The Kite Runner review
Lifted from Khaled Hosseini's award-winning novel, The Kite Runner swoops into Wyndham's Theatre following a UK tour. It's easy to see why now is the time for this mesmerising story to come to the West End; when war and refuge are prevalent topics in the world, and Giles Croft’s cautious, yet...
This House review
It seems impossible for a play that first premiered 2012 to be labelled as dated, but British politics has shifted so radically since then that This House - James Graham's stylish exhumation of the turbulent parliament of the late seventies - has already lost some of its bite. But what it lacks in...
Nice Fish review
A freezing Minnesota lake, two fisherman and a light up neon palm tree. That’s the premise of Mark Rylance and poet Louis Jenkins’ new play, Nice Fish. Part duologue, part soliloquy and part existential crisis, Nice Fish is a surreal mix between an arctic Waiting for Godot and that episode of...
Half a Sixpence review
Hold it! Half a Sixpence flashes, bangs and wallops into the West End, fresh from a rave run at Chichester Festival Theatre. David Heneker's 1965 musical that shot Tommy Steele to a newfound fame has been expanded, padded out and transformed in this new version by duo Stiles and Drewe, and recent...
School of Rock the Musical review
There's no way you can stop the School of Rock, Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest smash-hit musical to crash-land onto the London stage. It's been a while since Lloyd Webber last had a hit, with Love Never Dies and Stephen Ward closing much earlier than predicted. But School of Rock confirms the musical...
Peter Pan Goes Wrong review
“This is not a pantomime” Chris Bean, director of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society yells, whilst the audience retaliate “oh yes it is!” It's not for the most part, well, it's really not trying to be, but this dramatic society must be the unluckiest group in the country – so much so...
Dead Funny review
“Laughter is the best medicine” - it's true; laughter is a medicine, a tonic for every bad or difficult situation. Terry Johnson's riotous comedy Dead Funny proves it, on the surface being a laugh-out-loud slapstick comedy, but really showing how laughter is often used as a defence or coping...
The Dresser review
While the Second World War rages around the globe, personal dresser Norman is fighting his own battle in the backstage rooms of a regional theatre. Nothing - not the falling Nazi bombs, the air raid sirens, the scarcity of suitable male actors, nor the precarious mental state of their leading man -...
Murder Ballad review
Traditionally “a narrative describing the events of a murder”, Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash's Off-Broadway musical version of a murder ballad is bound to be somewhat predictable. Without giving away too much of the devilish details, it is, but Murder Ballad promises much more than a simple...
The Libertine review
Everyone knows the story of the raucous, debauched Earl of Rochester – everyone, that is, apart from apparently Stephen Jeffreys. The Libertine opens with a brooding Dominic Cooper proclaiming “you will not like me”, and although he's not far off the mark, it's the play that sets you at odds....
