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.
As she bows out as artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, Josie Rourke is leaving her mark on the classic musical Sweet Charity. She's got the great Anne-Marie Duff making her musical theatre debut in the title role, a stellar roster of talent, and some of the biggest numbers in musical theatre. But, just like Charity, this production never really seems to find its feet as it flits between trying to create a super hip vibe, while keeping its traditional appeal.Right from the outset, it's...
Hot off their Olivier wins for their revelatory reclamation of Tennessee Williams's Summer and Smoke, director Rebecca Frecknall and actor Patsy Ferran reunite now at the same Almeida Theatre for the more familiar Chekhov play, Three Sisters. But this time an endlessly wintry play succumbs, in this version, to directorial smoke and mirrors.Instead of a bank of pianos that dominated Summer and Smoke, this time the stage is set with a single piano, but a whole lot of chairs that will be constantly...
An elderly woman sitting in a chair, sharing her memories for 1 hour and 40 minutes without an interval, doesn't sound very theatrical. But since that woman is played by Maggie Smith, returning to the stage for the first time since the short-lived The Lady from Dubuque at the Haymarket in 2007, it has inevitably become a major event, selling out its entire run before it even opened.The bad news is that it's therefore impossible to get a ticket. But for those that have already got them, this is...
It's difficult to satisfy every audience; not everyone has the same sense of humour or taste in music. Rarely do you leave a theatre with a feeling like you get after Ghost Stories: a communal sense of disbelief and palpable relief.Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson's thriller blends stagecraft and scares to cast a spell over its audience. Having sent shivers through the West End and on international tours, it returns to the theatre where it all began as it forms part of outgoing Lyric Hammersmith...
"It is impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you." So says Nigel Slater in his memoir, and indeed as the audience walks into The Other Palace, the smell of perfect on-the-brink-of-burned toast wafts through the foyer to envelop them in comfort and nostalgia.These are the enduring sentiments during this two-hour comic and sensory experience. Following a young boy's story through childhood, Toast hits many of the cultural touchpoints of 1960s Britain; Parma Violets and Bovril, The...
Even though the tales of Beatrix Potter are over a century old, their continued ability to draw children into the imaginary world of Peter Rabbit and his friends still holds today. First performed at the Old Laundry Theatre at the World of Beatrix Potter in 2016, the stories leap from the glossy pages to London's theatre scene in a West End first at Where is Peter Rabbit?. Celebrating the author and her original characters during the 60-minute musical adaptation, it's a nostalgic show oozing...
Emilia may be making a splash in the West End right now for being a new play by a woman playwright with an all-female cast (and lead producers and creative team, too). But 37 years ago Caryl Churchill paved the way with Top Girls; and a play that was once of its time now proves to be a play for all time, as it is brought to the top table of the National Theatre for the first time.The play has been the source of many unfolding conversations and controversies in its time - it was originally...
Little Miss Sunshine is a fizzy - and admittedly occasionally fuzzy - little ray of musical sunshine. It is as eccentrically imperfect as the family it portrays who embark on a road trip from New Mexico to California in a wonky VW minibus van that's prone to breaking down so that the young daughter can enter a kids beauty contest. Yet, like them, its very fallibility is part of its generous wallop of charm; they are characters and a show that you want to root for. Especially one with...
In a time where the course of British politics is often unpredictable, watching a Golden Age musical adapted to star an alcohol-fuelled cast member where anything can happen felt like turning on the television to see parliamentary mayhem unfold. Shit-faced Showtime productions have been performed around the world for the last nine years, with the company's latest production featuring a rotating cast of seven performers take on Oliver Twist helped by a few shots of Dutch courage.The programme...
This is suddenly a golden age for the forever-classics of musical theatre, from London where Sondheim's Company and Follies have both had spellbinding reinventions, to Broadway where there are currently revelatory revivals of My Fair Lady, Oklahoma! and Kiss Me, Kate. And now, hot on the heels of an Off-Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof - performed, for the first time, in Yiddish, the language that would have actually been spoken in the Russian shtetl of Anatevka where it is set - comes...
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