London Theatre Reviews - West End & Off West End

Stories about gender non-conforming people have largely been left out of the historical canon. Linck & Mulhahn is a play that sets out to shed new light on such experiences, offering them a place in our understanding of human history. Set in the 1700s, Linck & Mulhahn follows the story of Anastasius Linck, a gender non-conforming person assigned female at birth and living as a man - first as a soldier and then as a clothmaker - until they meet Catharina, a unique woman who offers a … [Read more...]

Tori Scott needs to tell baristas in the sort of coffee shops that write customer names on paper cups in marker pen that it’s Tori With An ‘I’. While there may be some people out there who wouldn’t have a problem being literally labelled Tory (with a ‘y’) on a coffee cup, for Scott, considering what her political views are in any event, it’s far from desirable. The show is not political in nature overall, even if it does include a clarion call to protect the National Health Service (that is, … [Read more...]

A child plays with an orange, and the old man works himself into the ground. Playful, rough, intimate and touchingly funny, Home is a piece that will hang around in your mind, a story of both conflict and affection, loss and life. The piece kicks off with a puppet sequence showing a man leaving a doll's house, rustling an orange out of a tree and driving to work, and then the same in reverse. The puppetry, under the direction of Santi Guillamon, is deliberately unpolished, and in that … [Read more...]

I don’t think I ever come across so many video clips of past performances in a single-performer show since seeing Barry Humphries’ The Man Behind the Mask. Humphries’ career, however, stretches back to the 1950s - Rob Madge, who came out as non-binary to their mother, and to their Twitter following, in February 2021, tells their audience they were a test tube baby, born in 1996. That there are so many clips of childhood memories is at least partly on their insistence - one set of compilation … [Read more...]

Like most people, I think, I often have mixed feelings about a show I see. Occasionally, though it is rare, there will be a production where absolutely everything is perfect. From the concept to the story, script, set, lighting, sound, direction and performance, the show leaves nothing to be desired. On the whole, though, most productions are a combination of good and bad and it's the balance of these two elements that will ultimately decide how I feel. Smoke at the Southwark Playhouse is such a … [Read more...]

The well-known actor Robert Daws has worked with writer William Humble many times and in 2017 asked him if he would be interested in writing a one-man play about P G Wodehouse, “Maybe with some songs”. The result is Wodehouse in Wonderland. I am very familiar with PG Wodehouse (known as Plum to his family and friends) mainly from film and television adaptations of his books. I love his beautifully written quintessentially English writing. Tonight, I found out so much more about him. The … [Read more...]

“The times they are a-changin'”, as Bob Dylan put it - and as a deceased woman’s grandson (Phillip Jones) returns home to attend the funeral, the decline of the hometown since he left has only exacerbated. His mother (Sarah Rickman) is still in the family home, while her partner Mike (Raphael Von Blumenthal) doesn’t think much of the young man. When those feelings are reciprocated, the celebration of the return of the prodigal son that the mother had hoped for, somewhat muted as it was going to … [Read more...]