mon 28/07/2025

Theatre Reviews

Giant, Harold Pinter Theatre review - incendiary Roald Dahl drama with topical bite

Helen Hawkins

When Mark Rosenblatt was preparing his debut play, the miseries of the assault on Gaza were still over the horizon. Now they are here, another terrible moment in human history that resonates all through Giant. Since the play opened at the Royal Court last year, that ugly hum has grown even louder. Now transferred to the West End, it could have been written to give dramatic form to this most incendiary of talking points.

Read more...

Einkvan, Det Norske Teatret, The Coronet Theatre review - alienation times six

David Nice

Watching the stricken faces on the split screen, I felt at times like callow Farfrae in Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge: when faced with Henchard’s account of his blackest misery, the young man replies “Ah, now, I never feel like it”. Well, hardly ever. It’s impossible not to be held captive by the eyes and words of the six actors sharing the roles of estranged father, mother and son in Nobel Prize winning Norwegian writer Jon Fosse’s Einkvan (Everyman).

Read more...

The Gang of Three, King's Head Theatre - three old Labour ghosts resurrected to entertain and educate

Gary Naylor

There was a time when the only daytime TV (ex-weekends and ex-Wimbledon fortnight) comprised the annual party conferences and the Trade Union Congress. A seemingly endless parade of indistinguishable middle-aged balding white men, with Barbara Castle’s fiery redhead and Margaret Thatcher’s immovable blonde hairdo the only relief, would grab 15 minutes of fame speechifying on the minutiae of policy, some puffing on pipes, some on full-strength Capstans.

Read more...

Conversations After Sex, Park Theatre review - pillow talk proves a snooze

Gary Naylor

In Dublin, a city that has changed more than most in the last 30 years, a young woman, with an English accent that is expensive to acquire, is cycling through sexual partners. We eavesdrop on their conversations, witness the physical intimacy fade as the psychological intimacy hesitantly grows, in that strange vacuum in which you realise that you know everything and nothing about the person in front of you.

Read more...

Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's Globe - swagger and vivacity cohabit with death

Rachel Halliburton

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 gloom

Helen Hawkins

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 riff

Matt Wolf

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-destruction

Helen Hawkins

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 field

Gary Naylor

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 Holst

David Nice

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...

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... ...
The Winter's Tale, RSC, Stratford review - problem play...

There’s a deal to be made when taking your seat for The Winter’s Tale. It’s one the title alone would have...

Brixton Calling, Southwark Playhouse review - life-affirming...

What a delight it is to see the director, the star, even the marketing manager these days FFS, get out of the way and let a really...

BBC Proms: Batsashvili, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Rya...

This Prom began in sombre and melancholic shades of grey. Then...

Inter Alia, National Theatre review - dazzling performance,...

Rosamund Pike is back. For her first stage appearance since 2010, when she played Hedda Gabler in Adrian Noble’s production for Bath Theatre Royal...

The Waterfront, Netflix review - fish, drugs and rock'n...

You wouldn’t really want to belong to the Buckley family, a star-crossed dynasty who run their fishing business out of Havenport,...

Album: Debby Friday - The Starrr of the Queen of Life

Debby Friday is a Nigerian-Canadian singer-producer who found...

The Fantastic Four: First Steps review - innocence regained

Marvel goes back to its origins, gulping the fresh air of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s first hit comic The Fantastic Four in 1961. Ignoring...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Pale Fountains - The Complete Vir...

The Pale Fountains played their first live show on 12 February 1980 as the support to on-the-up fellow...

Giselle, National Ballet of Japan review - return of a class...

A new Giselle? Not quite: the production that ...