London Theatre Reviews

Read the latest London theatre reviews on the newest openings across the West End and beyond. Discover more about the latest must-see West End shows, Off-West End productions, and why you need to see shows in London. Scroll through our full theatre reviews listings of London musicals, plays, and live events from our London Theatre critics.

Sort byMost recent
  • Blood Wedding

    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...

    Young Vic (Main House)
  • 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...

    Bridge Theatre
  • Mamma Mia The Party

    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...

    The O2
  • Big the Musical

    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...

    Dominion Theatre
  • A Doll's House

    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...

  • A Very Expensive Poison

    "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,...

    Old Vic
  • 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,...

    Duke of York's Theatre
  • Fleabag

    A few years ago, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was performing her gem of a play at the Edinburgh Fringe which earned her the title of a 'promising talent'. In the following years, her meteoric rise has seen her play become a cult TV classic (as has her second TV show Killing Eve), she's become a writer in the upcoming James Bond film, a sell-out Broadway run, and she's landed the illustrious job Stateside of hosting Saturday Night Live - a real indicator of how global a name Waller-Bridge has become.But...

    Wyndham's Theatre
  • The Secret River

    While William Thornhill, the pardoned prisoner who lays claim to his own land in Australia, is the fictional antihero of Kate Grenville's novel The Secret River, it's hard to forget to Indigenous people he's displaced by laying claim to his space are real. Blameless, slaughtered, and real. After its debut in Australia in 2013, Andrew Bovell's adaptation comes to London following a run at Edinburgh International Festival, where actor Ningali Lawford-Wolf, the play's narrator, tragically passed...

    Olivier Theatre
  • The Doctor

    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...

    Duke of York's Theatre

Subscribe to our newsletter to unlock exclusive London theatre updates!

Special offers, reviews and release dates for the best shows in town.

You can unsubscribe at any time. Privacy Policy