Derren Brown has always blurred the line between magic, psychology and theatre. Only Human, now thrilling crowds on a national tour, pushes that hybrid to a fresh peak. You do not get a tidy play with characters and scenes; instead you witness a live investigation of free will and prediction, delivered with the snap of […]
Lovestuck transforms the infamous 2017 Tinder date involving an unflushable poo and a woman stuck in a bathroom window into an outrageously fun musical. It pours out romcom sparkle, unapologetic toilet humour and a surprisingly earnest plea for radical self-acceptance. The creative quartet behind the mayhem could hardly be less traditional. Jamie Morton and James […]
Evita is a sung-through musical that dramatises the rise of Argentinian First Lady Eva Perón. This 2025 West End revival at the London Palladium feels equal parts rock concert and political rally. Director Jamie Lloyd, never shy of provocation, has pared the 1978 Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice classic to its bones and then […]
Nye is a flashback play that drags you head-first into the morphine cloudy mind of Aneurin Bevan, the Welsh Minister of Health who birthed the National Health Service. In the vast Olivier theatre you first see Michael Sheen propped in a hospital bed, striped pyjamas glowing under cold lamps. The year is 1960; Bevan is […]
Heading to a West End show is exciting enough. The last thing you need is a panic jog down Shaftesbury Avenue because dinner ran late. Luckily, London’s theatre neighbourhood is packed with places that know the drill: feed you well, feed you fast and send you off before the curtain rises. Below is a down-to-earth […]
If you think you know Fiddler on the Roof (if you can hum the opening bars of ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ or picture Topol’s Tevye, arms akimbo beneath a painted shtetl sky), prepare to have your expectations upended at the Barbican. Jordan Fein’s revival, fresh from its sold-out run at Regent’s Park Open […]
Shucked breezes into Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre like a shot of sunshine after a week of drizzle. It is a loud and proud musical comedy that mixes folk tale silliness with a contemporary wink; part hoedown, part stand-up set, all set to a country-pop score. You sit beneath the trees, stare at a crooked […]
The Magician’s Table is billed as a wake for fictional magician Dieter Roterburg. Candlelight flickers across velvet drapes, a lone accordion sighs in the corner and ‘mourners’ clutch cocktails while swapping stories about a man who never existed. The production is not a play in the traditional sense but an immersive close-up magic event. There […]
Roald Dahl created some of literature’s most fantastical giants and witches, but in the new West End drama Giant, the beloved storyteller himself becomes the focal point of a monstrous moral tale. This Olivier Award-winning play is directed by Nicholas Hytner and marks the playwriting debut of Mark Rosenblatt. Giant dramatises a scandalous episode from […]
Here We Are is the final musical by the late Stephen Sondheim, currently playing at the Lyttelton Theatre. Part musical, part surrealist play, part social farce, it’s the sort of project only Sondheim would attempt, and in many ways, it’s perplexing. The piece was developed by Sondheim and playwright David Ives, drawing from two Luis […]