Theatre Reviews
Blues in the Night, Kiln Theatre review - hard times, hot tunesThursday, 25 July 2019![]()
It’s too darn hot, BoJo is in Downing Street, and we’re all going to Brexit hell – so we might as well sing the blues. Read more... |
The View UpStairs, Soho Theatre review - well-intentioned but needs a rewriteWednesday, 24 July 2019![]()
If good intentions were all, The View UpStairs would be Gypsy. Read more... |
The Bridges of Madison County, Menier Chocolate Factory review - Iowan romance fizzlesWednesday, 24 July 2019![]()
Robert James Waller’s bestselling, though critically panned, 1992 romance novel was reincarnated in the Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep-starring film, and then again in Jason Robert Brown and Marsha Norman’s Tony-winning 2013 musical – both adaptations wisely sloughing off some of the original’s schmaltz and sappiness. Read more... |
The Night of the Iguana, Noël Coward Theatre review - Clive Owen and Lia Williams burn brightWednesday, 17 July 2019![]()
One of the glories of contemporary London theatre is its revivals of classic American drama. Year after year, audiences are able to revisit and enjoy the great landmarks of postwar American playwriting from greats such as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard and David Mamet (recently joined by the likes of Lynn Nottage). Read more... |
Equus, Trafalgar Studios review - passionate intensityTuesday, 16 July 2019![]()
When he gave Martin Dysart, the troubled psychiatrist protagonist of Equus, a line in which he speaks about “moments of experience” being “magnetised”, Peter Shaffer might almost have been talking about theatre itself. Read more... |
Tao of Glass, Royal Exchange, Manchester review - brilliant, enchanting tales fascinateTuesday, 16 July 2019![]()
Who would have thought that a one-narrator show, mainly about projects that never got off the ground, would turn out to be such a satisfying evening’s entertainment? Read more... |
Whitewash, Soho Theatre review - a wild-at-heart linguistic joy-rideTuesday, 16 July 2019![]()
This witty street-smart play about a white-skinned boy born to a mixed-race mother deploys its narrative with the dexterity of a dance. Read more... |
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, London Palladium review - bright, brash, largely irresistibleFriday, 12 July 2019![]()
Cheeky and broad and (for the most part) as entertaining as seems humanly possible, this embryonic entry from the collaborative pen of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber is back at its onetime London home, the Palladium. It's a production far surpassing any of the various London and Broadway Joseph... Read more... |
The Fountainhead, The Lowry, Salford review – marathon in ManclandFriday, 12 July 2019![]()
Ivo van Hove’s reputation precedes his work as a rumble of thunder goes before a storm. Read more... |
Peter Gynt, National Theatre review - towering protagonist, middle-way productionThursday, 11 July 2019![]()
Like Hamlet and both parts of Goethe's Faust, with which it shares the highest peak of poetic drama, Ibsen's Peer Gynt is very long, timeless... 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

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...

The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic dialogue and very funny banter....

Every now and then a concert programme comes along that fits like a bespoke suit, and this one could have been specially designed for me. Two...

Nick Mohammed invented his Mr Swallow character – camp, lisping, with an inflated ego and the mistaken belief that he has creative...

Photographer Finetime and I have our first pints outside Dalton’s, a bar on...

There’s a grail, but it doesn't glow in a mundane if perverted Christian ritual. Three of the main characters have young and old actor versions...

The appalling destruction of Pan Am’s flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was put under the spotlight in January this year in Sky Atlantic’s ...

Ballet is hardly a stranger to Broadway. Until the late 1950s every other musical had its fantasy ballet sequence – think Cyd Charisse in ...

“Tell me what you see” invites Robert Forster during Strawberries' “Tell it Back to me.” The album’s eight songs do not, however,...

Quoted in an early music press article on his band Chapterhouse, singer-guitarist Stephen Patman said their ambition was “to have our records on...