London Theatre Reviews

Power politics in David Mamet's 'Oleanna' make for an imbalanced drama

It would be tempting to say that the time has come for Oleanna, David Mamet's supremely discomfiting play about power politics and academe that has been freshly revived by the director Lucy Bailey. But the sorrowful fact of the matter is that it's hard to imagine a world in which this ironically named play (its title references a folk song popularised in the 1960s that posits a possible utopia) doesn't chime with some sort of dystopian present.Whether tallying with the gathering debate back in...

Simon Russell Beale shines in 'Bach & Sons' at the Bridge Theatre

When the family business is music, and your father happens to be a genius, are you destined for glittering achievement - or a life underscored by inadequacy? That's a recurring motif in this new play by Nina Raine, who, as the daughter of poet Craig Raine, knows a thing or two about living with a celebrated patriarch. It's a piece about creativity and commerce, about the difficulty of balancing artistic integrity with economic survival. It's also about the eternal emotional haggling in a...

‘Billionaire Boy’ has a heart of gold but it's missing laugh-out-loud moments

Working as a top dog in the toilet roll industry during the pandemic would have been a loo-crative way to earn money. Being in the toilet roll industry definitely worked for Billionaire Boy's Len Spud, a businessman sitting on piles of cash after creating BumFresh, toilet paper that's moist on one side and dry on the other. His son, Joe Spud, may have a lot of money, but all he's looking for is a friend. Moving schools and meeting new people, Joe eventually realises that forming relationships...

'Anna X,' starring Emma Corrin, is an electric, theatrical joyride

The production is inseparable from the play when it comes to Anna X, the dazzling 80-minute theatrical joyride that brings the producer Sonia Friedman's RE:EMERGE season of new writing in a commercial context to a tremendous finish. Of the trio of plays under her auspices, following the dreary Walden and the lively J'Ouvert, Joseph Charlton's two-hander seems the one most obviously assured of a future life, not least in New York, where it is set. Whatever its onward trajectory, Charlton's wily...

'Heathers' returns as an elevated teen dark comedy with a fresh-faced cast

'Dear Diary. July 12th, 2021.' Veronica Sawyer opens Heathers with the phrase "Dear Diary", so it feels fitting to mark the day I battled through the wind and rain to see Heathers in the West End.The growing domination of cult teen musicals is alive and well as the West End reopens. Be More Chill and Six are playing in their largest West End venues to date. Dear Evan Hansen is set to reopen in the autumn. But for all the shared playground politics in teen musicals, no show takes on adult themes...

‘Magic Mike Live’ is not what you think — it’s better

Let go of every expectation you have about a show called Magic Mike Live. Yes, there will be shirtless, attractive men dancing. Yes there will be bottomless prosecco. Yes there will be the Pony song. But the evening of talent, dancing, and, honestly, joy and empowerment taking place at the Hippodrome Casino is a feat of live entertainment.Rather than writing a traditional review, we (London Theatre editors Suzy Evans and Sophie Thomas) broke down the experience on Slack after seeing the show....

Russell Brand takes on the Bard in 'Our Little Lives: Shakespeare & Me'

In the first few minutes of Our Little Lives, Russell Brand asks who in the audience cares about Shakespeare, and gets a moderately enthused cheer. Around the same point, a fan who gets singled out for a few moments of interaction is in breathless awe not of Shakespeare but of Brand himself, seizing any opportunity to try and express his admiration and the importance of the actor and comic to his life.These are the two poles of Brand's solo exploration of his life and Shakespeare — or perhaps,...

'Romeo and Juliet' at Shakespeare's Globe plays against the natural poetry

The parade of late of Romeo and Juliets - whether online or in three dimensions - continues its uneven pace with the Globe's new production of a time-honoured tragedy that here has been so textually butchered that it often feels as if you're getting the outtakes of Shakespeare's play rather than the work itself. Ola Ince, the director, has done astonishing work elsewhere, not least her brilliant staging of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's Appropriate for the Donmar Warehouse in late-summer 2019.But not...

If Gen Z is a musical, it’s definitely 'Be More Chill'

We've all behaved questionably as teenagers succumbing to peer pressure. It's easy to make irrational decisions when being cool is the only thing that seems to matter. But could a super computer change lives? One nerdy high schooler, Jeremy Heere, attempts to change his life in Be More Chill, an eccentric blast of teenage delirium that isn't actually that chill.Based on a book by Ned Vizzini, this buzzing musical sees Jeremy swallow a Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor (or SQUIP for short) in an...

Multiple casts bring depth and dimension to the multiverse in 'Constellations'

In 2012, playwright Nick Payne dazzled audiences with his fiendishly clever play that merges relationship drama with theories about quantum mechanics, superstrings, and the multiverse. Now it's back in the West End.If, after a year of Chris Whitty's "Next slide, please," you're feeling positively allergic to science, fear not: it basically boils down to there being infinite variations in parallel universes — so one in which lovers Roland and Marianne meet, don't hit it off and never see each...