London Theatre Reviews

Review - Peter Gynt starring James McArdle at the National Theatre

I'm not going to deny that Ibsen's Peer Gynt - here retitled Peter Gynt in David Hare's modern re-framing - is an epic slog. It's a collection of vignettes as a man trudges on an existential crisis through his life, trying to find its essential meaning, against the odds of crises, large and small.These include a very moving scene as he comforts his dying mother (and as someone who witnessed my own mother's death last November, this spoke to me with a profound truth and feeling), and surviving...

Review - the end of history... at the Royal Court

This tender, bracing and beautiful portrait of family life is a throwback in many ways: not just because it occurs across three time spans in the recent past - from 1997 to 2007 and 2017 - but also to the type of Royal Court play that reflects the tensions and disappointments of a lifelong socialist idealism and activism, and its multiple betrayals from Blair to Brexit.As such, it feels pretty conventional SW1 fare that we've seen at this address regularly in the past; and John Tiffany's...

Review - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 - The Musical at the Ambassadors Theatre

Sue Townsend's novel Adrian Mole is one that has spanned generations, from it's first publication in the '80s to the TV shows that followed. But it's probably fair to say most people under the age of 30 aren't too acquainted with the acne-prone teenager.That was until 2015, when Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary give Moley a new breath of life with a musical adaptation in Leicester. After a run at the Menier Chocolate Factory two years ago, it's making its West End premiere at the Ambassadors just...

Review - Noises Off at the Lyric Hammersmith

Michael Frayn's comedy Noises Off returns to the Lyric Hammersmith where it premiered over 30 years ago and while Jeremy Herrin's new production is hectically funny, those who attended on press night saw technical difficulties which saw the play about a play that goes wrong, go wrong.The play opens with a rehearsal for a touring production of the play Nothing On, which introduces us to inept actors including Meera Syal's woeful Dotty and Daniel Rigby's frenetic Garry. Director Lloyd (Lloyd...

Review - Gloria Estefan musical On Your Feet at the London Coliseum

"Rhythm is gonna get you", promises the famous Gloria Estefan hit, and its not so much a promise as a threat as it blares out - very loudly - from a punchy live onstage rhythm band at the top of On Your Feet!, a Broadway biomusical summer import to the London Coliseum. Just as that song took a year and a half to cross the Atlantic after its original US release in June 1987, finally charting in the UK in January 1989, so this show has taken nearly four years to reach London since its 2015...

Review - The Hunt at the Almeida Theatre

The Almeida previously struck theatrical gold in 2004 with a stage version of Thomas Vinterberg's 1998 Danish film Festen, chronicling a disturbing story of child abuse in a family, that subsequently transferred to the West End and also (briefly) to Broadway. Now it achieves a similar sense of churning unease with another story of child abuse, adapted by David Farr from another Vinterberg film Jagten, originally released in 2012. But this time the tables of doubt are turned entirely: it is the...

Review - Present Laughter starring Andrew Scott at the Old Vic

The West End seems to be full of 'weighty' plays recently; serious plays like Rosmersholm, Bitter Wheat and Sweat, with serious messages, which is great. But the laughter which roared through the stalls at the Old Vic for most the duration of this hilarious Present Laughter is just so welcome. This production stars as a credit to the talent of both Noel Coward and its star Andrew Scott.Okay. Let's deal with this early: a magnetic Scott delivers again. As Garry Essendine, the egotistical actor...

Review - Bitter Wheat starring John Malkovich at the Garrick Theatre

From the moment David Mamet's Bitter Wheat, a thinly-disguised portrayal of a Harvey Weinstein-like film producer's fall from grace was first announced as heading to the London stage earlier this year, it aroused controversy and hostility in equal measure. Some prominent critics and commentators took it to task, sight unseen, for offering a male perspective of the #MeToo story that was properly the territory, they said, of female writers only. Perhaps they should have bided their time. The...

Review - The Light in the Piazza at the Southbank Centre, Royal Festival Hall

No, it's not Mamma Mia!, the ABBA jukebox compilation threaded around an impending Greek island wedding that (as the advertising tagline has it) you already know you're going to love, such is the familiarity of its score full of pop hits. But The Light in the Piazza is a musical that instead, you can grow to love, as I have with all my heart since I first saw its Broadway premiere in 2005.You may not go in knowing all the tunes, but this show - which like Mamma Mia! revolves around a youthful...

Review - Hansel and Gretel at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre

Hansel and Gretel is always a tricky one to place for an audience. Whilst generally considered a children's fairytale, this originally gruesome tale of cruelty and parental neglect isn't in any way fluffy.The opera, originally devised in German by Adelheid Wette and Engelbert Humperdinck, softens it somewhat by revisiting some of the more unforgiving elements, and paired with Peter McKintosh's colourful set at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, this English adaptation has a broader appeal....