sun 03/08/2025

Theatre Reviews

The Busy World Is Hushed, Finborough Theatre review - new play puts the G-word centre stage

Jenny Gilbert

God makes few appearances at the modern playhouse – so few that the Finborough Theatre saw fit to print a glossary in the programme for its latest production.

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Young Frankenstein review - Mel Brooks musical is blissfully bonkers

Matt Wolf

What a difference an ocean and a change of scale can make. When I saw the Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein on Broadway a decade ago, the show seemed to take its cue from the lumbering monster contained within it, who stutters and sputters before eventually being kickstarted into something resembling life.

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Saint George and the Dragon, National Theatre review – a modern folk tale in the Olivier

Heather Neill

Bold and fearless are adjectives that might describe playwright Rory Mullarkey as accurately as any chivalrous knight. He made his name in 2013 when, at the age of 25, his play Cannibals, part of which was in Russian, took to the main stage at the Manchester Royal Exchange and went on to win the James Tait Black Prize.

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Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle, Wyndham’s Theatre review – paradoxically predictable

aleks Sierz

Playwright Simon Stephens and director Marianne Elliott are hyped as a winning partnership.

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Victory Condition, Royal Court review - Ballardian vision of the contemporary

aleks Sierz

What does it mean to feel contemporary? Feel. Contemporary.

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The Lie, Menier Chocolate Factory review - fake news, real feeling

Marianka Swain

A year after premiering acclaimed French playwright Florian Zeller’s The Truth, the Menier Chocolate Factory now hosts The Lie – which, as the name suggests, acts as a companion piece of sorts.

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Labour of Love, Noël Coward Theatre, review - Martin Freeman and Tamsin Greig labour in vain

aleks Sierz

Prolific playwright James Graham aspires to be nothing if not timely.

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B, Royal Court review - intriguing, ironical, but flawed

aleks Sierz

In the 1960s, we had the theatre of commitment; today we have an attitude of non-committal. Once, political playwrights could be guaranteed to tell you what to think, to describe what was wrong with society – and what to do about it.

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After the Rehearsal/Persona, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Barbican - van Hove reconfigures Bergman

David Nice

Three tall orders must be met in any successful transfer of an Ingmar Bergman text from screen to stage. First, take a company of actors as good as the various ones that the master himself assembled over the years, both in his films and in the theatre; Ivo van Hove’s Toneelgroep is one of the few in the world today up to the mark, working just as intensively.

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Jane Eyre, National Theatre review - a dynamic treatment that just misses

Jenny Gilbert

Sometimes you go to the theatre and in the first 10 minutes are convinced that the production is going to smash it, only to find by half time that it’s not. Initial delight gives way to mild irritation, and as a member of the ticket-buying public you draw a line under it and hope for better luck next time. A critic, however, must identify what didn’t work and why.

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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.


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