London theatre reviews

Simon Stephens is a playwright whose recent work has been found on big stages with starry actors like Andrew Scott and Ian McKellen. So this four-hander (that for the most part is actually a two-hander) that debuted in Dublin makes for a startlingly intimate affair. 

As You Like It is mostly a play about a large assortment of oddballs living in a forest for some reason. It definitely has a plot, but it also kind of plays out like an eccentric Tudor sketch show. And I’ve seen a lot of productions get lost in the woods (badoom) of its teeming characters and their largely low stakes adventures. Fortunately dual directors Sean Holmes and Charlie Josephine – plus their creative team headed by designer Paul Wills – are excellent guides though the trees…

‘But how did Marilyn Monroe really die?’ is not necessarily a question you’re expecting to have answered down the theatre in 2026, especially not via the medium of a play starring late ‘00s pop star Pixie Lott…

If it hasn’t necessarily always been entirely clear why Matthew Warchus decided to reconfigure the Old Vic to an in-the-round set up for his final year in charge of the theatre (some sort of bucket list thing?) it does all pay off with this fine revival of an early Alan Ayckbourn classic…

Death Note: The Musical is a remarkably faithful adaptation of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's classic mid-’00s Death Note manga, which concerns Light Yagami, a Tokyo high school student who (via a capricious death spirit) comes into possession of a book that kills anyone whose name is written in it…

It’s been unspeakably hot in London for weeks, but it seems the temperature is about to cranked up even more. Matthew Bourne’s sultry dance reinvention of Carmen has returned to Sadler’s Wells in all its sweaty, grimy glory after a decade off-stage, and its timing couldn’t be more apt…

Chaka Khan has lived one hell of a life. A teenage Black Panther turned soul star, she worked with everyone from Whitney Houston to Joni Mitchell, shot at her second husband with a rifle, and battled alcohol and drug addiction throughout her life. Khan was born to spawn her own jukebox musical. She’s got the story, and she’s certainly got the hits…

To be totally clear: Now You See Me Live is a stage-magic spectacular that has little to do with the Jesse Eisenberg-fronted film trilogy of the same name. That is to say, there’s no plot here and if the various participating magicians are using it as a front for fighting capitalism via the medium of high-concept heists, then they’re keeping quiet about it…

A love letter to theatre. A love letter to Philip Glass. A meditation on creativity and Taoism. There isn’t really a way to describe this show without making it sound naff or dull.
But that’s to underestimate the great Phelim McDermott who, with his company Improbable, has made some of the most extraordinary work of the last couple of decades, as well as West End hits like My Neighbour Totoro and big operas like Philip Glass's epic Akhnaten. 

Indiana Lown-Collins’ production of Shakespeare’s early comedy about three Spanish noblemen who decide it will be a great idea to swear off women and lock themselves away for three years of study – mere moments before a very eligible princess and her ladies arrive – is awash with sun-soaked flamenco energy…