The latest revival of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Noël Coward Theatre offers a lively and lavish re-imagining of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 comedy, directed by Max Webster and featuring a cast led by Olly Alexander (Algernon Moncrieff), Nathan Stewart‑Jarrett (Jack Worthing) and Stephen Fry (Lady Bracknell). On balance, the production succeeds in refreshing […]
Walking into Salomé at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, you have a sense of foreboding. If anything, the whole experience of getting into the theatre felt more like airport security than theatre. Bags were being searched, full pat downs and even water bottles were being confiscated from the audience. The bar was shut so no buying […]
This Assassins at the Bridewell Theatre is ambitious but not successful. Directed by Dan Edge for SEDOS, the production announces itself as sharp, timely political commentary. In truth it is a cluttered slog, largely due to Sondheim’s unmemorable and cumbersome material. The Americon 2025 frame is clever in theory but bloats the storytelling and muddies […]
James Graham’s Punch, directed by Adam Penford, arrives at the Apollo with all the subtlety of its title. It is urgent, unvarnished and at times unbearably heavy-handed. But when it connects, it hits with force. Based on Jacob Dunne’s memoir Right From Wrong, the play traces the aftermath of a single reckless punch thrown by a nineteen-year-old […]
Penn & Teller at the London Palladium is a magic comedy show, starring Penn Jillette as the talker and Teller as the near silent foil. It marks their first West End residency as part of their 50th anniversary tour. The show unfolds in two acts, each built around a handful of major set piece tricks […]
This is a dark comedy by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran about a young Adolf Hitler who visits a new kind of doctor in Vienna, Sigmund Freud, and keeps reappearing in Sigmund Freud’s life as Europe tilts toward disaster. The opening is brutal and direct. Adolf’s father whips him with a belt for bedwetting while […]
Interview at Riverside Studios promises sharp conflict but delivers mixed rewards. Adapted and directed by Teunkie Van Der Sluijs from Theo van Gogh’s original film, this two-hander pits Robert Sean Leonard’s Pierre, a jaded political journalist, against Paten Hughes’s Katya, an actor-influencer living in a fashionable Brooklyn loft. What begins as a perfunctory profile spirals […]
The current production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not one to miss. A combination of humour, an Edwardian playroom setting, and the use of all the characters being played by ‘children’, makes for an entertaining 90 minutes for all ages, and particularly younger audiences. This production is one of Shakespeare’s most well known […]
Griff Rhys Jones arrives on stage with the easy authority of someone who has been performing for decades. He has built his career on charm, improvisation and comic authority, but Cat’s Pyjamas exposes the limits of that formula when the material is weak. Billed as an evening of stories, observations and reflections, the show is […]
The West End has no shortage of spectacle-heavy musicals, but few lean on technical wizardry as nakedly as Back to the Future. This stage adaptation of the 1985 film is a noisy, restless machine whose strongest asset is its special effects. The DeLorean roars, the clock tower trembles, and the stage seems to liquefy into […]