London theatre reviews

If you’re in the market for a meticulously accurate, 100 percent culturally sensitive drama about the events that led to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand… then approach US playwright Rajiv Joseph’s play with caution…

The title of Hideki Noda's latest play is ‘minus three twenty Fahrenheit’, roughly the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, the temperature at which a body sits suspended in cryogenic storage. It's also, roughly, the temperature at which this review nearly froze trying to explain the plot to a friend afterwards…

This nailbitingly tense thriller is director Felix Barrett’s second ‘normal’ piece of theatre to open in London in the last year, following West End smash Paranormal Activity.

This latest entry in London’s unending stream of Midsummer Night’s Dreams has plenty of ideas. But does Atri Banerjee’s production have a single coherent central idea? If it does, I couldn’t see it.

When Richard Nelson's Springwood was announced last year, it arrived with an impressive pedigree: it was set to mark Stanley Tucci's directorial debut. Since then, Tucci has dropped out (starry scheduling conflicts!), with US playwright Nelson stepping into the director’s chair himself. It's hard not to wonder whether Tucci might have coaxed something more dynamic from the material. 

There is evidence to suggest that giving the hero of Edmond Rostan’s French classic a big prosthetic nose is increasingly considered passé…

Writer Stephen Beresford’s musical adaptation of his own 2014 film is a triumph. Under the assured direction of Matthew Warchus – who directed the film – with a by-turns playful and powerful score by Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde, Pride succeeds in packing a wallop of an emotional punch while never neglecting to find the very human humour in even its most sombre moments…

A Frank Sinatra musical is a great opportunity: a titan of the 20th century, he was a complex figure who was both emblematic of America and in many ways an outsider to it. He also had a pretty stonking songbook. But this sauceless bio-musical manages to do the impressive job of acknowledging Sinatra’s many, uh, foibles while making him seem incredibly bland as a human being…

The Truth opens with a classic farce set-up: a rumpled bed from which the rumpled head of Stephen Mangan's Michel emerges, looking roguishly pleased with itself, next to the equally rumpled but less satisfied head of Alice (Sarah Hadland) who is, we soon discover, Michel's best friend's wife. Over the course of 90 tightly-plotted minutes, it becomes enjoyably clear that neither Michel, Alice nor their cuckolded spouses Paul and Laurence, would know what the truth was if it came and bit them on the bottom…

At first glance, Ben Ockrent’s family drama Relics has it all. There’s the starry cast (Sally Phillips! Charly Clive!), and big name director Michael Longhurst. Even Joanna Scotcher’s richly layered set, slowly revealed as a screen lifts to show off the deep wood panels and sentimental knick knacks of a beloved home where secrets lie, offers a sense of intricately selected prestige…