At the end of a year in which female-forward and feminist theatre has made so much progress, The Boy Friend looks regressive as well as nostalgic. On the other hand, it is a colourful and es…
Coppélia may be the nearest classical ballet comes to pantomime and as a choice alternative to the usual slew of Nutcrackers and Sleeping Beauties, this one is a tuneful and comic delight.
If you're with a bunch of co-workers and up for a turkey and tinsel-free 'night out' for your department that won't frighten Mavis from Accounts, The Wolf Of Wall Street may be just what you…
The American leading ladies London seems to take to its heart seem to be belters, but Kelli O'Hara has more variety in her voice than any of them.
Sydney & the Old Girl is a refreshing breath of foul air, a dark comedy with deeply unpleasant characters which manages to echo Pinter and Joe Orton in its macabre domestic antagonism.
Time and again, this production of The Mikado comes up fresh as paint and is the perfect antidote to dark days every bit as much now as in 1986 or when Gilbert and Sullivan wrote it in 1885.
Islander most certainly isn't a rehearsal, it's a perfectly finished piece, like a stone polished by the waves.
Don't miss it A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. Makes you laugh, makes you think. Makes you realise Toby Stephens is one of our finest.
Director Sean Foley had a huge success with The Ladykillers, turning the gentle fifties Ealing comedy into a smart farce. You can't blame him for taking a second bite at the same cherry. Unf…
Ned Bennett's minimalist and thoughtful production of Equus is by turns thrilling and dull, sensationally staging the sexual and violent aspects of the story while confining the psychiatrist…
At last, someone has laid the sugary ghost of Elaine Paige. Jamie Lloyd's stripped-back Evita at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park has all the metallic modernity of their Jesus Christ Su…
If a student disco is your personal nightmare, look away now. Tree starts and ends with a throbbing onstage party to wish the audience is persuasively invited. The last time this many Waitr…
Sally Cookson's reinterpreted Peter Pan at the new, splendid, exciting Troubadour Theatre very near White City tube captures contemporary imaginations because they can see how it works, and …
The Illusionists is not overpriced, it does hold your attention " even the row of 11 just-out-of-school-for-the-holidays girls on booster cushions behind me didn't talk or fidget during the …
It seems appropriate that Captain Corelli's Mandolin, the 1990s beach novel that launched a hundred thousand package holidays to Kefalonia should itself be staged in a lightly air-conditione…
Thirty-seven years later, I'm back to see Noises Off re-staged with Meera Syal, Lloyd Owen and Daniel Rigby in a rather over-engineered production by Jeremy Herrin.
Tam Williams' production of Private Lives at the Mill at Sonning is clean and crisp, nicely framed with a lady accordoniste setting the location, and after a slowish start the piece moves up…
The most lyrical and romantic thing about Light In The Piazza is its title. That, and the luscious vintage-style 50s costumes which evoke the American idyll of Italy as captured by Audrey He…
Afterglow at Southwark Playhouse is a classy production but still slow, and because every scene change is like cleaning up after a particularly acrobatic shag, there are more pauses and long…
One wonders which came first for the Grade/Linnit company " the misguided desire to mount an epic scale production of Man of La Mancha, a musical which hasn't been.produced in London since 1…
This is as unconventional production of Sweet Charity as you're likely to see. Set firmly in the art milieu of Andy Warhol's Factory, it's so perfectly, silver-foil-wrapped acid-tabbed 1967 …
Remember the eighties? From Michael Douglas' braces in Wall Street to Joan Cusack's shoulder pads and big hair in Working Girl, they're all here if a little distorted from the rear-view mirr…
Katherine Parkinson was not a surprising choice for the joint venture by Avalon and BBC Arts whereby seasoned creatives were sponsored to write for the stage. Although her script for Sitting…
At 53, Simon Evans isn't so different from circuit comedians half his age " a rhetorical stream of invective squirted squarely at current events, with the exception that he speaks entirely i…
"You put the grill on high, and the bread under it. Turn it over half-way through. And then you take it out and scrape it." That extract from my eight-year-old school essay could just as eas…