London Theatre - Musicals, Plays, Drama, and Fringe

'The Tempest' review — a cut down Shakespeare loses its magic

Shakespeare’s valedictory, to comply with the received scholarship on this climactic play of his, lands with muted force in Sean Holmes’s curate’s egg of a production – engaging and vital at some moments, flat and curiously lacking in impact at others. The news value is surely that Ferdy Roberts, as Prospero, spends most of the performance wearing nothing but snugly-fitting yellow swimming trunks, which may be fine during these hot summer days but might be less comfortable for the actor as the...

'South Pacific' review — Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical is recharged with a new political currency

Put to one side, and it isn’t easy, the gorgeous orchestral swells that usually precede South Pacific and that, in the revelatory Lincoln Center Theater revival of this 1949 musical in New York in 2008, were capable of inducing tears of joy. Daniel Evans’s thoughtful and pointed reappraisal of the same Rodgers and Hammerstein title, seen last year at Chichester and now at Sadler’s Wells for a late-summer run, opens with the sight of Liat (Sera Maehara), the young Tonkinese child of Bloody Mary,...

'All of Us' review — Francesca Martinez's debut play is a profound snapshot of disability in modern Britain

What is “normal”? For some, normal could translate as being an able-bodied person who requires no assistance. For others, normal could mean living a day-to-day routine. For Jess, a self-labelled “wobbly” therapist living with cerebral palsy, there’s no such thing as normal, and that should be celebrated. Actor, comic, and CP sufferer Francesca Martinez’s debut play shines a spotlight on what it’s like to live as a disabled person in modern Britain. Developed over the course of two years, and...