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.

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  • Follies

    Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's 1971 Broadway musical yields new emotions, textures and terrors with each repeated viewing or production. Nostalgia, as the old saying goes, isn't what it used to be. But Follies is a show about the perils of living in the past that comes alive in the present, and reminds us - like Samuel Beckett's great work of existential terror Waiting for Godot or Chekhov's Uncle Vanya - that we have to simply face the cold light of reality and carry on. Yes, the show is...

    Olivier Theatre
  • Equus

    There's always a paradox at the heart of Peter Shaffer's plays of (lack of) faith, divinity and redemption: they are unquestionably verbose in their use of language and mightily overblown in the dramatic stakes, but my God (and I use that exclamation intentionally) they can make for good theatre. His two most famous plays are Equus (1973) and Amadeus (1979), both of which originally premiered at the National Theatre, and each revolve around their lead characters wrestling with their own...

    Theatre Royal Stratford East
  • Only Fools and Horses

    With a flurry of transfers arriving from Broadway, I've been wondering where the new British musicals are in the West End; but be careful what you wish for. While the new Broadway shows are all variously progressive - from telling true stories in the marvellous just-opened Come from Away and a principally female-led creative team to tell a story of female empowerment in Waitress to another story of teenage suicide and social media promotion in the forthcoming Dear Evan Hansen - Only Fools and...

    Theatre Royal Haymarket
  • Shipwreck

    There have been a good number of plays across London that have addressed The Issue that is Donald Trump, whether it be Jon Culshaw's tip of the hat in the first production of the Pinter season, or the Bridge's contemporary Julius Caesar. But at the Almeida, Anne Washburn takes Trump on head-on, deconstructing almost every element of the President's character, political career, and the people that vote for him.But rather than being a clever or searing dissection of the leader of the Free World,...

  • Come From Away

    Come From Away lost out in the Tony race for most of the seven awards it was nominated for to Dear Evan Hansen, apart from Christopher Ashley who won the award for Best Director of a Musical. Both shows are coincidentally transferring to the West End this year in replica versions of their original Broadway productions, along with Waitress and On Your Feet. But Come From Away is in a category of its own: a genuinely original musical, based on real-life events that took place in the immediate wake...

    Phoenix Theatre
  • 9 to 5 The Musical

    Sometimes theatre is all in the timing. When the 1980 comedy 9 to 5 was first turned into a Broadway musical in 2009, it was just the latest in a run of film titles being opportunistically adapted for the stage; and it duly ran for only five months there. But now, in the wake of #MeToo, its story about sexual harassment and bullying in the office place, as well as unequal pay and opportunities for female workers there, carries a new resonance and relevance.And now when the tables are turned on...

    Savoy Theatre
  • All About Eve

    Another opening night in the West End, and two exciting talents hit the stage in Gillian Anderson and Lily James. But as Ivo van Hove's hotly-anticipated adaptation of All About Eve opens at the Noel Coward, perhaps it pulls back the curtain and reveals a thing or two about power, age and the stage.Based on the 1950 film by Joseph L Mankiewicz - which in turn is based on an earlier play by Mary Orr - it's a true Broadway story. Eve Harington (James) arrives at the stage door, fresh from seeing...

    Noël Coward Theatre
  • The Price

    London is in the midst of a mini-Arthur Miller season - this week will also see the opening of a new production of The American Clock at the Old Vic, directed by the American director Rachel Chavkin, while down the street at the Young Vic Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell will co-direct Death of a Salesman in May.But first, there's this exemplary revival of Arthur Miller's 1968 slow-burning family drama The Price, transferring in a production first seen at Bath Theatre Royal last year. The...

    Wyndham's Theatre
  • Pinter 7

    For the last six months, something remarkable has been happening at the Harold Pinter Theatre - it has been given over to a seven-part season of brief celebrity-cast runs of all of the theatre's namesake playwright Harold Pinter's short plays, sometimes presented in rep, to mark the 10th anniversary of his passing. It's been bracing and brilliant to be able to see these plays, from the earliest part of his career to its final lap, back to back. For completists, there's been nothing better (I...

    Harold Pinter Theatre
  • Home I'm Darling

    The West End may be catching up with the times, but it's via characters who either live, or want to live, in the past. This month and next, contemporary women playwrights are seeing two new plays of theirs transfer to town - Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's historical Emilia, set 400 years ago, will come from Shakespeare's Globe to the Vaudeville, while Laura Wade's smart and engaging Home, I'm Darling, set today but whose characters try to live in an imagined version of the 1950s, has just arrived at the...

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