London theatre reviews

Though it would be pushing it to say Tom Morris directs Othello as a comedy, he certainly wrings more laughs than usual out of Shakespeare’s great tragedy…

This big-hearted new musical is rooted in a brilliant episode of real life. In 1985, three female mechanics, Ros Wall, Annette Williams and Roz Woollen, set up a car repair shop in Sheffield to create work in short supply in their male-dominated industry…

There are no wild directorial flourishes or big awards-bait performances in director Michael Grandage and playwright Jack Holden’s stage adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s seminal novel of the ‘80s. The wheel is at no point reinvented. But, by Thatcher’s ghost, it does a tremendous job of cutting Hollinghurst’s period odyssey into a gripping, flab-free two-and-a-half hours of theatre.

Ella Hickson’s Wendy-centric RSC retelling of JM Barrie’s classic tale of lost boys, pirates, a ticking crocodile and perpetual childhood finally lands in London after premiering in Stratford-upon-Avon over a decade ago. However, some clunky characterisation and awkward modernisation mean that it never truly soars.

Anna Ziegler’s play The Wanderers makes its UK debut at the Marylebone Theatre after becoming an off-Broadway hit in 2023, starring Katie Holmes. Tracking the lives and loves of two Jewish couples from different generations in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it is a crafty, gradually intensifying drama that examines the values we embrace and reject.

While the millennia-old union between planet Earth and humanity might not be the first coupling that springs to mind when you think of unhealthy relationships, there’s no denying it is pretty toxic. The Earth gives! Humanity takes!

Aussie director Kip Williams made a big splash over here last year with his ultra techy, live video-centric take on The Picture of Dorian Gray, which used a multitude of crafty camera tricks to create a whole universe of characters out of one Sarah Snook. Next year, he’ll be doing something similar with a Dracula in which Cynthia Erivo tackles 23 different roles. This Donmar adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 classic The Maids is his first original UK production. And the question begged is: are all Kip Williams’s shows ‘like that’, in a visual sense?

Nicola Walker is a brilliant TV actor: her sullen, sarcastic charisma brings an edge to sundry MOR terrestrial Brit dramas in which her career has flourished. But even though she has done some great stuff on stage I’m not sure Nicola Walker has ever truly successfully brought her innate Nicola Walkerness to bear in a theatre role. Until now. 

Tracy Letts’s 2018 play starring Susan Sarandon and Andrea Riseborough embraces and subverts bio-drama cliches.