London Theatre Reviews - West End & Off West End

Exploring both the Jewish and Christian faiths, Candlesticks in some ways puts forward some good arguments for systems of belief that exist entirely outside what is commonly deemed to be organised religion, such as atheism or humanism. It is rather contrived, in that Louise (Mary Tillett) is culturally Jewish but doesn’t exactly have an unshakeable belief in the existence of God, while her daughter Jenny (Sophie McMahon) has had some kind of Damascene conversion to Christianity. Louise’s … [Read more...]

Harold Shipman, known to his many patients, family and friends as ‘Fred’, was Britain’s worst serial killer. The official inquiry into his crimes found that over a quarter of a century he had been responsible for the death of more than 200 men, women and children and that there were likely to be many, many more victims. One of Shipman’s victims was Renée Lacey, whom he murdered on the 6th of June 1996 and in a powerful new play, The Quality of Mercy, Renee‘s grandson the writer and performer … [Read more...]

Being one of Arthur Miller’s best-made and most challenging plays, The Crucible is also one of his most frequently performed. I was going to say “revived,” but that would carry the implication that it had somehow been allowed to die since its completion in 1953. It had of course done no such thing, even though this full-blooded production at the National Theatre is the first major UK one for some years. The play was the third in an astoundingly fruitful period for the author in the postwar … [Read more...]

To be fair, Linda Lavin called her concert Love Notes, there’s an album of the same name, and that’s more or less what it was about - variations on the overarching theme of love. The songs alone form a narrative of sorts: assuming the running order was precisely as it was meant to be (there was no reason to suspect things were amiss), she had her eye on someone, to the point where she admitted spying on them, then, when that episode of young love came to an end, she wished she were in love … [Read more...]