West End

Writer: Kevin Elyot Director: Adam Spreadbury-Maher Reviewer: Karl O'Doherty Written 36 years ago and feeling as if it were written last summer by a sharp young observer of today’s relationship trends, Coming Clean proves that an insight is timeless. Spreadbury-Maher’s production comes to the West End stage from a successful run at the King’s Heat in Islington. Each venue allows ...

Writer: Harold Pinter Director: Jamie Lloyd Reviewer: Stephen Bates Harold Pinter’s career as a writer encompassed an era of unprecedented social mobility in Britain. Sparked by the end of post-War austerity, new opportunities opened up for the once disadvantaged, London’s East End and West End began to merge and members of the working classes moved up society’s ladder. The sixth ...

Writer: Harold Pinter Director: Patrick Marber Reviewer: Stephen Bates We may expect works by Harold Pinter to be dark, comedic and enigmatic and this collection of short plays, the fifth in Jamie Lloyd’s ambitious Pinter at the Pinter season, delivers to varying degrees in all those respects. However, there is a more specific unifying theme here, that of human disconnection ...

Director:  Neil Dorward Reviewer:  Richard Maguire 2018 has been a vintage year for circus in London. January was a little less cold with the sultry Becoming Shadesat the Vault Festival, while summer arrived early when Circus Abyssinia came to town in April. And favourites like the high adrenaline Cirque Berserk and the naughty Briefs still pull in the crowds. To finish the ...

Writer: Charles Dickens Director: Tom Cairns Reviewer: Scott Matthewman Ebenezer Scrooge is alive, to begin with. A Christmas Carolis, too, alive with characters who emerge fully-drawn from their first breath, from the humbuggery of Scrooge to the ebullience of his nephew, Fred. Given that Dickens himself would perform his Yuletide short story, it is no surprise that his prose works ...

Writer and Director: Anthony Neilson Reviewer:  Richard Maguire   The National Theatre’s recipe for Christmas: Take a classic Edgar Allan Poe story and season with plenty of Hitchcock; Add a splash of The Exorcist and a pinch of Misery; Place in The Dorfman for two and a half hours; Serve with postmodern irony. It’s definitely a recipe for success. Surprisingly, The Tell-Tale Heart is Anthony ...

Presenters: Dr Chris and Dr Xand van Tulleken Reviewer: Karl O'Doherty “It’s not a Panto” This is possibly the only unsupported claim maid by the identical twin pair through the 70 minute show that rolls from snot and earwax, to viruses, vaccinations and emotional well being. With many rounds of actual “Oh no he isn’t” very much in evidence, the ...

Writer: Sam Shepard Director: Matthew Dunster Reviewer: Maryam Philpott After a stint in a long-running TV show, a lot of actors head for the theatre almost immediately - the stage is their shop window, a chance to show the casting agents and creatives that the character they have been playing for years is only a fraction of what they can ...