London Theatre Reviews

Lily Allen makes an admirable stage debut in the scary and shouty '2:22: A Ghost Story'

Lily Allen shrieks before she even says a word in 2:22: A Ghost Story, which tips you off immediately as to the way Danny Robins's debut West End play is due to proceed. But the name-grabbing debut on view is, of course, singer-songwriter Allen, who was due some years back to be penning a major musical of Bridget Jones's Diary from which she parted company along the way.Instead, here Allen is, looking sleek and glam and very much forming part of the four-person ensemble that has been assembled...

Sophocles rewrite ‘Paradise’, starring Lesley Sharp, is brave, bold, and bruising

This summer's barrage of theatre openings comes to an unexpectedly heady climax with Paradise, the poet and polymath Kae Tempest's brave and bruising modern-day adaptation of Sophocles's Philoctetes. Marking the first show in 18 months or so to open at the National Theatre to full capacity, Ian Rickson's production reminds us of this director's singular gift for theatrical transliteration and, indeed, translation, as reflected in his magnificent revival at this same address a few years ago of...

‘The Windsors: Endgame’ flies the Union Jack for British satire

Writing anything about the Royal Family can get you cancelled these days. Well, it's time to stick my neck out on the line and say "God Save the King," as the Prince of Wales ascends to the throne — aptly at the Prince of Wales Theatre — in The Windsors: Endgame. Perhaps like the Royal Family themselves, The Windsors: Endgame will divide opinion like marmite. Some will dislike the show's bitter taste, but this is a masterclass in British satire. The Windsors: Endgame is a right royal pantomime...

A reimagined ‘Carousel’ at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre revitalises the classic

"When you walk through a storm Hold your head up high And don't be afraid of the dark"Those powerful lyrics from the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic "You'll Never Walk Alone" hit a little differently after over a year of a pandemic, a "storm" that has shuttered our theatres, separated our families, and devastated our world. There was also a literal storm brewing on Monday night at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, and the company of Carousel definitely walked on through the wind, rain, and...

'Big Big Sky' serves up compelling thoughts on humanity

Big Big Sky is the ample name given the lovingly conceived new Hampstead Downstairs play by Tom Wells that somewhat overreaches for an effect that Tessa Walker's production doesn't entirely achieve. Telling of the shifting fortunes of four denizens in a cafe in Kilnsea, East Yorkshire - familiar terrain for this writer - the play catches human behaviour on the wing without quite transporting the playgoer to the state of theatrical grace that would seem to be the goal.Dispensing vegan brownies...

'Singin' in the Rain' starring Adam Cooper makes a small splash

​​Trust the British weather to make the opening of Singin' in the Rain an immersive experience, with a flurry of umbrellas outside the theatre to match those onstage. And while the revival of Jonathan Church's 2011 Chichester production was certainly cheering on a drizzly night, faithfully re-creating the beloved movie, it never really wowed.Partly, it had the misfortune of following the explosive Anything Goes, which set an enormously high bar for Golden Age musicals. But while that production...

Sutton Foster is giving one of the best musical theatre performances of all time in ​​’Anything Goes’

Are there any actors you wish you could travel back in time and see onstage? For me, it's stars like Carol Channing in Hello,Dolly!, Ethel Merman in Annie Get Your Gun, or Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady. Imagine what it would be like to experience those legends creating those iconic roles. There are also performances I've seen but would love to be able to revisit, like Patti LuPone in Gypsy, Cynthia Erivo in The Color Purple, or Audra McDonald in anything. While theatre's ephemeral nature is part...

A rewritten 'John and Jen' feels like a missed opportunity

The Southwark Playhouse's smaller second stage makes a fitting attic. Natalie Johnson's set is simultaneously cramped and expansive, a naturalistically cluttered backdrop packed with boxes and lovingly detailed detritus of a suburban American life from 1980 to the present, a fit for the intimacy of the venue (which is perhaps unfortunately cramped—there is no distancing in place, and masks are not required).Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald's two-person musical about the changing relationship...

‘Wonderville Magic and Illusion’ is a love letter to magic for the ages

If Stan Lee had created the Marvel characters as magicians, then the acts in Wonderville Magic and Illusion would be the Avengers. This newly-created vaudevillian variety show brings together world-leading illusionists for a summer run at the Palace Theatre, famously home to the spellbinding play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Now believing in the impossible and seeing the unthinkable are difficult tasks, but it's made easy thanks to the Wonderville performers. Wonderville rolls an evening...

'Changing Destiny' at the Young Vic is a few bricks short of a pyramid

Changing Destiny makes all sorts of sense as a Covid-era selection with which to reopen the invaluable Young Vic: an hour in length with a cast of two and drawing upon a seminal text from ancient Egypt called Sinuhe that is widely thought to presage many of the great epic narratives that followed (The Odyssey, for one). Like The Mahabharata from Peter Brook, a legendary director well-known to Young Vic audiences, Sinuhe in the Booker prize-winning Nigerian writer Ben Okri's distillation of this...