Theatre Reviews
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's Globe - swagger and vivacity cohabit with deathMonday, 05 May 2025
Holsters, Stetsons and bluegrass music bring a distinctive flavour to this Wild West riff on Romeo and Juliet that flings us into a vortex of frontier-town politics where men are men and bad girls wear gingham. Sean Holmes’ vigorous production stirs up the original to prove that cowboys can be zombies and that you should always bring a gun to a knife-fight. Read more... |
Krapp's Last Tape, Barbican review - playing with the lighter side of Beckett's gloomSaturday, 03 May 2025
In the Stygian darkness of a bare room, a table on a low platform with a light hanging overhead starts to emerge. Then a door briefly opens at the back of the space and the figure that has entered and sat down at the table also begins to emerge. When the stage lighting goes on, this tableau out of a Bacon painting sharpens and we can properly scrutinise the man. Read more... |
My Master Builder, Wyndham's Theatre review - Ewan McGregor headlines stillborn Ibsen riffThursday, 01 May 2025
It's both brave and bracing to welcome new voices to the West End, but sometimes one wonders if such exposure necessarily works to the benefit of those involved. Read more... |
Dealer's Choice, Donmar Warehouse review - fresh take on a classic about male self-destructionWednesday, 30 April 2025
Patrick Marber’s powerful debut about gambling men is 30 years old, born as the Eighties entrepreneurial boom was starting to sour but before poker become a game for mathematical whizz kids. What it reveals as it maps the male psyche seems as pertinent as ever. Read more... |
Much Ado About Nothing, RSC, Stratford - Messina FC scores on the bardic football fieldTuesday, 29 April 2025
Fragile egos abound. An older person (usually a man) has to bring the best out of the stars, but mustn’t neglect the team ethic. Picking the right players is critical. There’s never enough money, because everything that comes in this season is spent on the next. The media, with a sneer never too far from the old guard and its new version alternately snapping and fawning with little in between, has to be placated. Read more... |
Ben and Imo, Orange Tree Theatre review - vibrant, strongly acted fiction about Britten and Imogen HolstSaturday, 26 April 2025
Back in 2009, there were Ben and Wystan on stage (Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art). Last year came Ben and Master David Hemmings (Kevin Kelly's Turning the Screw), followed by Ben and Imogen Holst according to Mark Ravenhill. That RSC Swan production is now playing in the Richmond round. It grips, thanks to extraordinary performances by Samuel Barnett and Victoria Yeates, and taut dramatic structure, but how deeply is it rooted in truth, and does that matter? Read more... |
The Inseparables, Finborough Theatre review - uneven portrait of a close female friendshipFriday, 25 April 2025
The Finborough has once again performed the miracle of creating a whole world in its intimate space: this time, inter-war France, where two young girls meet and form a strong attachment. The semi-autobiographical story comes from a 1954 Simone de Beauvoir novel, Les inséparables, never published in her lifetime. Some apparently considered it too intimate, and Jean-Paul Sartre disapproved of it. Read more... |
Personal Values, Hampstead Theatre review - deep grief that's too briefThursday, 24 April 2025
“They fuck you up your Mum and Dad; they may not mean to, but they do.” These lines from Philip Larkin’s 1975 poem, “This Be the Verse”, sum up the emotional fuel of many recent plays by young writers. Read more... |
Ghosts, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre - turns out, they do fuck you upFriday, 18 April 2025
A single sofa is all we have on stage to attract our eye - the signifier of intimate family evenings, chummy breakfast TV and, more recently, Graham Norton’s bonhomie. Until you catch proper sight of the room’s walls that is, which are not, as you first thought, Duluxed in a bland magnolia shade, nor even panelled with upmarket modernist abstract paintings, befitting of the whiff of wealth that suffuses the space. Read more... |
All the Happy Things, Soho Theatre review - deep feelings, but little dramaWednesday, 16 April 2025
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Or words to that effect. This quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost seems apt when thinking about the prevalence of mental health issues in current new writing for British stages. Perhaps this subject reflects the long shadow of the pandemic, or our greater sensitivity to such conditions. 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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