Reviews of Plays in London West End and Off West End

Walking through a seemingly less busy than usual central London towards The London Library in St James’s Square, there apparently was one thing on everyone’s mind - the coronavirus. Hoping that a couple of hours or so watching a site-specific, promenade, immersive version of H G Wells’ 1895 novella The Time Machine would give us a chance to forget about what was happening in the real world was soon removed as writer Jonathan Holloway had done his homework and although he wrote the piece last … [Read more...]

One Jewish Boy, set mostly in London and New York, concerns Jesse, a thirty-year-old (or thereabouts) from North London who is unable to mentally recover from the trauma of an antisemitic attack on him, and Alex, the mixed heritage woman he falls in love with. Even though the attack took place in 2013, and the play is set in 2020, and though Alex has, certainly at first, more patience and understanding than anyone has a right to expect, we see their relationship careering in many directions, … [Read more...]

There aren’t many plays like Delivery, which successfully navigates through some very serious subjects whilst eliciting laugh out loud laughter from the audience - and without leaving theatregoers feeling even slightly guilty about chortling away at something they’ve just witnessed. Joseph (Alex Walton) is one of those friendly people, a cheeky chappie if you will, who might not have done very well academically but is streetwise and practical. Getting a decent job, however, is not easy … [Read more...]

Thursday 25th July 2019 was the day I recall sitting in the office, melting as the mercury hit something close to forty degrees Celsius (I think in the end it was somewhere around 38.5 degrees). An ice-cream van close by was chiming away rather vigorously, but clearly was getting very little, if any, trade: getting an ice cream would involve going outside, which hardly anybody was prepared to do in the middle of the day. But that was one day in London, and by the following morning, the … [Read more...]

Various characters are introduced in When We Died, including Kerry, Rachel’s (Alexandra Donnachie) senior colleague, Adam, Gail, Fred, Sara and Sinead, the last of these being the wife of a recently deceased man. Rachel works for a funeral director - it would seem, anyway: she doesn’t state so specifically, but who else would embalm corpses? The critical incident in the show involves the deceased - and therefore it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the narrative is being told in retrospect. … [Read more...]

Matthew Spangler’s adaptation of Khaled Hosseini 2003 novel uses first-person narration through the eyes of Amir (David Ahmad) amidst the backdrop of late twentieth-century Afghanistan to focus on the everyday relationships that occur: of father and son, childhood friends, and later on man and wife. Like the kite in the title, the drama sort of floats in the air, bringing together theatrical elements to tell the rarely sturdy and often harrowing events of Amir’s life and those who are closest to … [Read more...]

Like his masterpiece The Winslow Boy, Terence Rattigan’s final play Cause Célèbre was inspired by a notorious trial, in this case that dealing with the alleged murder of an architect, Francis Rattenbury, by his wife Alma, thirty years his junior, and her lover George Stoner who was, in turn, twenty years younger than her. Originally a 1975 radio play featuring Diana Dors, the play’s non-linear format and multiple settings were carried over to the stage adaptation, first seen in 1977 and … [Read more...]