London Theatre Reviews

Review - The Doctor starring Juliet Stevenson at the Almeida Theatre

In his final production in his role as associate director at the Almeida, Robert Icke has left a little gift. His modernisation of Arthur Schnitzler's 105-year-old play Professor Bernhardi is a tense medical drama, but it has handed Juliet Stevenson an electrifying role in which she is absolutely mesmerisingStevenson doesn't step foot off stage once for the entirety of the just under three-hour running time (that's including the interval), as she becomes Professor Ruth Wolff, the doctor at the...

Review - Evita at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre

It's Evita, Jim, but not as we know it... Shortly into Act I of this new staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's beloved 1978 musical at the Open Air Theatre, that strangely feels as stripped back as it does overstuffed, Agustin Magaldi serenades us with "On This Night of a Thousand Stars." I looked up towards the stars myself and couldn't help but wonder what the great Harold Prince, the musical's original director who sadly passed away just over a week ago, would be thinking right now....

Review – Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain Part Four at the Apollo Theatre

With Boris Johnson moved into Number 10 and the dreaded 'B word' uttered more than ever, it may seem as if history is being rewritten before our eyes every day. But with centuries of history shaping our country's past, Horrible Histories returns to the West End to remind us of exciting, and somewhat less gloomy times.Based on Terry Deary's series of children's books and the subsequent BAFTA award-winning television series, Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain takes its audience on a historical...

Review - Brainiac Live at the Garrick Theatre

"Look after your ears kids" is the conclusion of one Brainiac's experiment, testing the hearing capacity of the younger and older members of the audience and the frequencies they can hear.Ironic, given moments later, she's mixing calcium carbide with water and setting it on fire to (loudly) launch socks into the crowd.To be fair, that was modest in comparison to the hydrogen balloon she and her other Brainiacs have just exploded, after they chucked a two-litre bottle of liquid nitrogen into a...

Review - Tree at the Young Vic

If you're hoping to arrive at the Young Vic early and have a leisurely perusal of the programme pre-show at Tree, think again. As I made my way down towards the stage, all I could see was the grinning artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah throwing some shapes welcoming people to the space, as actors and audience cut up the dancefloor stage to bone-rattling bass.It's the first spectacle of this show, which takes its inspiration from Idris Elba's album mi Mandela, which he recorded after travelling...

Review - Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear - The Musical at the National Theatre

If you want a good example of eclectic programming, consider this: earlier this year I was sat in the Dorfman watching Downstate, a play about a social house for a group of sex offenders. Last night, the same theatre was full of kids as they watched fat Gary Wilmot float to the sky in a hot air balloon.I may have left one show harrowed, but luckily, that was not the case with Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear.The new musical is based on Andy Stanton's children's novels which, unusually, does not take...

Review - The Girl on the Train at the Duke of York's Theatre

Adapted from the hit thriller novel by Paula Hawkins which told three women's narratives as they became embroiled in a missing person case - which was in turn adapted into a not-so-hit film starring Emily Blunt - Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel's stage version of The Girl on the Train was premiered at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds last year, and pulls into the West End at the Duke of York's as part of a UK tour. But this might be one journey you're grateful to miss.Like the film, the play...

Review - The Night of the Iguana starring Clive Owen at the Noel Coward Theatre

Beyond the trilogy of acknowledged dramatic masterpieces of The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the extensive repertoire of Tennessee Williams can sometimes seem ripe and overblown. But the last twelve months have seen another trilogy of his secondary plays brought to the London stage in revelatory ways, from Summer and Smoke (which transferred from the Almeida to the Duke of York's) and Orpheus Descending (at the Menier Chocolate Factory) to the latest...

Review - Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the London Palladium

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is set, according to Tim Rice's ever-concise and anachronistically playful lyrics, "way way back many centuries ago/ Not long after the Bible began."Not quite so long ago, but well over a quarter of a century ago, Rice and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's first musical collaboration Joseph was revived at the London Palladium in a 1991 production that starred Jason Donovan, then at the height of his fame, in the title role. Now the show is back at the...

Review - Captain Corelli's Mandolin at the Harold Pinter Theatre

The journey of stories from screen to stage are now well-travelled, especially in musicals, with many (if not most) new musicals originating in popular film titles from the back catalogue - Moulin Rouge is just the latest about to open on Broadway, joining a season that saw King Kong and Beetlejuice added to the roster.On the plays front, stories adapted from page to stage are equally common: a stage version of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is currently one of the most successful new plays...