mon 19/05/2025

Theatre Reviews

A Christmas Carol, Old Vic Theatre review - the festive favourite mixes gloom with merriment

Heather Neill

"Dickensian" commonly means both sentimental Victorian, apple-cheeked family perfection (especially at Christmas) and abject poverty.

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The Boy Friend, Menier Chocolate Factory review - fun but featherweight

Matt Wolf

There’s slight (White Christmas, to name but one) and then there’s The Boy Friend, a period musical so unabashedly vaporous that if you sneeze, it might blow away.

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Midnight Movie, Royal Court review - sleepless and digital

aleks Sierz

Eve Leigh is an experimental playwright who has tackled difficult issues for more than a decade. Yet most members of the public will know her, and her actor husband Tom Penn, as the neighbours who recorded an altercation between Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds in June this year. At least, that's what it says on the internet. But don't let this distract you.

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The Wind of Heaven, Finborough Theatre review - a welcome, if strange, Emlyn Williams rediscovery

Heather Neill

This is the third Emlyn Williams piece to be presented here in a decade: The Druid's Rest in 2009 was followed by the enormous success of Accolade, directed by Blanche McIntyre, two years later.

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The Wolf of Wall Street, 5-15 Sun Street review - energetic but to what end?

Matt Wolf

Of all the groups you probably wouldn’t want to be part of, surely the hyper-adrenalised, hardscrabble populace of The Wolf of Wall Street, the Jordan Belfort memoir made into an amphetamine rush of a film by Martin Scorsese, must rank near the very top.

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White Christmas, Dominion Theatre review - breezy but bland

Matt Wolf

Nostalgia for things that probably never were is an animating theme in politics these days.

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My Brilliant Friend, National Theatre review - sleek spectacle almost eats its characters

David Nice

It took no time for Elena Ferrante's two Neapolitan friends to join the ranks of great literary creations: Lenù as successful writer-narrator, critical of her past ambivalence; Lila the unknowable fascinator, her brilliance often diverted into poisoned channels.

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The Arrival, Bush Theatre review - boys will definitely be boys

aleks Sierz

Family dramas are a staple of British new writing, but as well as talking about our nearest and dearest, can they also say something about the wider society? The Arrival, by director turned playwright Bijan Sheibani, who won an Olivier award for Bola Agbaje's Gone Too Far! in 2008, has ambitions to be a study of masculinity in crisis.

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The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Bridge Theatre review – spellbinding narrative of parallel worlds

Rachel Halliburton

We all remember that moment when we walked through the back of the wardrobe: the heaviness of the fur coats, that first crunch of the snow underfoot. It’s an extraordinary moment of childhood that has also become too normal because shared memory has made it so. What does it really mean to walk through a door and emerge in another world entirely?

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Henry VI, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - a lively vortex

David Nice

No Joan of Arc means no Henry VI Part One. France, where we left the victorious Henry V - the superb Sarah Amankwah, a shining light of this company - in the Globe's summer history plays, only figures briefly in the last act of a candelelit, intimate stepping-back to the more problematic saga.

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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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