tue 14/10/2025

Theatre Reviews

Makeshifts and Realities, Finborough Theatre review - Edwardian dramas with a pinch of Chekhov

Gary Naylor

We’re in (pretty much literally so in this most intimate of venues) an Edwardian sitting room, time hanging heavily in the air, gentility almost visibly fading before our eyes.

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Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: PLEASE LEAVE (a message) / Shadow Kingdom

David Kettle

PLEASE LEAVE (a message), Underbelly, Cowgate 

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Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Without Sin / An Alternative Helpline for the End of the World / Two Strangers Walk into a Bar...

David Kettle

With its throbbing crowds and its performers baying for attention (and for audiences), the Edinburgh Fringe can be a hectic, raucous place. But for anyone who needs a break from the crammed-full, in-your-face stand-up gigs, thankfully three shows provide far calmer, more intimate experiences – involving just you and one other.

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La Cage Aux Folles, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - 40 years on, the drag show still entertains and educates

Gary Naylor

Forty years ago, the world was very different for gay men. AIDS was devastating their communities, especially in the big cities where hard-won enclaves of acceptance were being hollowed out, one sunken-eyed friend after another. Media screamed “Gay Plague” and some politicians barely suppressed their glee at the “perverts’” comeuppance.

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Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: The Grand Old Opera House Hotel / YOU ARE GOING TO DIE

David Kettle

The Grand Old Opera House Hotel, Traverse Theatre 

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Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Tennessee, Rose / The Ballad of Truman Capote

Veronica Lee

Tennessee, Rose, Pleasance Dome 

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Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Adults / Bacon

David Kettle

Adults, Traverse Theatre 

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Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Flat & the Curves / Shamilton! / I Wish My Life Were Like a Musical

Veronica Lee

Flat & the Curves, Pleasance Dome 

Flat & the Curves – Katy Baker, Charlotte Brooke, Issy Wroe Wright and Arabella Rodrigo – perform a gig-style musical comedy show with risqué material about what it means to be a modern woman. And there's a generous side helping about the inadequacy of men, too.

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The SpongeBob Musical, QEH review - musical based on popular kids' animation sinks for lack of focus

Gary Naylor

There are many things that you are not told about being a parent, a vast landscape of details that batter you with unwelcome difference from that comfortable life of Friday night prosecco and pizza. One is a whole new palette of garish colours barging into your eyeline – fluorescent yellow, eye-bleeding orange, vomity green.

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Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Casting the Runes / The Return / Woodhill

David Kettle

Casting the Runes, Pleasance Courtyard 

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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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