Wyndham's Theatre

Inter Alia opens with Rosamund Pike wigged and gowned and rocking out, rasping ‘fuck the patriarchy’ into a mic. This is not a power ballad: the Saltburn and Gone Girl star plays Jess Parks, a pioneering feminist judge, and she is performing the emotional cut-and-thrust of a recent rape trial with relish, deploying her icy froideur to slay macho barristers who are attempting to slut shame vulnerable complainants. The dimly lit blokes in the backing band are, it transpires, Parks' husband and son: a fitting setup for Suzie Miller's three-hand play that feels more like a 100-minute monologue. Like its companion legal drama Prima Facie, which was a massive hit starring Jodie Comer, Inter Alia is a spectacularly demanding showcase for a female star, and Pike delivers the goods with stadium-level charisma, intelligence and flair. Miller’s play is based on interviews with female judges who juggle demanding careers with caring responsibilities and social lives: ‘inter alia’ means ‘among other things’. It's fun to see Pike in an earthier, more physical theatrical role, very different from the icy Hitchcock blondes she's known for on film. Initially, we see her dashing from court to robing room, fielding a dozen missed calls from her sweet bumbling lout of a teenage son, Harry (Cormac McAlinden) who can't find a Hawaian shirt for a party he's going to later, then dashing home to prepare a supper for guests while getting dolled up, taking phone calls and questions, and ironing...

This review is from March 2026. John Proctor is the Villian transfers to Wyndham’s Theatre in Febrary 2027, with casting TBC. John Proctor is the Villain is a period drama about 2018. By that I don’t specifically mean that the Broadway smash nails the exact experience of going to a US high school in the late ’10s: frankly, the American education system is so alien that there are points where Kimberly Belflower’s play might as well have been set on a Mars colony space academy for all the resemblance it bears to the average Brit comp. But what Belflower does do brilliantly is nail the intersection between the relatively brief apex of the #MeToo movement and a generation of smart, naive school girls who would have been the right age to absorb its rhetoric at the precise moment they’re discovering what it was a reaction to. Plus, it has a banging soundtrack, with Lorde’s 2017 hit ‘Green Light’ embedded deep in its bones, and discussed in reverent tones by its young characters in a way that feels poignant and illuminating: school girls don’t geek out over ‘Green Light’ anymore, and they probably don’t discuss #MeToo either. If this sounds like it has the potential to come across as a bit like a po-faced lecture then that couldn’t be further from the case. Danya Taymor’s production – which transfers recast from a smash Broadway run – is an absolute blast, the many serious issues raised all of a piece with its breathless ebullience and Belflower’s endlessly witty text. As much as...