Patrick Marmion

“Sadly, that does not make the American a good fit for Noel Coward's 1925 comedy Hay Fever, and the part of aging English stage diva Judith Bliss.”

“This interminable verbal slugfest is a love-hate affair for the audience, as well as Martha and George.”

“What is most remarkable is that what might sound like a very dry subject is delivered by Kinnear as a fascinating, fun-filled and even frolicsome evening.”

“It is an extraordinary song from the gutter, hailing the human spirit and its ability to survive.”

“At first intrigued by the shenanigans from ancient myth, I simply lost patience with the muddle of existential angst.”

“Nadia Fall’s production taps into a ferocious, proto-feminist defiance led by Outhwaite.”

“This will be too 'authorised' and synthetic for people – like me – who want to get behind those sly blue eyes.”

“This play is as excruciatingly wrought as an episode of Fawlty Towers.”

“Instead they’re offering something slick but decaffeinated, evasive and artificial.”

“War Horse continues to be a stunning, invincibly spellbinding spectacle.”

“The crowd whooped along throughout this mercilessly entertaining celebration of Burton’s madcap ghost caper.”

“It not only absolves the Victorian era of its sins of excess, it carries its charms lightly, to ensure that grace does indeed pervade.”

“Two decades on, it is a tad dated... But it's still driven by the agonies of heartbreak and social anxiety.”

“But this feeble show, with its fatuous pranks, is not it.”

“Pike's turn as a judge in freefall will leave you breathless.”

“Icke’s production is intermittently revelatory, yet also oddly obstructive: a sunless vision of fair Verona with an almost constant backing track you’d normally associate with an aromatherapy massage at a posh spa.”

“All very dated, but a spicy trip down memory lane.”

“Guilty of the excesses it seeks to satirise, the production certainly won’t discomfort today’s middle classes.”

“Yet what's missing is old–fashioned suspense.”

“Watching him as he attempts to pull off a fiscal Houdini act is a treat.”

“To know what he means by that, you have to catch Oliver Kaderbhai’s seamless production.”

“Everyone who values a good night out should approach with caution.”

“Thea Sharrock’s production misses the sense of the small town’s vulnerability, all alone in the wide-open spaces of the dusty Midwest.”

“Never miss an opportunity to catch Sheridan Smith live.”

“It could be sharper, but their fans will love seeing them lay waste to another institution.”

“Not only fake news, it’s fake entertainment.”

“Le Carre’s plot still snakes craftily to its wintry conclusion: that intelligence services are driven by a single moral imperative - results.”

“The result is a harrowing journey into guilt-racked despair.”

“Great as the acting often is on Ti Green's gracefully metamorphic set, the play endures as a queasy, morally dubious melodrama.”

“Robert Hastie's production looks fabulous on Ben Stones's handsome set of a palatial ballroom with dado-to-ceiling frescoes illustrating Danish military history.”

“Max Webster’s joyous production remains book-ended with an LGBTQ+ pageant which adds needless flummery to an immaculately constructed plot.”

“Worse, Greek tragedy becomes mirthless pantomime with truly dismal jokes.”

“Instead it’s about the beauty of making connections which release you from the pain of life’s false hopes and unavoidable fears.”

“And Daniel Evans’s steamy production fizzes with rare theatrical chemistry.”

“Pike's Jessica is a force of nature, going out on karaoke nights with girlfriend barristers.”

“Prepare to be blown away by Rachel Zegler.”

“But if you're hoping for something closer to the bone, you may find this a little too professional.”

“Ireland is never merely gratuitous and has a genius for embarrassing moral dilemmas.”

“But for its emotional agonies to really torture us, I was hoping for a more intimate atmosphere than is provided by Lindsay Posner's respectable production, first seen in Bath last year.”

“Actually, it’s more like three – making it a 360, all-round, head-spinning winner.”

“But not even they, nor a stunningly inventive and lavishly executed stage design, can make this mongrel sing.”

“The three-hour show feels a bit flabby.”

“The show isn't original, but it is as flawless as Cher's complexion - and a sunny, retro night out.”

“The chemistry between them is like a kilo of sodium dumped in the village pond: fizzy, flashing and explosive.”

“For all its fearless talk about sex and relationship fluidity, it heads towards a mushy, sentimental end that not all viewers will find intriguing.”

“Sadly though, alongside Indira Varma as his unsuspecting mum, Malek isn’t the best thing about Matthew Warchus’s apocalyptic staging.”

“Too much feels too loud and over-stated.”

“Fuelled by Celine top tunes, what follows is 100 minutes of cast-iron, ocean-going hysteria on the high Cs.”

“The effect is not just joyful, but also epic and cinematic, catching Benjamin's sense of innocence and wonder, along with his feelings of doom and dread as a man with a secret he dare not share.”

“This is an impressive staging, peppered with sensationally unhinged performances, not all of them from Coogan.”

“When they’re alone, Strong and Manville are sensational.”

“In Zinnie Harris’s dismal 2019 expurgation of Webster’s misogynist tragedy, Whittaker’s bland Duchess is held captive and murdered by her brothers. I’ve always struggled to make sense of the plot, but thanks to this I have — and wish I hadn’t. The incest angle is the torch carried for the Duchess by her twin Ferdinand (Rory Fleck Byrne).”

“Although the change was agreed with the O’Casey estate, it still strikes me as failing to understand the pain of this great and tragic comedy.”

“What is really shocking and impressive about Nicholas Hytner's production is not that Dahl is exposed – this is a matter of public record. Instead, it's the fact that the play is a violent, incendiary provocation.”

“James Macdonald has clearly scoured the text for its morsels of amusement and crumbs of comfort.”

“She takes infectious, childlike pleasure in her role and ensures this very jolly, Dolly mixture is well worth a guzzle.”

“Suffice to say, it is a loveless piece of work, from which many people, of all ethnicities, may wish in retrospect that they too had been excluded.”

“James Graham’s adaptation of the TV series has matured and become an even more powerful elegy for Merseyside and its declining docks.”

“I suggest you book an en suite.”

“For pure spectacle Spirited Away ... is quite something — thanks to a rotating timber-framed traditional Japanese house buried in a green glade.”

“It’s theatrical torture that does to the viewer what the State of New York did to our poor, deluded heroine.”

“The result is a teeming portrait of 19th-century London that only occasionally gets stuck in the silt of its own plot.”

“The show proves to be a pretty good approximation of purgatory - and that’s really not an experience I can in good conscience recommend to anyone.”

“More than anything though, it’s thanks to the emotional wattage of Smith’s voice that the show really soars.”

“Not since Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins have we had to endure such excruciating dissonance.”

“Here he could tune into a fluent example of multicultural London English in Tyrell Williams’s sharp, funny and very touching play Red Pitch, first seen at the Bush Theatre.”

“But Price is so keen to beatify Bevan that his exemplary life passes almost unopposed.”

“But in case you couldn’t tell, it was not for me.”

“Weirdly, though, that doesn't mean it's no good.”

“But that doesn't stop Just For One Day absolutely nuking, erasing and laying waste to all cynicism — to ensure Saint Bob and crew rise again.”

“This is not a play that ends well for anyone.”

“Although the three-hour yarn, with English surtitles translating muscular Mongolian verse, is overblown, repetitive and utterly alien, it is certainly something to behold.”

“Kirkwood's script has an embarrassment of riches.”

“She’s flogging the family castle in Northumberland to a Russian oligarch and escaping to South Korea with a French lesbian lover. The comedy is billed as fusing Oscar Wilde and P.G. Wodehouse, and exhibits some small wit and (to begin with), the semblance of a plot.”

“As adult-oriented Carry On comedy it's reasonably good fun.”

“Yet shimmying up and down scales, the music lacks the emotional heft the audience seemed to crave.”

“Not only confusing, by trying to fast-track the play's epic emotional journey, the spectacle becomes ever more bizarre and uncomfortable to watch.”

“It's quietly touching and hugely life-affirming.”

“But while both actresses sprinkle stardust liberally across Skinner's play, I found the piece itself a curiously laboured and lacklustre affair.”

“This Pygmalion may not prove universally popular — but it's very exciting and undoubtedly audacious.”

“The title tune — loud enough to make your kidneys vibrate — raises the roof, but not as high as Faith Omole's yearning rendition of Coles Corner.”

“So much goes right in this exceptional production that it's quite simply a killer Mockingbird.”

“Without that abandon, it's a spectacle that, to me at least, is insufficiently disreputable.”

“And if you don't mind paying £20-£100 a head for that, it is reassuringly silly fun.”

“Laurence Connor and James Powell's rendition of Boublil and Schonberg's musical reinvention of Victor Hugo's novel is an absolute blinder.”