London Theatre Reviews - West End & Off West End

Like The Merchant of Venice, with its profound antisemitism, and the misogynistic Taming of the Shrew, Othello is one of Shakespeare’s most challenging plays for a contemporary audience. Racism is commonplace among the characters and there are lines that leave a deep sense of discomfort. Add to this, the perils of misinformation and kneejerk over-reaction to triggering and it is clear that Shakespeare’s play, more than 400 years old, is not only vitally relevant to our times but also, more than … [Read more...]

If the situation in Have I None is really going to be what the future is like, I don’t want it. Sara (Abigail Stone) is cooped up at home, and the world appears to have gone back into lockdown. But unlike the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the way of masses of online content (no, I’m not talking about blue movies), the powers that be in 2077 having managed, one way or another, to abolish entertainment. Almost everything in the world has changed, and the housing … [Read more...]

Male bonding contains seeds of sacrifice and understanding to rival any Christian religion's tenets of divine hope and compassion. And in a play about three Irish males, it's difficult not to think of the influence of Catholic and Protestant faiths on the national psyche. Putting the canon of dogma aside, it's a curious phenomenon, this tacit bonding that ensures men will continue to die for one another, either in a street brawl or on a battlefield in some distant country - one that needs … [Read more...]

I hugely enjoyed The Shawshank Redemption. This 2009 adaptation by Owen O’Neill and Dave Johns is based not on the 1994 Columbia Movie but on Stephen King’s original 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. Some of the secondary characters are rather two-dimensional, but only during the ‘disappearing scene’ in Act Two does one miss what Hollywood did for the story, as the play allows one to use the imagination much more, especially, as in the novella, the plot is, from time to time, … [Read more...]

This play is, I must admit, intriguing stuff. Michael Aleen (Gwithian Evans) is a patient in a secure psychiatric hospital - and that is the correct term for this facility, as opposed to ‘madhouse’ or ‘asylum’: he’s dressed in everyday clothes and not in a straitjacket, and the consultation room being used by Dr Greenberg (Jon Osbaldeston) has no signs of using physical restraints on people. That’s not the only conventional thing about this production, which is set in the said consultation room, … [Read more...]

Some one-person shows feel like full-fledged plays with various characters and moments enacted by a single actor; whereas other single-performer productions come across more like stand-up or story hour. Jemma Kahn’s We Didn’t Come to Hell For The Croissants is somewhere between the two. Using Japanese kamishibai (‘paper theatre’), Khan walks us through seven tales, each written by a different author, in which she plays distinct characters in relation to the story-board illustrations she presents … [Read more...]

According to a friend who holidayed in Cornwall, “everything” in Cornwall is Cornish - that is to say, there are far more products that have some sort of Cornish label on them than those that don’t. Cornish tea, Cornish beer, Cornish chocolate, Cornish ketchup, and of course, Cornish pasty. Like most places, one has to be savvy and selective when it comes to choosing where to buy from, to avoid overpaying for goods that could be purchased for cheaper elsewhere, off the beaten tourist trails. … [Read more...]