West End

Writers and Directors: Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne   Reviewer:  Richard Maguire London theatre is currently in existential crisis with two works by Albert Camus, The Plague and The Outsider, on at The Arcola and The Print Room respectively, and now The Prisoner by theatre legend Peter Brook comes to the National. This new play examines how we find freedom in an ...

Writer: Dawn King Director: Rachel O’Riordan Reviewer: Stephen Bates It is a bit like old times at the Ambassadors Theatre, the original home of The Mousetrap. Dawn King’s play, first seen at the tiny Finborough Theatre in 2011, is a creepy thriller set in an isolated part of rural England, where any knock on the door carries a threat. This ...

Book, music and lyrics: Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe Director: Andy Fickman Reviewer: Stephen Bates When Veronica, the 17-year-old heroine of Heathers The Musical, gets trapped in a cow field, confronted by two threatening thugs, we feel inclined to ask why she does not pick up her mobile ‘phone. But this is 1989 and we quickly realise that curses can ...

Writer: Arinzé Kene Director: Omar Elerian Reviewer: Stephen Bates Arinzé Kene’s 2017 play good dog established the writer as an astute commentator on modern urban tensions, with his narrator positioned on a balcony above a busy street, observing the comings and goings beneath him. Here, the writer gets down and dirty, rummaging around working-class London as if to search for ...

Director: Gary Lloyd Reviewer: Grace Patrick Gary Lloyd’sThriller Live is an exuberant celebration of the career and life of Michael Jackson: As we’re told several times during the show, nobody else either before or since has reached the heights of his stardom and international renown. One element of this that really hit home is the successful effort to move past ...

Writers: Toby Marlow & Lucy Moss Directors: Lucy Moss & Jamie Armitage Reviewer: Tom Finch Every now and then a show comes along that is so well put together, so engaging and so hugely enjoyable that five stars doesn’t quite seem enough. If only there was the option to award six stars. Six - The Musical which burst into the Arts Theatre ...

Book: Nadim Naaman Music and lyrics: Nadim Naaman and Dana Al Farden Director: Bronagh Lagan Reviewer: David Guest Important social issues mix with a heartbreaking love story in a new musical with a story to tell across decades, languages and cultures. Broken Wings is a tale of doomed passion set in turn of the century Beirut, based on the seminal ...

Writer: Oscar Wilde Director:Michael Fentimen Reviewer: Maryam Philpott At the end of Classic Spring’s year-long Oscar Wilde season, this final show has this phrase, taken from The Importance of Being Earnest, emblazoned across the safety curtain: 'If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out'. The fourth of Wilde’s plays to be staged by ...