UK / West End Theater Reviews

Review: CHAILLOT – THEÂTRE NATIONAL DE LA DANSE/RACHID OURAMDANE'S CORPS EXTRÊMES, Sadler's Wells
by Franco Milazzo - May 24, 2023

Most people going to the theatre will take public transport or their own car. In September 2021, Nathan Paulin took a 600-metre walk to Chaillot - Paris’ Théâtre National De La Danse on a slackline 70 metres above the Seine....

Review: HELEN, Theatre503
by Alexander Cohen - May 24, 2023

Well intentioned but generic study of grief...

Review: DEAD ON TIME - A MOVING MURDER MYSTERY, Belmond Trains
by Franco Milazzo - May 23, 2023

It’s 1951 and, as the nation prepares itself for the Festival of Britain, a heinous crime has been committed. After a murder most foul, ten suspects, a killer hiding in plain sight and around two hundred passengers-cum-amateur detectives find themselves all aboard the same train. It’s fair to say th...

Review: GLAD TO BE DEAD at R-Bar, Brighton Fringe
by Paige Cochrane - May 23, 2023

Each year Brighton Fringe is home to some of the UK theatre scenes wildest and most unique performances. Make It Mine’s offering is Glad To Be Dead, a cycle of monologues from gothic horrors most notorious characters, waxing philosophical and lamenting their own misfortune, all wrapped up in one hou...

Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Shakespeare's Globe
by Debbie Gilpin - May 23, 2023

“To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.” It appears that the Globe has a fondness for dreaming, as Shakespeare’s most performed play is back in the outdoor space for the third time in Michelle Terry’s tenure as Artistic Director. ...

Review: TIFF STEVENSON: SEXY BRAIN, Soho Theatre
by Imogen Usherwood - May 21, 2023

Tiff Stevenson's latest show is a hilarious and well-observed study of navigating life as a woman...

Review: SPEAKERS' CORNER: THE PUBLIC SHAMING OF RUFUS LOVE, The Hope Theatre
by Alexander Cohen - May 22, 2023

Admirable inquiry into the morality of mob short changed by its own self-indulgence...

Review: THE BIG O, King's Head Theatre
by Cindy Marcolina - May 21, 2023

The Big O navigates Lucy’s self-loathing and PTSD in an inspirational journey, but, while the topic is loudly and proudly urgent, the play falls short on many levels. This said, it’s most definitely not a lost cause. Even though it’s all over the place at this stage, Kim Cormack’s exploration of fem...

Review: WOZZECK, Royal Opera House
by Alexander Cohen - May 22, 2023

Deborah Warner's new production dives head first into the Lars Von Trier pool of paranoia...

Review: A BRIEF LIST OF EVERYONE WHO DIED, Finborough Theatre
by Abbie Grundy - May 20, 2023

As its title suggests, A Brief List of Everyone Who Died is a play that deals with grief....

Review: BALLET BLACK: PIONEERS, Theatre Royal, Stratford East
by Vikki Jane Vile - May 19, 2023

Ballet Black is now in its 21st season, Cassa Pancho’s company entering somewhat of a new era after the retirement of company favourite, Cira Robinson and the addition of some junior members to its ranks....

Review: GODOT IS A WOMAN, Old Fire Station, Oxford
by Katie Kirkpatrick - May 19, 2023

In their Fringe hit Godot is a Woman, Silent Faces theatre company explore Beckett and his estate’s refusal to allow women or non-binary people to perform his most famous play through a series of skits and spoofs on the play itself. The show is initially framed through a phone call to the estate whi...

Review Roundup: What Did the Critics Think of Mike Faist and Lucas Hedges in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN?
by Aliya Al-Hassan - May 19, 2023

The world premiere of Ashley Robinson's play with music, Brokeback Mountain, has now opened @sohoplace. Directed by Jonathan Butterell with songs by Dan Gillespie Sells, the show stars Mike Faist as Jack and Lucas Hedges as Ennis, both making their West End stage debuts. ...

Review: THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, Shakespeare's Globe
by Alexander Cohen - May 19, 2023

With the swashbuckling zeal of a rowdy tavern brawl and all the brash bravado you can shake a bulging cod piece at, the Sean Holmes helmed The Comedy of Errors crashes onto the Globe stage to start the summer season with a bang....

Review: BLEAK EXPECTATIONS, Criterion Theatre
by Aliya Al-Hassan - May 19, 2023

It's always welcome to see a little show that's done good: from a BBC Radio 4 comedy series, to Newbury's Watermill Theatre, Mark Evan's Dickensian parody now has a home in the West End. ...

Review: BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, @sohoplace
by Abbie Grundy - May 18, 2023

While the romance shared between Ennis (Lucas Hedges) and Jack (Mike Faist) was immortalised by the Academy-Award Winning film of the same name, it takes on an entirely new life on the stage in a stunning production directed by Jonathan Butterell....

Review: THE GREAT GATSBY, Sadler's Wells
by Vikki Jane Vile - May 18, 2023

A visit from Leeds-based Northern Ballet every Spring at Sadler’s Wells is always a highlight of the dance calendar, and never more so when at their glittering best with their unique dance interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby....

Review: VENUS, by Impermanence, Wilton's Music Hall
by Matthew Paluch - May 18, 2023

Impermanence Dance Theatre had quite the ride for their opening night (in London) of Venus: a quadruple bill of new work at the Wilton's Music Hall....

Review: ONCE ON THIS ISLAND, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre
by Franco Milazzo - May 17, 2023

A modern musical fairytale, Once On This Island is Romeo and Juliet set in the French Antilles with the two lovers on opposite sides of a race and class divide. Regent’s Park Theatre opens its 2023 season with a humdinger of a revival, a real foot-stomper that rings in the ears long after the last s...

Review: HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING, Southwark Playhouse
by Gary Naylor - May 17, 2023

Good performances illuminate a show that a bold new production tackles with confidence, if not complete success...

Review: THE MISANDRIST, Arcola Theatre
by Cindy Marcolina - May 17, 2023

Playwright Lisa Carroll explores how the contemporary search for intimacy is marred by millennial malaise and trauma cycles in a witty dramedy that’s unexplainably ideologically ambiguous....

Review: LEAVES OF GLASS, Park Theatre
by Cindy Marcolina - May 16, 2023

Director Max Harrison takes the play and makes it a contemporary exploration of unaddressed trauma, gaslighting, and complicated family relations with performances that scrape excellence once they settle into themselves....

Review: PORCA MISERIA, Barbican Theatre
by Franco Milazzo - May 15, 2023

Sometimes show titles are spot-on perfect, albeit unintentionally. Porca Miseria is, in the Italian vernacular, an expression of frustration, something I would use when losing a cufflink or after sitting through a three hour-plus triptych of dance works that is, in the English vernacular, patently b...

Review: LEGACY By Elmhurst Ballet Company, Sadler's Wells
by Matthew Paluch - May 14, 2023

Elmhurst Ballet Company, the graduate year students of Elmhurst Ballet School opened their 2023 performance Legacy at the Lilian BaylisTheatre, Sadler's Wells on 14 May. The student company will also be performing the programme at the Elmhurst Studio Theatre(Birmingham) 19-20 May....

Review: VENUS AND ADONIS, Riverside Studios
by Cindy Marcolina - May 13, 2023

The performance ambles between overly physical and shackled by stillness. Hunter delivers the difference in characters through caricatural vocal modulations, which redundancy adds Venus’s excessive flamboyancy in an annoying chain of vapid banality. We come out of it with very little. He is a visibl...