Sunday, February 20, 2022
Orange Tree, Richmond; Lyric Hammersmith; Hampstead; Almeida, LondonA Hindu schoolgirl challenges all around her; Toby Stephens and Gina McKee star in Florian Zeller’s sketchy new play; an…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:54AMSunday, February 13, 2022
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, LondonThough standup George Fouracres brings pugnacious energy to the role, Shakespeare’s tragedy is rendered way too glib
The best thing about Sean Holmes’s cha…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:03AMSunday, February 6, 2022
Old Vic; Royal Court, LondonLennie James and Paapa Essiedu illuminate Caryl Churchill’s great cloning play, while a fine cast lift Alistair McDowall’s wordy new dystopia
It is proving to…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:24AMSunday, January 30, 2022
Bristol Old Vic; Riverside Studios, LondonMark Rylance mines more drama from the 19th-century doctor driven mad by his work on hygiene than Elizabeth McGovern finds in the faded glamour of A…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:54AMSunday, January 23, 2022
Piccadilly theatre; Young Vic, LondonA razzle-dazzle take on Baz Luhrmann’s Parisian pop jukebox triumphs through force of glitz, while a new play about race gets lost in abstraction
There…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:42AMSaturday, December 25, 2021
Little Amal stirred hearts, Chaucer hit Willesden, Cush Jumbo was a perfect prince, and once again James Graham said it all
Read the Observer critics’ review of 2021 in full here
It was a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:54AMSunday, December 19, 2021
Playhouse; Young Vic; National Theatre, LondonRebecca Frecknall’s Weimar glamfest with Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley goes big and nails it (nearly); James Graham brilliantly revives a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:42AMSunday, December 12, 2021
Bridge; Wyndham’s; Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, LondonThe familiar and the fantastic are as one in the Bridge’s Philip Pullman spectacular; more puppet magic powers Life of Pi; and a coolly …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:18AMSunday, December 5, 2021
Finborough, LondonThis crackling production of David Ireland’s caustic portrait of a troubled former gunman is close up and in your face
Hurrah for the first London staging of this play by…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:36AMSunday, November 28, 2021
Lyttelton; Garrick; Criterion, LondonRising tides and clunking dialogue overwhelm Moira Buffini’s new play; Beverley Knight and co excel in the latest jukebox musical. Plus, the joys of ka…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:18AMSunday, November 21, 2021
Kiln; Royal Court, LondonThe Wife of Bath is wonderfully at home in 21st-century Brent in Zadie Smith’s inspired reworking of Chaucer. Meanwhile, the troubles of the Royal Court’s big ne…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:18PMSunday, November 7, 2021
Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; Soho theatre, Hampstead theatre, LondonThe RSC’s Christmas spectacular lacks a little magic touch, while two maternally themed plays offer v…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:06AMSunday, October 31, 2021
Various venues, London; Bristol Old VicLittle Amal makes human hearts beat faster, while compassion fuels Emma Rice’s great whirl of a Brontë adaptation
In Arabic, Amal means “hope”. …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24AMSunday, October 24, 2021
Lyric; Tabernacle; Donmar Warehouse LondonMagnetic Arinzé Kene as Bob Marley powers the West End’s latest jukebox musical. And a verbatim play drawn from the Grenfell inquiry bears unstin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:48AMSunday, October 17, 2021
Royal Court Upstairs; Almeida; Bridge, LondonLucy Kirkwood’s raw response to the murders of Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard captures a moment of terrible rage. And Saoirse Ronan commands as…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:36AMSunday, October 10, 2021
Young Vic; Gielgud; Royal Court, LondonCush Jumbo is a perfect prince, Ben Miles bows out as Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell, while Caryl Churchill gets to the heart of love and loss in under 20 …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:06AMSunday, October 3, 2021
Olivier; Theatre Royal Stratford East, LondonLarry Kramer’s 1985 response to the Aids crisis resonates with new force. And Dublin ghost stories unfurl slowly in a fine Conor McPherson revi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:24AMSunday, September 12, 2021
Theatre Royal Drury Lane; Dorfman, LondonWill the West End ever let go of this glinting new adaptation of the beloved Disney film. Back in the real world, a telling historical mashup from Wi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:54AMSunday, September 5, 2021
Almeida, LondonMirth and menace fight it out in Josh Azouz’s play of shifting alliances, with Adrian Edmondson on fine form as a knitting Nazi officer
The action is tragic; the dialogue fr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:36AMSunday, August 29, 2021
Royal Court Upstairs, LondonAs delivered by the Dutch singer Wende, the diffuse nature of assorted words that “can only be sung” take on the force of nature
I often wish I had been in Pa…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:06AMSunday, August 22, 2021
Gillian Lynne theatre; Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, LondonAndrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical, sparkily scripted by Emerald Fennell, goes to the ball at last. And Carousel gets a salty …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:54AMSunday, August 15, 2021
Olivier; Noël Coward theatre, LondonLesley Sharp is magnetic in Kae Tempest’s ferocious reworking of Sophocles, while Lily Allen makes a spookily quiet West End debut
It is rare for an au…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:48AMSunday, August 1, 2021
Old Vic, LondonWarm, wily and gloriously playful, Emma Rice’s adaptation of the 1987 film is another motel-and-ballad show triumph for the Old Vic
It is, says director Emma Rice, a story t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:36AMSunday, July 25, 2021
Theatre Royal Windsor; Harold Pinter theatre; Bush, LondonIan McKellen’s wonderfully assured Prince of Denmark is a double-edged sword; The Crown’s Emma Corrin can do far more than Diana…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:54AMSunday, July 18, 2021
Chichester Festival theatreDaniel Evans’s production bursts with energy as it foregrounds an anti-racist message in the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic
I have always flinched from the sedu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:03AMSunday, July 11, 2021
Vaudeville; Theatre Royal Stratford East, LondonThe first two of four new casts work their magic differently in Nick Payne’s irresistible multiple realities play. And April De Angelis make…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:18AMSunday, July 4, 2021
Bridge; Lyric Hammersmith, LondonSimon Russell Beale is Bach to his fingertips in Nina Raine’s intermittently brilliant tale of the great composer’s domestic labours. And a fine triple b…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:48AMSunday, June 27, 2021
Notting Hill carnival and Dylan Thomas’s radio masterpiece come to the stage, while no one does lockdown like Beckett
It is an unlikely phenomenon in the West End. Women slamming their arg…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:54AMSunday, June 20, 2021
Hampstead theatre, LondonThe ingenious struggle of a new generation of entrepreneurs is charted in Dawn Walton’s bright revival of Alfred Fagon’s prescient 1975 play
Alfred Fagon’s pla…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:48AMSunday, June 13, 2021
Dorfman; Theatre Royal Stratford East, LondonGhosts confront bureaucracy and memory; and a murdered man’s spirit inspires his twin sister to tackle racial injustice
Here are ghosts bringin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:18AMSunday, June 6, 2021
Pinter; Kiln; Old Vic/online
Gemma Arterton’s failed astronaut confronts her overachieving sister in Amy Berryman’s debut play; wheelchair user Amy Trigg transfixes with her witty monolo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:03AM 
