mon 19/05/2025

Theatre Reviews

Rags: The Musical, Park Theatre review - a timely, if predictable, immigrant tale

Marianka Swain

“Take our country back!” is the rallying cry of the self-identified “real” Americans gathered to protest the arrival of immigrants.

Read more...

Les Misérables, Sondheim Theatre review - join in our crusade

aleks Sierz

Do you hear the people sing? In recent months, you're more likely to have heard news stories about the longest running West End musical than the actual music.

Read more...

Scrounger, Finborough Theatre review - uncomfortable play tackles disability discrimination

Saskia Baron

Scrounger is no comfortable evening in the theatre, for reasons both intentional and inadvertent. Athena Stevens’ new play recounts her 2016 battle with British Airways and London City Airport, who subjected her to the humiliation of being taken off a flight to Edinburgh because they couldn’t fit her c

Read more...

Magic Goes Wrong, Vaudeville Theatre review - entertaining spoof

Veronica Lee

Mischief Theatre's “Goes Wrong” oeuvre is now well established: broad humour combined with physical comedy and slapstick mishaps.

Read more...

The Tyler Sisters, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs review – raucous celebration of sisterhood

Laura De Lisle

The Tyler sisters start as they mean to go on: bickering. Middle sister Gail (Bryony Hannah) has come home from uni to find that youngest Katrina (Angela Griffin) has stolen her room. “What about Maddy’s? Why didn’t you take that?” Gail snaps. “She’s in it,” Katrina points out. “I am in it, to be fair,” confirms eldest Maddy (Caroline Faber), trying her best not to take sides. “I am actually in it.”

Read more...

Best of 2019: Theatre

Matt Wolf

Political dysfunction and societal distress led many amongst us to the brink this year, so where better than the theatre to find succour if not always solace in the abundantly thoughtful offerings of a creative community as often as not working at full tilt?

Read more...

Girl From The North Country, Gielgud Theatre review – poignant collaboration between Conor McPherson and Bob Dylan

Rachel Halliburton

Despair hangs like mildew over the small iron-ore mining town of Duluth, Minnesota, where dreams go to die, and the living haunt the clapped-out buildings like lost souls.

Read more...

Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Alexandra Palace Theatre review - JM Barrie's classic as you have never seen it before

Veronica Lee

Mischief Theatre is a wonder of modern commercial theatre. In 2008, a group of young actors who had met at drama school started the ensemble – writing, producing, directing and performing their own work.

Read more...

Curtains, Wyndham's Theatre review - unexpectedly giddy fun

Matt Wolf

Who knew? This West End premiere of the 2007 Broadway entry from the legendary songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret) secured a prime holiday-season slot at the last minute when this playhouse's previous entry, The Man in the White Suit, closed prematurely.

Read more...

Snowflake, Kiln Theatre review - strong but clumsy generational war

aleks Sierz

The prolific Mike Bartlett – from whose pen have leapt television series such as Doctor Foster and Press, as well as stage hits such as King Charles III – has two things to celebrate tonight.

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

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

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

It followed some...

Parsifal, Glyndebourne review - the music flies up, the dram...

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...

Mr Swallow: Show Pony, Richmond Theatre review - magic trick...

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

The Bombing of Pan Am 103, BBC One review - new dramatisatio...

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 to Broadway: Wheeldon Works, Royal Ballet review - th...

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

Album: Robert Forster - Strawberries

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

Music Reissues Weekly: Chapterhouse - White House Demos

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

Songlines Encounters, Kings Place review - West African and...

Songlines Encounters is your round-the-world ticket to great...

The Deep Blue Sea, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - Tamsin G...

The water proves newly inviting in The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Rattigan's mournful 1952 play that some while ago established its status as...

The Brightening Air, Old Vic review - Chekhov jostles Conor...

It's one thing to be indebted to a playwright, as Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter have been at different times to Beckett, or Sondheim's latest...