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 […]
The Rise and Fall of Margaret Thatcher is a sharply drawn political drama that slices through the myth and legend of Britain’s first female Prime Minister with theatrical flair. Written by Edmund Green and directed by Harry Medawar, the play eschews hagiography and hatchet job, instead offering a nuanced, often darkly comic exploration of the […]
The Frogs, Stephen Sondheim’s rarely revived musical, is back in London. This production, directed with a knowing wink by Georgie Rankcom, offers a riotous, if unwieldy, journey through the underworld. The Frogs is a musical comedy with a lineage as odd as its premise. Originally penned by Aristophanes in 405 BC as a satirical play, […]
Heading to a West End show isn’t just a night out, it’s a live, shared experience where every person in the room helps keep the magic alive. The actors give it their all, the backstage crew works in near-silence, and your fellow audience members want to get lost in the story. 1. Why good manners […]
1. Curtain-up on twenty-first-century theatrewear Gone are the days when a night at Drury Lane demanded tails and opera gloves. Today’s London theatres welcome everyone from hoodie-clad students to tuxedoed gala-goers, often in the same row. Officially, there is no enforced dress code in the West End, yet many of us still enjoy dressing “one […]
Talk about a star-studded cast. This ambitious reimagining of Ibsen’s The Master Builder shifts the story to contemporary America and, crucially, centres on the women who orbit the title character. Playwright Anna Raicek keeps the bones of the original, but transplants them into a sleek modern drama that speaks to the #MeToo era and the […]
The stage is a picture-perfect English garden, all pastel foxgloves and iced-cake fences. Yet within minutes George Bernard Shaw’s anarchic spirit starts slicing through the prettiness. Director Dominic Cooke delivers the play in a single breath, about one hour forty minutes, stripping away interval niceties so the ideas land before they cool and your bladder […]
A heavy desk, rows of well thumbed Hansard volumes and the tell tale scent of pipe smoke set the scene of this 1970s political play. Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky unravel their ninety minute political comedy drama The Gang of Three with disarming ease, inviting you to eavesdrop on a trio of Labour heavyweights who […]
‘Faygele’ is Yiddish for ‘little bird’, though it’s more often hurled as a slur against gay men. Shimmy Braun’s script, drawn from personal experience, carves out a bold narrative within the American Orthodox Jewish community – a world rarely seen on stage, and even more rarely with this kind of candour and specificity. Walk into […]
Lindsay Posner’s revival of Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea has journeyed from a small studio in Bath to the grand Theatre Royal Haymarket, proving once again that the quietest tragedies can command the biggest rooms. From the first moment, as you see the apparent corpse and anticipate its discoverers, a faint smell of gas […]