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West End Review: Nicole Kidman in ‘Photograph 51’
Nicole Kidman is part of London’s theater lore: Her naked 1998 turn in “The Blue Room” spawned that grubby critical assessment, “Pure theatrical Viagra.” Returning to the West End 17 years later, she...
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London Theater Review: ‘Pomona’
There isn’t another play quite like “Pomona.” Alistair McDowall is one of a batch of young British writers chucking dramatic form up against the wall. His debut, “Brilliant Adventures,” put a...
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London Theater Review: ‘Hangmen’ by Martin McDonagh
How’s this for irony? In the middle of the Swinging Sixties, Great Britain abolished hanging. On Nov. 9, 1965, it stopped swinging. Great news for progressives; less so for Harry Wade, the nation’s...
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London Theater Review: Trevor Nunn’s Nine-Hour ‘The Wars of Roses’
“The Wars of the Roses” was a landmark production back in 1963 — one for the history books. Compressing the three parts of “Henry VI” and “Richard III” into a streamlined trilogy, and staged with epic...
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London Theater Review: David Hare’s ‘The Moderate Soprano’
Glyndebourne has become a British institution: an opera house on a large country estate deep in the heart of the Home Counties. David Hare goes back to its beginnings with a portrait of its founder...
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London Theater Review: ‘The Hairy Ape’ Starring Bertie Carvel
Long before the Great Depression caused America’s workforce to stall, Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 expressionist sequence of scenes, “The Hairy Ape,” rattled the cages of capitalism. In the new production at...
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West End Review: ‘The Winter’s Tale’ and ‘Harlequinade,’ with Kenneth...
Kenneth Branagh has a habit of occupying West End theaters. In 1988, his actor-led company Renaissance Theatre took over the Phoenix for a season, challenging the commercial sector with its lowly...
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London Review: Immersive Cult Hit ‘You Me Bum Bum Train’
You might call “You Me Bum Bum Train” the ride of a lifetime — only that would be underselling it. It’s the ride of several lifetimes at once. Morgan Lloyd and Kate Bond’s immersive cult-hit throws you...
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London Theater Review: Wallace Shawn’s ‘Evening at the Talk House’
Wallace Shawn is up to his old tricks again: pricking the conscience of right-on, left-leaning theatergoers. No one does that better than this impish, idiosyncratic polymath, who, at 72, still comes...
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London Theater Review: Caryl Churchill’s ‘Here We Go’
Routinely described as Britain’s greatest living playwright — arguably in a job-share with Tom Stoppard — Caryl Churchill can do in a 45-minute triptych what most writers take three full acts for....
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London Theater Review: ‘Ben Hur,’ the Stage Spoof
Playwright Patrick Barlow had a big, surprise hit with his stage version of “The 39 Steps,” racking up nine years in the West End and two more on Broadway, gleefully sending up its source material by...
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London Theater Review: Sheridan Smith in ‘Funny Girl’
When Fanny Brice’s boss tries to make a joke of her dowdy looks, dolling her up as a deluded bride convinced of her beauty, his comic star takes him to task. “They’re supposed to laugh at you,” shrugs...
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West End Review: ‘A Christmas Carol’ with Jim Broadbent
Christmases past, present and future have one thing in common: Someone, somewhere will be staging Charles Dickens’ seasonal favorite “A Christmas Carol.” It’s that creaky over-familiarity that lets...
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London Theater Review: ‘Wonder.land’ with Music by Damon Albarn
Forget the looking glass. Blur frontman Damon Albarn and playwright Moira Buffini take us through “Black Mirror” territory in “Wonder.land,” their musical reboot of “Alice in Wonderland.” Reframing...
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London Theater Review: ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ with Dominic West
What is “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”? A delicious slice of scandalous eroticism — pure sauce and spleen — or something more intricate? Josie Rourke leans towards the former, encouraging Janet McTeer and...
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London Theater Review: ‘The Rolling Stone’
Homosexuality is “a bad habit,” according to Ugandan politician Medard Bitekyerezo — a statement that reflects the homophobia enshrined in his country’s law. Chris Urch’s bullish drama “The Rolling...
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London Theater Review: ‘The Mother’
French playwright Florian Zeller is fast becoming London’s cheri. Just as his well-received play “The Father,” due on Broadway in March with Frank Langella, let us into the mind of an Alzheimer’s...
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London Theater Review: Caryl Churchill’s ‘Escaped Alone’
What better way to counter the invisibility of older women than by putting them on stage? Caryl Churchill’s new play at the Royal Court, coming soon after last fall’s “Here We Go” at the National,...
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London Theater Review: Ralph Fiennes in ‘The Master Builder’
Ralph Fiennes likes a challenge. He picks his parts like a pole-vaulter pushing himself higher. Last year, it was Jack Tanner in the moral maze of Shaw’s “Man and Superman,” a four-hour tongue twister...
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West End Theater Review: Matthew Perry’s ‘The End of Longing’
In the run-up to “The End of Longing,” the West End play written by and starring Matthew Perry, the actor-playwright let slip that he can’t remember filming three seasons of “Friends,” such was his...
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