Toussaint Douglass arrives at the Soho Theatre trailing acclaim from Edinburgh, where his debut hour earned a Best Newcomer nomination and sold-out audiences. The show that greets London, however, raises uncomfortable questions about where playful crowd work ends and aggressive confrontation begins.This is stand-up comedy that trades heavily on absurdist charm. Douglass, a Lewisham-born performer […]
Patrick Marber calls it a masterpiece, but Mel Brooks wrote a vaudeville act. When the curtain lifts at the Garrick Theatre on this gleeful revival of The Producers, you witness execution so precise it borders on ruthless: every gag, every gesture, every swastika-adorned pigeon lands exactly where intended. The problem is that Brooks’ musical comedy […]
This revival of J.B. Priestley’s When We Are Married at the Donmar Warehouse proves you don’t need a certificate to make a marriage work. Donmar artistic director Tim Sheader’s production finds real warmth and bite in a 1934 comedy that could easily have felt like a dusty period piece. Three Yorkshire couples gather to toast […]
If you’ve ever loved something so deeply it becomes part of your identity – a sports team or a band – then Gerry & Sewell will likely resonate with you. And if you haven’t? Honestly, don’t worry. You don’t need to be an avid football fan to enjoy this show. Playing a short 2-week run […]
Kenrex is a raw, unflinching piece of theatre which, in January, we’re already thinking is a contender for our top three plays of the year. Sadly it’s almost completely sold out, and tickets are like gold dust. This is the almost unbelievable story of Ken Rex McElroy, a notorious bigger-than-life bully in Skidmore, Missouri, whose […]
The mixed fortunes of musical theatre writers have rarely been thrown into sharper relief than in the case of Stephen Schwartz over the past couple of months. While the second instalment of the film version of his blockbuster Wicked opened worldwide to great fanfare (with the original stage production continuing its lengthy runs on both […]
Busy, and unapologetically smutty, Sleeping Beauty at The London Palladium knows exactly how it wants to entertain you. This is a family pantomime which pays little homage to the familiar fairy tale, and freely acknowledges that in the opening when leading man Julian Clary (playing King Julian) tells the audience the plot is just a […]
The Grim at Southwark Playhouse Borough is a sharp, uneven night in the mortuary. When it works, it is very funny and properly frightening; when it wobbles, you can feel the stitches straining. Edmund Morris writes and stars as Shaun, a world-weary undertaker in 1964 East End London, with Louis Davison as jittery assistant Robert […]
The solo performance Jobsworth at the Park Theatre makes a crackling entry and leaves you both laughing and uneasy. Written and performed by the immensely talented Libby Rodliffe (co-written with Isley Lynn), it stands as a dark-comic portrait of everyday survival in the cost-of-living era. Rodliffe plays Bea, a manic, red-suited woman juggling three full-time jobs: she […]
Wendy & Peter Pan at the Barbican Theatre is a fairytale full of sword-play, flying figures and glittering waves of light. By and large it delivers what you might reasonably expect of a festive adventure, but the emotional ground it tries to cover proves uneven. It thrills, it jolts, but it never quite soars. This […]