London theatre reviews

After 430 or so years it’s fairly apparent that we as a species are not going to get tired of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. And even though Emily Lim’s new take comes less than three months after the Globe’s last production of the same play ended, it still feels like a breath of fresh air.

If you’ve recently found yourself on the Piccadilly Line during evening rush hour, you may have noticed fellow passengers sporting feather boas, bowler hats and other attempts at Belle Époque attire. They’re on the way to the latest immersive dining experience from The Lost Estate, creators of popular festive show The Great Christmas Feast…

I was both moved by and a little annoyed at Mass. This story of two sets of bereaved parents attempting rapprochement in the aftermath of a high school shooting is the debut play by US actor and filmmaker Fran Kranz…

This 1968 play by the great dramatist of the fractured American Dream isn’t one of Arthur Miller’s best. But The Price is compelling in its uncompromising cynicism, originally written as a rebuke to how Miller perceived the abstract, consequence-free tone of 1960s theatre.

Who would the Fab Four be without their fifth member? Would Beatlemania have existed at all? Would their US success have even been possible? And those albums – would they have given it all up before they’d had the chance to create the likes of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Revolver?

If you know Christopher Brett Bailey you will surely know him for 2014’s This Is How We Die, a hallucinatory, hilarious beat poetry-style road trip monologue that ended in an awesome roar of sound as the show – hitherto just Bailey at a desk – morphed into a cacophonous post rock gig…

As actor Yousef Sweid freely admits near the start of his solo show, the name Between the River and the Sea promises controversy – controversy that never really comes, because you see, he’s a bit of a centrist dad. 

Usually when reviewing children’s theatre I completely disregard the opinions of my own kids, who are pathetically easily pleased and woefully lacking in in-depth knowledge of the theatrical arts. This is different though.

The main flaw with Avenue Q in 2026 is that Avenue Q did it first. By which I mean that the jaw-dropping audacity of a rude musical theatre parody of Sesame Street has now largely gone – it is a very famous show that ran for five years in the West End the first time around and almost 20 in New York.