mon 17/02/2025

Theatre Reviews

The Buddha of Suburbia, Barbican Theatre review - farcical fun, but what about the issues?

aleks Sierz

Hanif Kureishi’s 1990 novel The Buddha of Suburbia begins like this: “My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost”. Almost. Yes, that's good. We are in 1970s south-east London, and this immediately introduces, despite its tentative tone, the protagonist as a young man trying to define his identity.

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How To Survive Your Mother, King's Head Theatre review - mummy issues drive autobiographical dramedy

Gary Naylor

It is unsurprising to learn in the post-show Q&A that each audience receives Jonathan Maitland’s new play based on his 2006 memoir differently. My house laughed a lot (me especially) but some see the tragic overwhelming the comic, and the laughs dry up. When it comes to humour, as is the case with mothers, it’s each to their own.

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Dr Strangelove, Noël Coward Theatre review - an evening of different parts

Rachel Halliburton

Even by Stanley Kubrick’s standards, Dr Strangelove went through an extraordinary evolutionary process. After starting it off as a serious film about nuclear war based on the 1958 novel Two Hours to Doom, he decided to turn it into a comedy with the help of porn-obsessed satirist Terry Southern.

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Reykjavik, Hampstead Theatre review - drama frozen by waves of detail

aleks Sierz

“Don’t take a piss in the house of a woman you have made a widow.” The mixture of earthy comedy and tragic pain in this piece of parental advice is typical of the tone of Richard Bean’s Reykjavik, his new work play which explores the lives of the Hull trawlermen of the mid-1970s.

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The Forsyte Saga Parts 1 and 2, Park Theatre review - if Chekhov did soap operas

Gary Naylor

The misadventures and misbehaviours of the English upper-middle class is catnip for TV executives. All those posh types on which us hoi polloi can sit in delicious self-righteous judgement, as we marvel at their cut glass accents, well-tailored clothes and ostentatious wealth. Meanwhile their worlds are always collapsing due to villainy, venality or misconceived virtue. Lovely stuff! 

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The Wild Duck, The Norwegian Ibsen Company, Coronet Theatre review - slow burn, devastating climax

David Nice

“I think this is all very strange,” declares 14-year-old Hedvig Ekdal at the end of The Wild Duck’s third act, just as everything is about to plunge into a terrifying vortex. Alan Lucien Øyen's’s production is pointedly strange from the start, a claustrophobic, Beckett-like terrain in the haunting, possibly haunted space of the Coronet, with black side walls and 13 black chairs, in which happiness stands no chance of survival. The screw turns slowly, but with devastating effect.

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Autumn, Park Theatre review - on stage as in politics, Brexit drama promises much, but loses its way

Gary Naylor

Theatre is a strange dish. A recipe can be stacked with delicious ingredients, cooked to exacting standards, taste-test beautifully at the halfway mark, yet leave you not quite full, not exactly satisfied, disappointed that it didn’t come out quite as expected when plated up. 

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The Fear of 13, Donmar Warehouse review - powerful analysis of a gross injustice

Helen Hawkins

There is star casting, and there is casting the right star – not the same thing. The Donmar’s new production, The Fear of 13, succeeds in the latter category, in spades. 

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The Duchess [of Malfi], Trafalgar Theatre review - actors imprisoned by confused time travelling

Helen Hawkins

John Webster’s sour, bloody tale of brotherly greed and vice has been updated by the playwright Zinnie Harris, who also directs her own text at the Trafalgar. The title has a handy [of Malfi] added. But do we really know where we are? Or which century we’re watching?

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Marylebone Theatre review - explosive play for today

Helen Hawkins

An incendiary play has opened at the Marylebone, the adventurous venue just off Baker Street. Bigger houses were apparently unwilling to stage it, fearing anti-Israeli protests. Their loss.

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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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