London Theatre Reviews

Review - A Day in the Death of Joe Egg at Trafalgar Studios

Peter Nichols died just last month, aged 92, but here's living and welcome proof that a great playwright's work is bound to outlive him. In a career that also spanned premieres at the National and the RSC, his first major hit was A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, originally premiered at Glasgow's Citizens' Theatre in 1967, before transferring to the West End and then Broadway. Returning now for its second West End revival since then, it remains a shatteringly personal play and a deeply involving...

Review - Ian McKellen on Stage at the Harold Pinter Theatre

An unadulterated love letter to the theatre, to the actor's life and the prose and poetry that fuel both, Ian McKellen's latest one-man show is a thing of sheer joy and utter wonder: an act of selfless generosity and warmth in every regard.There is, of course, an ever-present danger in any one-person show that it could become an act of self-regard, and it is unquestionably true that McKellen, too, has a lot to be proud of, so he could be forgiven for indulging those qualities. But though false...

Review - The Watsons at the Menier Chocolate Factory

Jane Austen only wrote six finished novels before dying at the age of just 41. But an entire industry has developed around her endlessly popular fiction, including multiple film and television versions and plenty of literary (and some not-so-literary) spin-offs inspired by her characters and stories (including one called Pride and Promiscuity, which helpfully provides us with "the lost sex scenes of Jane Austen").She died before completing what would have been her seventh novel Sanditon; it was...

Review - Blood Wedding at the Young Vic

In an exchange in a programme note for this vivid, startling new production of Blood Wedding, Young Vic artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah and guest director Yaël Farber recall their first discussion of a possible collaboration at the theatre, they exchanged lists of plays they wanted to do. This Lorca classic, written in 1932 and first performed in 1933, was at the top of both of their lists. In an act of directorial generosity, Kwei-Armah yields the wish to do it to Farber; and she has repaid...

Review - Two Ladies at the Bridge Theatre

No, Two Ladies has nothing to do with the wonderful Kander and Ebb song of the same name from Cabaret, with its great repeated refrain: "Bee-dle-dee bee-dle-dee dee". But that line just about sums up my own non-plussed reaction to Nancy Harris's convoluted, frequently far-fetched and straining-at-the-seams new play that shares that song title. But truth in politics, these days, is now turning out to be a lot stranger than fiction, so this play is already fighting a losing credibility battle as...

Review - Mamma Mia! The Party at The O2

Not so much a show as an interactive 3D experience, complete with a full three-course meal, freely-flowing alcohol (only some of which is included in the initial price), all-singing and dancing (and a tiny bit of storyline), Mamma Mia! the Party could be subtitled, 'Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again - again.' The original stage incarnation of Mamma Mia!, which earlier this year celebrated its 20th anniversary in the West End and of course also went global, has not only launched a whole genre of...

Review - Big the Musical at the Dominion Theatre

Big the Musical was - in a pre-Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark and King Kong - one of the costliest Broadway flop musicals ever staged at the time of its 1996 premiere, losing the entirety of its $10.3m investment when it shut after just six months, after failing to be nominated for that year's Tony Award for best musical.Even though it had a British director - the late, great Mike Ockrent (whose hits included Me and My Girl and Crazy for You on both sides of the Atlantic), working with the...

Review - Lucy Prebble's A Very Expensive Poison at the Old Vic

"In a way, it's an anti-thriller. But I must never ever say that," says playwright Lucy Prebble in a programme note about her new, expansive and intriguing play A Very Expensive Poison, based on Guardian journalist Luke Harding's 2018 book about the Russian state-sanctioned 2006 murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, by then a British citizen living in London.Prebble's play similarly unpacks the often-unsayable in its dogged pursuit of revealing the truth of how he came to die,...

Review - A Doll's House at Lyric Hammersmith

Lyric Hammersmith is not so much a doll's house of a theatre as a jewel box Tardis: an unexpectedly traditional Victorian theatre, on three levels, that has been delicately reassembled and recreated from plasterwork preserved from a demolished theatre and recreated within a modern 1970s building.It has long provided a defining anchor to west London's theatrical offering that also includes the increasingly essential Bush Theatre, itself recently reinvigorated by the arrival of artistic director...

Review - The Son at the Duke of York's Theatre

Everything Florian Zeller puts his pen to seems to end up in the West End, from his Olivier Award-winning play The Father to his recent success with The Height of the Storm, set to transfer to Broadway next week. His latest, The Son, is the first to transfer to the West End from Indhu Rubasingham's recently rebranded Kiln Theatre, and it's a taut, emotive examination of the tragedy of adolescence depression.Nicolas has hit a brick wall. Since his parents divorced, he's been skipping school,...