London theatre reviews

Four London teenagers sit, bored and trapped inside on a Saturday. They’ve been robbed of their free time, but worst of all they have been subjected to the company of their fellow troublemakers…

Shakespeare’s Globe launches its summer season with this sparkling staging of one of the bard’s best comedies. It’s a sun-drenched spectacle that makes full use of the theatre’s crowd-pleasing openness and opportunity for audience interaction.

Aussie director Benedict Andrews’s UK reputation is heavily based on his extraordinary 2012 production of Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters’, which turned the melancholy masterpiece into a wild fin de siècle romp set on a huge black slag heap, in which the titular siblings memorably danced to Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ while howling their boredom…

British playwright Sami Ibrahim’s 2022 play ‘two Palestinians go dogging’, was a divisive one. Some praised the experimental dark comedy, set in Palestine in the year 2043. Others didn’t really know what was going on. But critics echoed that, no matter what, this unrelenting show stayed with you…

What was great about the Lyric Hammersmith’s 2019 adaptation of Stanisław Lem’s ‘Solaris’ was that it understood that sci-fi on stage doesn’t have to mean splashy effects and cinematic thrills, that it can mostly take place in your head. But David Haig’s take on Philip K Dick’s 1956 short story ‘The Minority Report’ regrettably takes the opposite tack…

A cold shaft of reality is expertly manoeuvred into place and then thrust forward mercilessly in the latest work from master of whimsy Emma Rice and her Wise Children company…

Remember that incredibly cool band from Scotland in the ’80s that changed music forever despite only playing a few gigs? No? Well that’s because they didn’t exist. 

Cricket and playwrights is a weirdly classic combination, with Beckett, Stoppard and Pinter the most famous amongst many vocal fans of the sport. Nobody has ever actually written a great play about it, though…

Everyone knows the story of ‘Swan Lake’. A princess turned into a swan, a wicked sorcerer, a chiselled prince coming to save her. It’s a wonder that the ancient story, and ancient 1877 choreography by Marius Petipa, is still beguiling audiences. But just like the most classic of fairy tales, the tale of the cursed princess remains a gesamtkunstwerk that will definitely pull on your heartstrings…

This fresh new musical romcom is a treat - not too sickly, but perfectly sweet. The tone is exactly what you’d expect from the title: offbeat, a little bit indie, knowing its quirks. And so’s the premise…