now, with links to our reviews for further elucidation.Albion, Almeida Theatre ★★★★ Mike Bartlett's play has deepened in accordance with our divisive times. Until 29 FebCollapsible, Bush Read more ...
Veronica Lee
What joy it is to welcome this offshoot of the television series to the West End stage – complete with several of that show's cast, plus a few new additions. Ben Elton has fashioned an original story that picks up in 1605, a decade after where the third series left off (with the death of William Shakespeare's son, Hamnet), and two years into the reign of King James.Will (David Mitchell, on great form as the prolix and self-obsessed playwright) has had a run of duds and now is under pressure to write a hit to save his company of actors from disbandment. His landlady's niece, Kate (the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It’s not uncommon for playwrights to begin their careers by writing what they know, to co-opt a frequently quoted precept about authorial inspiration. So it’s among the many fascinations of Leopoldstadt that Tom Stoppard, at the age of 82, should have written his most personal play and also, very possibly (and sadly), his last. Audiences will surely warm to the news that this bustling dynastic tale leading, as its story necessitates, to unimaginable despair and loss is also among Sir Tom’s most accessible, as well: yes, there are a lot of characters to track, and a glance at the family tree Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Uncle Vanya must surely be the closest, the most essential of Chekhov’s plays, its cast – just four main players who are caught up in the drama's fraught emotional action, and four who are essentially supporting – a concentrated unit even by the playwright's lean standards. Its overlapping strands of unrequited love and desperate loneliness are tightly wound, so organically so that any single false note risks throwing the whole off balance. That’s never the case in director Ian Rickson’s exquisite production of this new adaptation by Conor McPherson, one which stretches the original in Read more ...
Veronica Lee
When Frank Skinner did a London run of new material last year, the show was billed as a taster of a longer touring version. I wrote then that the show whetted my appetite for more, and I'm glad to say that the updated version, Showbiz, which now has a West End residency, has delivered.Showbiz comes after Skinner has chalked up more than 30 years in comedy and is a pleasing mix of reflections on parenting, the ageing process and fame. He starts the show by cheekily using Bruce Forsyth's famous phrase “Nice to see you, to see you nice” when he walks on stage. As he says drily: “No one else is Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Who knew? This West End premiere of the 2007 Broadway entry from the legendary songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret) secured a prime holiday-season slot at the last minute when this playhouse's previous entry, The Man in the White Suit, closed prematurely. And the happy if unexpected news is that Paul Foster’s touring production – Wyndham's, unusually, is another stop on the road – is a pure delight. Curtains may not be the subtlest or most nuanced musical you’ll ever see, but it’s without a doubt one of this year’s most thoroughly Read more ...
Veronica Lee
When Qdos brought back pantomime to the Palladium three years ago after an absence of nearly 30 years, it set the bar high with superb production values, a large ensemble, a live band – and a stage stuffed with stars. Now those stars – Julian Clary, Paul O'Grady, Paul Zerdin, Nigel Havers and Gary Wilmot – have become a sort of panto ensemble in their own right and reassemble for this year's outing, Goldilocks and the Three Bears.Traditionalists will quibble – perhaps fairly – as it's several minutes into the show before it even looks like a panto, when O'Grady's baddie, Baron von Savage Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Actor James McAvoy is much in demand: in the BBC's His Dark Materials he is busy saving a parallel world, while in the poetic universe of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac he is tasked with soothing more than one aching heart. Opening at the Playhouse Theatre, in a brilliant new version by master penman Martin Crimp, this classic tale is directed by Jamie Lloyd, whose company's revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal – starring Tom Hiddleston – has this year wowed both West End and Broadway. This time, McAvoy comes up with a breathtaking career-best performance, and the entire evening is a Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen is an institution in the States, running on Broadway since 2016 and currently on its second year of a national tour. It also made a star of original leading man Ben Platt, now appearing in Netflix’s The Politician – and this long-awaited West End production could well do the same for the exceedingly talented 21-year-old Sam Tutty.Tutty plays the titular Evan, a 17-year-old high school senior suffering from debilitating social anxiety. His well-meaning, divorcée mother, Heidi (Rebecca Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Stewart Lee is back on the road after three years, and he comes back wonderfully refreshed and on marvellous form with this double header, Tornado/Snowflake.Tornado, the first hour, starts with Lee reading out the wrong blurb that his show Comedy Vehicle was given on Netflix. It actually describes the B-movie Sharknado, in which sharks rain from the sky. The joke is teased out and weaves through the hour, as he chisels away at a favourite subject in his work, his perceived standing in comedy. Would anybody notice if they tuned in to his show after reading that description?The mention of Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In Peru in 1985, Joe Simpson - then 25 - and his 21-year-old climbing partner Simon Yates were descending the remote Siula Grande, which was hard to get up but even harder to get down, when Simpson broke his leg. They both assumed it was a death sentence, but Yates gave him a couple of paracetamol, dug himself into a bucket seat in the snow and lowered the stricken Simpson down the mountain slope, paying out 300ft of rope, then climbing down and doing it again, and again, for hours.A blizzard blew in, Simpson was lowered over an overhanging ledge, and at that point the rope ran out. Dangling Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Theatre can touch thousands of lives. But can it compete with the success of a bestselling book? First published in 1988, mountaineer Joe Simpson's Touching the Void has apparently sold more than a million copies, and it's been translated into some 20 languages. It tells the adventure story of how he, and Simon Yates, climbed the Siula Grande peak in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. Last year, David Greig's stage adaptation of the book opened at the Bristol Old Vic, and then went on tour. Now the much-praised show comes into the West End, and it's an odd mix of the vertiginous and the banal.Set Read more ...