At Hornchurch, artistic director Douglas Rintoul seems to have gone for the faithful-to-the-first-production approach: for example, Melanie Gutteridge's Beverly is a neatly dutiful homage to…
Meanness and greenness have often gone hand in hand at Regent's Park " £3.50 for a tiny ice cream cone, really? " but never more so than in Maria Aberg's confident production of Little Sh…
There is undoubtedly a thrill in seeing a huge and highly professional ballet company perform one of the classic masterworks in one of the city's most beautiful settings.
Does Beatrice love Benedick? Does Macron love May? The entente cordiale is alive and well in award-winning Antic Disposition's lively production of Much Ado About Nothing.
In Tom Latter’s stolid revival of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice at the Park Theatre, relocation to Hull does a lot for the pitiable poverty, nothing for the snappy Lancashire dialo…
I am fully content to hail Alan Bennett as a National Treasure, and while I enjoyed many aspects of Allelujah!, I still hoped for even better and a return to his form in, say, The Madness of…
'She's a little bit Hairspray, he's a little bit Glee …' is not actually a lyric from Bring It On, a high school musical being given a sparky showcase by the British Theatre Academy at Sou…
Combining a realistic portrayal of Glenn Miller with Steele's genial narration could be the saving of this piece.
All the advance publicity for Knights of the Rose gave me a sense of foreboding. I thought the Arts Theatre had hit rock bottom with Ruthless but it seems there is further to go.
Kelli O'Hara trails a cloud of Broadway success and redefines the role of Anna in The King & I in a way that lays the ghost of previous incumbents and outshines all our homegrown talent.
For all my scepticism about the views expressed by some characters, I decidedly think this is impressive work from a playwright to be taken seriously and it's only very slightly too long and…
At last, the Young Vic has come of age. Fun Home marks one of the best productions it has housed and breaks new ground for musical theatre.
With such an array of talent on offer, it's a mystery why tutors chose as a graduate showcase this thinly-written early 80s spoof of 1920s girls' school fiction long eclipsed by St Trinian's…
It's a short run at the Donmar " take any available ticket, Polly Findlay's splendidly-cast and nimbly directed production is a must-see. And let's hope it has a longer life somewhere else.
The 'special relationship' between the UK and US may be under strain at the moment but never was it stronger than in 84 Charing Cross Road, a warm-hearted rationing-era story of gnarly chain…
This is a very good production of a rather unmemorable musical. As stories about an argumentative mother and daughter go, The Rink is several farmboys short of the picnic that is Gypsy.
Tartuffe was conceived in 1664 as a satire of the golden age of the court at Versailles, and in the clumsiest of updates, the excessive posturings of Louis XIV are replaced by allusions to D…
It's been a bumper week for rape. Harvey Weinstein was indicted. Tommy Robinson was jailed for filming the accused in a grooming gang trial outside Leeds Crown Court. The world's most durabl…
I find myself bemoaning weak material in The Biograph Girl while applauding excellent performances. In the cast of nine, everyone is engaging, focused and talented with tremendous collective…
The Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park finally has a summer pantomime in Peter Pan they can revive with minor tweaks and cast changes forever if they so desire.
Walking into Trafalgar Studios and seeing such a realistically dated four-star hotel suite, I thought, 'oh, good, Katy Brand is going to satirise everything about sixties' drawing room comed…
Lorna Dallas extensively celebrates Spring in 16 tightly themed numbers at Live at Zédel and proves almost as remarkable a song archivist as she is a song stylist.
It's 59 minutes to Doomsday in Unexploded Ordnances, a new-one-on-me genre called 'Forum Theatre' where two celebrated lesbian actors recruit the 12 oldest audience members to be a council o…
Two groups are better impersonated on television than by theatre: the Royal Family, and East Enders. In H.R. Haitch they collide awkwardly in a royal wedding spoof musical with all the elega…
The trouble with touring American musicals is… well, where do you start? First of all, they have to be de-skilled from the Broadway originals so that an associate director and a lower-cost…