The Independent

“Rent manages that, and then some.”

“It’s fun, but it won’t leave your eyes streaming.”

“If you want to be deeply, profoundly disturbed by a night at the theatre, there's no finer way to do it than this.”

“This is a play of ideas, but unlike Tom Stoppard’s brilliant, recently revived Arcadia, it can’t turn the abstract territory of maths and logic into something richly emotive.”

“It’s a bluntly brilliant satire of capitalism and the way it destroys people who mess with it – chewing them up like drunks who’ve become heedlessly entangled in an escalator.”

“Though all the choices here feel calculated to drag this play into 2026, it still doesn't quite make sense now.”

“And in this, it is a clear success.”

“Still, its neatly crafted ambiguity ultimately feels frustrating.”

“Here, Turner prunes it into a witty, approachable form – but leaves all its thorns intact.”

“Watching this hybrid play is often a laborious exercise, like trying to connect pieces from two different jigsaw puzzles that don't quite fit.”

“Fall’s production, though, favours a consistent tone of brash silliness over psychological intensity.”

“The world of Ayckbourn's play is an odd one to visit.”

“McOnie clearly loves Cats but this production often doesn't feel very catty.”

“Still, maybe Kane suits a more pared-back approach, one that lets her message cut like a knife.”

“But when it takes itself seriously, it's one hell of a bad trip.”

“But structurally, it's frustratingly old school – imprisoned by a wistful nostalgia that won't allow Platt's real talents to break free.”

“This is a masterfully constructed play, turning a familiar story into a consistently tense murder mystery with an artfully splintered timeline.”

“Just follow Mary Magdalene’s advice – ‘Close your eyes, and relax’ – and you’ll sink into the glorious sounds of a voice that’s achieved divine status.”

“This production drags her subtext kicking and screaming into the daylight.”

“The result is a broad satire filled with platitudes and generalised debates about female empowerment, the patriarchy and trolls on the internet.”

“This minimalism might be efficient, but it doesn't always serve the play, and makes it harder to create the claustrophobic, cigarette smoke-saturated feel of a tiny office that's full of caged corporate beasts.”

“This is a pacy, intense, and refreshingly unusual kind of thriller – one that reminds us that the scariest things in life aren’t the ones that go bump in the night.”

“But this undead scene-stealer stops us from taking the actual narrative here seriously; we don’t have space to feel the aching poignancy just beneath its surface.”

“Posner's production wears these themes lightly, letting Shaffer's deft plotting and gently satirical humour shine out.”

“Hare doesn't let his audience love it too, because he's too obsessed with overlaying it with his own agenda of old (good) versus new (diabolical).”

“And it really does shine on the Donmar's small stage, where an audience can see close-up how a single space shifts from an impersonal meeting place into an almost spiritual site of reconciliation.”

“Kiln artistic director Amit Sharma’s staging is fluent and funny, deftly showing the seismic social changes rippling through Lennon and Epstein’s relationship.”

“The world has changed, and Avenue Q has not.”

“This is a richly emotional, brilliantly intelligent take on a classic – one that'll plunge a knife into your heart so skilfully that you hardly notice the pain.”

“Kimberly Belflower's hit Broadway play John Proctor is the Villain is a fantastically cathartic riff on Arthur Miller's witch-trial play The Crucible.”

“Daniel Raggett's staging makes the most of Hare's witty one-liners without sacrificing the essential bleakness of this story.”

“Still, the best moments of Summerfolk shine out, strikingly modern.”

“Alas, this time it feels effortful rather than fluent – and Erivo seems too stressed to offer more than the odd glimpse of Dracula’s coolly gothic allure.”

“It takes you on a journey that sends you home feeling a bit lighter, a bit more hopeful, than you did before.”

“Neither this sanitised production nor his unstintingly mild-mannered performance can capture the darker realities of grief, sex and mortality.”

“But ultimately, its directionless satire of woke politics doesn’t just lose the plot – it forgets it was meant to be looking for one.”

“While there are only a handful of moments in which this production really comes alive, it's a confident, punchy, and dramatically substantial piece of theatre.”

“Carrie Cracknell's stellar Old Vic revival ditches the rolling lawns and airy Classical architecture of Stoppard's setting in favour of a fluid, dimly lit, in-the-round staging that emphasises that these characters are reaching out of the known world and into the stars.”

“It doesn’t look or sound like any other musical you'll see in London, and there’s something entrancing about this icy injection of nihilism into a remorselessly peppy genre.”

“But there’s still a certain pathos that comes with leaving this space, knowing it’ll be quite some time before you see a Shakespeare play that hums with so much mischief and life.”

“This production tells its story carefully, but it still feels a little slow, a little crowded, a little uncertain of what it is.”

“Still, taken as an exploration of mental illness, this play’s blunt, larky approach feels both dated and faintly tasteless.”

“Escola’s play basically sits in a genre of its own, one that mixes the farcical humour of am-dram classics like Charley’s Aunt with the disturbing queer energy of early John Waters films.”

“Fein and co have treated this musical with the care and seriousness it deserves – and that’s a spell not easily broken.”

“There’s an authentic, rare flavour to this story, too – but it’ll take an experienced palate to fully appreciate it.”

“Like a big game hunter, it aims at huge moving targets – and hits them, again and again.”

“There’s an almost unbearable heaviness to Ivo van Hove’s powerful revival of All My Sons, staged with a crushing gravity underneath a giant glowing sun.”

“This is the first major adaptation of Le Carré’s work, and it’s setting off on a long national tour to enthral his spy-obsessed fans.”

“It's a quietly moving play that makes sense on its own – without quite having the narrative heft to clean up as a piece of drama in its own right.”

“Anchored by Mod, Porn Play is by turns funny and disturbing – a welcome and bold addition to the growing discourse surrounding sex and the internet.”

“This team has staged The Hunger Games with all the bells, bangs and whistles you’d expect, but it hasn’t truly understood the appeal of its source material.”

“Instead, it feels like an entertaining but ultimately unpersuasive take on Shakespeare’s story of an arch manipulator.”

“And if all these bodies somehow fail to fit together into a single living, breathing portrait of an actual person, each still brings some brilliance of its own to this fractured story.”

“It’s a compelling reading of Shakespeare’s play, even if it loses its way when its deathtoll climbs.”

“This play won’t necessarily disappoint Locke’s fans, who’ll pay a top ticket price of £135 for this cheaply staged, 100-minute drama – but it lacks the passion, authenticity and political bite that might make them theatre lovers for life.”

“This is full-bodied theatre, rich with invention, intriguing themes and visual sumptuousness.”

“And its carefully interwoven strands of the mundane and the supernatural give this play an enduring strength – one that tugs audiences into this little tavern, long after they’ve called time on other plays of its vintage.”

“Irish avant-garde theatre company Dead Centre and British Sign Language (BSL) poet Zoë McWhinney have collaborated to create an experimental epic of war and resistance that'll make you rub your eyes and reach desperately for something real to hold on to.”

“It sings with all the sex and politics and religious iconoclasm that the bard handled so carefully in his plays, showing that every literary choice he made was freighted with danger.”

“Their satirical musical The Book of Mormon, written in league with Avenue Q's Robert Lopez, wowed Broadway in 2011.”

“Every Brilliant Thing is in its totality endearing but today risks feeling pathologically non-specific, like an Ed Sheeran song about heartbreak or a straight-to-Netflix movie about being alive.”

“Inter Alia’s impact builds and builds until it’s almost unbearable.”

“The Estate is a play that’s full of such powerful emotional beats, without ever becoming a cohesive whole.”

“This gorgeous sensory overload of a show is its own comment on the rising tide of fascism.”

“Unfortunately, there’s none of the same imaginative energy in this stodgy new stage version, which hits the expected beats without capturing the lovable zaniness that makes Hercules a fan fave.”

“Daniel Aukin’s production feels rich and sumptuous enough to be forgiven.”

“Cooke’s pared-back production lets that modernity shine out, scrapping all that tedious late-Victorian stage business of tablecloths and rattling teacups in favour of a simple circle of greenery.”

“Still, it feels both softer and less purposeful than the plays that made Ireland’s name.”

“It's flip, funny, and undeniably stylish. But essentially unsatisfying, too.”

“Still, this relatable humour sits increasingly uncomfortably inside the oddly shaped outlines of Ibsen’s play.”

“Still, somehow the plot of Air never takes a definitive shape.”

“Gold dresses are pretty, but greed isn't good.”

“But somehow, it lacks Icke’s usual ability to winnow complex source material into one coherent message.”

“This isn’t a morally complicated story, really. But it’s a hugely satisfying one – a well-crafted period piece with lots to say about the present-day pressures on minority artists at the mercy of corporate agendas.”

“Still, it’s a welcome excuse to revisit a classic, sewn together with just enough originality to make it feel like a stylish homage, not a cynical knock-off.”

“It’s a fascinating experiment, one that’s beautiful, but ultimately impenetrable.”

“Tonight, on stage, the spirit of Inside No 9 is alive and kicking.”

“But all this elaborate grandeur weighs heavily on the shoulders of a star who’s not strong enough to support it, overwhelming a story that’s lost its old magic in the telling.”

“This musical feels squarely aimed at the mass market, and it’s neither aspirational nor memorable enough to escape the sale rack.”

“The problem is that these face-offs have little emotional heft to them; rather, they feel aimless and worse yet, pointless.”

“It’s a lovable but overly reverential approach to a film classic that’s sturdy enough to withstand a braver spin.”

“This production is fatally lacking in tragic richness and weight.”

“Writer and director Robert Icke's brilliant reimagining of Oedipus achieves the monumental feat of taking a Greek drama where (almost) everyone thinks they know what's going to happen, and turning it into an exercise in tension.”

“Rylance’s charisma knits together a production that’s full of roustabout hilarity and poignancy mingled together, bright and bleak at once.”

“It’s all a bit of a muddle: a play of many parts, struggling to find their sum.”

“Giant ultimately lacks tension, because it’s clear from the start that Dahl is deeply but lazily prejudiced, with no intention of changing.”

“Sometimes, it feels like MacDonald’s production could sit a bit longer with this play’s discomfiting moments, especially in the first act.”

“Where Six’s 80-minute runtime meant it could get away without having much of a story, this two-and-a-half-hour show definitely sags – its endless callbacks and in-jokes are no substitute for a satisfying storyline.”

“The Real Thing offers a less deeply felt, more snobbish perspective on the ills of the left – and there’s something resolutely unfashionable about its spectacle of adulterous middle-class couples being beastly to each other in beige living rooms.”

“But somehow this production still doesn’t have the aesthetic or thematic boldness to link together its two halves.”

“Anyone craving a taste of good old-fashioned razzmatazz won’t be disappointed in Hello, Dolly!, a 1964 musical served up with all the trimmings in the Palladium’s vast gilded barn.”

“Harris’s play is full of a sharp satirical intelligence that makes the right words fall from the wrong mouths, and resists pat conclusions.”

“It’s more spectacle than sense, an extraordinary creative onslaught, with songs about steam engines cranked out at max volume, all designed to delight your inner child – which it really does.”

“It isn’t a bad musical, really, but there isn’t a single moment that justifies its musical existence.”

“It's not a perfect piece, and at times it risks ossifying into a creaky relic from the past. But West stops that from happening.”

“Although there’s this technical mastershow going on, which is properly stunning, that doesn’t automatically make it a good show.”

“The play can now be regarded as a contemporary classic, Gough’s performance confirmed as one of the greatest of her generation.”

“If we must have an adaptation, it’s impossible to imagine a better one than this.”

“Ben Power’s deft adaptation of Dickens’ sprawling novel emphasises its brilliant characters and eternally relevant themes, but the bleak production and dour music wrestle with one another rather than cohering as a whole.”

“But as Falstaff toddles off into the wings, the overriding sensation is one of trying to convince yourself you’re not disappointed.”