Category: Uncategorized

• IT WALKS AROUND THE HOUSE AT NIGHT – ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – the build-up impresses more than the pay-off but this horror thriller is a technical marvel

  

  IT WALKS AROUND THE HOUSE AT NIGHT

  by Tim Foley

  directed by Neil Bettles

  Southwark Playhouse Borough – The Large, London – until 28 March 2026

  running time: 90 minutes no interval 

  https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/it-walks-around-the-house-at-night/

  The tremendous West End success of Paranormal Activity (already confirmed for a return season later this year) and the ongoing tour of The Woman in Black following a three decade London run suggests that audiences are still more than willing to pay good money to be scared out of their wits. The horror genre in theatre gets another creditable addition with this chiller, already a success in the regions and now traumatising sell out audiences in Southwark. 

  It Walks Around The House At Night is a good, scary time in the theatre but it ends up being a victim of its own ingenuity. Tim Foley’s script and Neil Bettles’ production (both as staging and in terms of the quite brilliant technical elements, and more on those shortly) do such a terrifically creepy job of setting up the premise and story that when the denouement comes it’s inevitably a bit of an anticlimax, albeit a hysterical one. 

  George Naylor plays unemployed actor Joe, seconded from his job in a gay bar by a wealthy, mysterious gent to come to a remote manor house for a week to pretend to be a ghost nightly walking the perimeter of this country pile for the entertainment of the strangers nieces. It’s an unlikely but intriguing premise but Joe turns out to be an unreliable witness with more than a few personal issues. He’s embittered by his flailing acting career and his break-up from posh boy Rufus (who he nicknames, not entirely affectionately, Dufus), is up to his eyeballs in debt, and has a troubled family history. He also has a couple of sizeable chips on his shoulder: about class, about a regional theatre writing project that has come to nought. So, yes, Joe is a lot. Is he really being followed when he makes these macabre night walks around the estate, and how many of the night terrors he experiences are actually real, and how many are the products of his fevered, paranoid brain?

  On top of all that he is seriously considering jumping the bones of the rich, hot older man who has brought him to the middle of the countryside for this unconventional job. Naylor commendably doesn’t overdo trying to endear this abrasive, insecure chancer to us. He’s often very funny but also entirely self-absorbed and pretty unkind. If Naylor‘s performance tends to the shouty, his athleticism and precision impresses, and he has a wonderful ability to connect with an audience, even when Joe is being a bit of a jerk.

  Needless to say, almost nothing about Joe’s unconventional work gig is to be taken at face value and Naylor isn’t the only actor involved. Without giving too much away, Oliver Baines brings grace and gravitas to a character called simply ‘The Dancer’ and Paul Hilton, surely one of this country’s greatest but most underrated actors, provides a vivid pre-recorded voiceover for a section that seems to come out of left field. 

  The suggestion of the terror of the unknown is much more potent than the later sequences where all hell breaks loose, almost literally. It’s undoubtedly the stuff of nightmares – Joe’s and the audience’s – but dragging the sinister and forbidding out into the open robs it of some of its power. Foley’s writing, which for the most part skilfully blends irreverent humour with real fear, temporarily becomes disappointingly prosaic. 

  Bettles’ staging doesn’t put a foot wrong though. The set, co-designed by Bettles and Tom Robbins is a shady wonder of skewed perspectives and weird angles, and the lighting and video design by Joshua Pharo is gloriously, dislocatingly ambiguous and atmospheric. Horror thrives on aural stimuli and Pete Malkin’s sound work here is an absolute masterpiece.

  The ending feels like a more malevolent riff on The Woman in Black’s unexpected, bone-chilling conclusion but might have benefitted from a crucial element of it not having been revealed to us before. As with Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s popular Ghost Stories, the shuddering build-up of suspense proves more exciting than the pay-off. That reservation aside, this is a big fat popular hit that will send fear-crazed patrons out delirious, and deliciously exhausted.

  March 11, 2026

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• MARIE AND ROSETTA – ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – the play’s a little uneven but when the music kicks in, this is heavenly

  

  MARIE AND ROSETTA 

  by George Brant

  directed by Monique Touko 

  @sohoplace, London – until 11 April 2026

  running time: 2 hours including interval

  https://nimaxtheatres.com/shows/marie-rosetta/

  If it takes a star to play a star, then that aspect of Marie and Rosetta is in very safe hands. A vibrant Beverley Knight plays “the Godmother of rock’n’roll” Sister Rosetta Tharpe in George Brant’s enjoyable two hander examining the legacy of the musical pioneer who inspired greats such as Elvis, Johnny Cash and Ray Charles, but whose name isn’t as universally well known as it deserves to be. Knight brings dynamic stage presence, exquisite comic timing tempered with a rare emotional availability, and, as expected, roof-raising, majestic vocals. 

  She’s partnered by rising star Ntombizodwa Ndlovu as Marie Knight, Rosetta’s protégée, musical collaborator and (alleged) lover, although Brant’s play (first seen off-Broadway a decade ago in a different production) is curiously noncommittal about exploring that part of their relationship. Ndlovu is excellent, but the role feels underwritten in comparison to the barnstorming opportunities Knight is afforded as Tharpe. 

  The play opens in a funeral parlour in Mississippi in 1946, as Rosetta persuades Marie to tour with her. Brant emphasises the grimness and racism of the mid twentieth century touring circuit in much of America as it pertains to these two Black women, who, almost unbelievably, will be expected to sleep amongst the coffins, no other accommodation being permitted to them. “We not in New York anymore, honey” states Rosetta, “we not in Chicago. Can’t stay in no hotel down here.” The script bounces fleetly and, honestly, a little confusingly through various life events, some traumatic, for both women, before returning to the funeral parlour and a would-be tear-soaked conclusion that feels earned by the acting if not the writing. 

  Brant’s work is at its best when depicting Rosetta’s passion and fervour around her music, as she moves between gospel and the roots of rock’n’roll, and Knight, with her rolling gait and bruised survivor’s vitality, handles it so persuasively. This in turn leads to the sections when Monique Touko’s in-the-round production really excels, and the music takes over. An all-female quartet of musicians, led by Shirley Tetteh, tear through gospel, r’n’b, rock numbers, while the voices holler and soar thrillingly overhead. If the dialogue is sometimes tepid, when the singing starts, Marie and Rosetta becomes red hot.

  The real Rosetta and Marie played instruments and having Knight and Ndlovu mime invisible guitar and piano at various points becomes distracting and enervating, given the amount of music in the production. Despite the sketchiness of the characterisations as written, the contrast in the two women’s energies and outlooks is nicely conveyed. Liam Godwin’s orchestrations are suitably rousing and Tony Gayle delivers a sound design that captures the rawness of rock’n’roll in its infancy and ensures that we all feel the music in our bones. Visually, the show is attractive, driving a decent middle path between glamour and grit (set design by Lily Arnold, costumes by Jodie-Simone Howe, wigs, hair and make-up by Keisha Banya) and it’s beautifully lit by Matt Haskins.

  Marie and Rosetta isn’t a great play: its structure is unwieldy and the storytelling is unclear, and having the audience on all sides is great for the intimacy but problematic for sightlines, at least as staged here. Still, it has genuine heart and humour. It also sheds a welcome light on a pair of neglected musical talents, one of whom really should be spoken of in the same breath as the other ‘greats’. See it for that, for the unforgettable music, and for the performances. 

  March 10, 2026

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• OUR TOWN – ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Michael Sheen stars in Thornton Wilder’s American classic with a distinctly Welsh accent

  

  OUR TOWN

  by Thornton Wilder

  directed by Francesca Goodridge

  creative associate: Russell T Davies

  a Rose Theatre and Welsh National Theatre co-production 

  Rose Theatre, Kingston – until 28 March 2026

  running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval 

  https://www.rosetheatre.org/whats-on/our-town-m74x

  For all its warmth and lyricism, the 1938 American drama Our Town is a curious choice as inaugural production for the Welsh National Theatre, despite being a natural precursor to that quintessential Welsh text, Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. Both use a narrator and panoply of characters to bring to life a fictional community, rich in intrigues and eccentricities but revelling in their crucial ordinariness, and with just a touch of the fantastical. One wonders if that’s what inspired WNT artistic director and onstage star Michael Sheen, in tandem with director Francesca Goodridge, to select Thornton Wilder’s metatheatrical masterpiece, in a co-presentation with Rose Theatre Kingston. 

  Sheen already played First Voice, the role immortalised by Richard Burton, in a post-pandemic staging of Under Milk Wood at the National, so maybe didn’t want to revisit it so soon, but there are undoubtedly echoes of that performance in his charismatic turn here as Our Town’s Stage Manager. Where Thomas’ play is marinated in poetic melancholy and humour, the figures deftly, vividly conjured up in a few brilliant lines, Wilder’s writing is blander, more pedestrian, his people thinly characterised. The form of Our Town (revolutionary in the 1930s) strikes me as more remarkable than its execution, which manages to be simultaneously treacly and profound, theatrically heightened yet, until the last of the three acts, dramatically inert.

  Our Town is certainly an important play in the American theatrical canon, with opportunities for a large ensemble cast, but one can’t help wishing that, for this debut Welsh National Theatre show, Sheen and gang had gone for something by an actual Welsh playwright. The production is performed with Welsh accents, and traditional hymns are sung at certain points, but the nods to the Principality feel grafted on. Enthusiastic programme notes by Sheen and Goodridge seek to sell us on the universality of Wilder’s creation, but in practice this iteration doesn’t fully convince. Welsh place names are used inconsistently, which is a bit confusing, and references to dollars, the Appalachians, New Hampshire, Boston etc. sound weird coming out of the mouths of these Welsh people. The accents are generally from South Wales yet some (not all) of the cast pronounce the town’s name (Grover’s Corners) with the pinched gutturality of North Wales. 

  Sheen invests the Stage Manager, conjuring the inhabitants of Grover’s Corners, living and dead, out of thin air, with authoritative charm and wry humour, plus, it must be said, a large helping of grandstanding ham. He certainly owns the stage, and his legion of fans won’t be disappointed. The acting (particularly in the overlong first half; it all gets a bit more subdued in the death-centred final act) tends towards the broad: the energy is admirable, but it does appear that most of these overwrought Welsh-Americans never met a gurn, grimace or double-take they didn’t like. That said, there’s some lovely nuance in the performances of Gareth Snook as a sensitive town undertaker, and of Peter Devlin as a youngster who goes from idealism and romance to disillusioned grief in the course of the play, and Sian Reese-Williams as his tough but tender mother. 

  Our Town is divided into three acts and the decision to perform the first two prior to the interval results in a ninety minute first half that might prove interminable to anybody with a low threshold for down-home charm and whimsy. The last section is genuinely affecting though, as it looks at Grover’s Corners – and by extension all human existence – from both sides of the grave (“the dead don’t stay interested in us living people for long…gradually they lose hold of the earth”.) Wilder’s writing and Goodridge’s staging acquire a welcome gravitas and emotional pull that unsettles but satisfies. I defy anybody not to be moved by the Stage Manager’s ultimate assertion that the only people to truly appreciate life in all its joys and complexities are “saints and poets maybe…they do some.” The whole show ends on a note of rapturous, contemplative stillness.

  Goodridge’s busy, good-looking production is dominated by the fluid, dynamic choreography and movement direction by Jess Williams and Ryan Joseph Stafford’s gorgeous, evocative lighting, all golden glow in the first half and sepulchral pallor in the second. If this show had scenery, most of the cast would be chewing it but Hayley Grindle’s design makes inventive use of ladders and planks to delineate locations. Dylan Jones provides a magical, ubiquitous musical score that occasionally overwhelms the spoken words.

  TV’s Russell T Davies is credited as creative consultant but it isn’t immediately clear what his contribution is. Welsh accents aside, this is a fairly straight rendition of a play that’s wholesome and full of heart, but probably more interesting for its place in American theatre history rather than its content and characters. It’s a respectable start to the much-needed Welsh National Theatre but one hopes that future projects will be packing a bit more hwyl.

  March 5, 2026

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• THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – folk, fine performances and a very British odyssey combine in enjoyable new musical

  

  THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY

  Book by Rachel Joyce based on her own novel

  Music and lyrics by Passenger 

  adaptation co-created by Rachel Joyce, Peter Darling and Katy Rudd

  directed by Katy Rudd

  Theatre Royal Haymarket, London – until 18 April 2026

  running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval 

  https://trh.co.uk/whatson/harold-fry/

  Rachel Joyce’s beloved debut novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, first published in 2012, has already spawned a popular film starring Jim Broadbent as the tormented retiree who undertakes an epic walk from Devon up to the Lake District for the unlikeliest but most noble of reasons. Now it’s a big-hearted musical with haunting songs by bestselling folk artist Passenger (real name: Mike Rosenberg) and a whirling, inventive production by Katy Rudd, arriving in the West End beefed-up from its well received Chichester premiere last year. 

  It’s not hard to see the enduring appeal of this slightly tall tale of loss, sacrifice and the importance of appreciating what we have in our lives. It’s sentimental for sure but the emotional pay-offs in the story feel honest and earned: you can’t really argue with a roomful of sobbing patrons. Unlike the eponymous Harold’s journey though, this is no trudge, especially when dressed up with Passenger’s soaring music – all melodic hooks, folk beats and moments of rousing beauty – and in a staging that delights in the possibilities of theatrical storytelling, employing everything from puppetry to video to dance (the stompy, intermittently graceful choreography by Tom Jackson Greaves really hits the mark). 

  As with her work on The Ocean At The End of The Lane and Ballet Shoes for the National, Rudd excels at marrying the mundane (Harold’s wife Maureen stewing discontentedly at home, their next door neighbour discussing how he disposes of grass cuttings…) with the fantastical, as individual stage pictures swirl by, delighting the eye and quickening the pulse. The more whimsical elements of the visual storytelling sometimes feel a little grafted on, but the bold theatricality consistently commands attention. 

  Billy Elliot choreographer Peter Darling is credited as co-adapter, along with Rudd and Joyce, and his influence surely seems to be a factor in making exhilaratingly airborne a downbeat story one wouldn’t automatically expect to sing and dance, and burnishing it with an entrancing showbiz sheen. A scene in a railway station café transforms into a Busby Berkeley-esque tap extravaganza, a roadside garage car wash explodes into a zestful, glittering chorus line….

  The changes in tone sometimes jar, and the whole thing is held together by the plangent uplift of the score and a glorious central performance by Mark Addy, combining irascible charm with almost classical intensity as Harold’s psyche and resolve fall apart. For much of the evening, his disapproving wife Maureen seems like a pretty thankless role by comparison, although the always exquisite Jenna Russell invests her with a flinty wit, and a wonderfully expressive singing voice capable of going from pinched resentment to full-throated emotionalism within a few bars. When she has a change of heart and opens back up to Harold, it’s tremendously affecting, and the sniffles throughout the auditorium throughout the final scene attest to how much the audience has invested in these two flawed but lovable characters. 

  Joyce has adapted her own novel for the stage and, while it’s undoubtedly engaging, Harold’s odyssey has an episodic feel and an occasional lack of clarity as it jumps back and forth in time and introduces peripheral characters only to discard them minutes later. As a musical, it suffers from the commendable but frustrating desire to give apparently every character a song, although the sheer quality of Passenger’s work – at times reminiscent of Benjamin Button and Come From Away, both superior tuners but with a similar emotional wallop – means that at least the extraneous numbers are enjoyable.

  In an excellent supporting cast, standouts include Daniel Crossley, a subtly outrageous delight as a tap-dancing gent with an unusual romantic dilemma, Madeleine Worrall as a kind but pithy Eastern European doctor who helps Harold, and Jenna Boyd, just gorgeous as a pragmatic farmer’s wife and a warm, golden-voiced singing nun (you’ve got to have a nun in a wholesome musical apparently). There’s equally fine work from Peter Polycarpou as a lonely neighbour and Maggie Service as the saintly co-worker who’s at the end of Harold’s arduous journey. Clarion-voiced Nicole Nyarambi stops the show as a diffident garage worker who sets Harold on his way. Noah Mullins brings presence and exciting vocals to the role of a Balladeer whose relevance to the central story becomes darker and more essential as the evening progresses.

  Samuel Wyer’s woody, earthy set ingeniously marries Mother Nature with suburbia. In tandem with Paule Constable’s stunning lighting and video creations by Ash J Woodward that sometimes take the breath away with their simplicity and sheer beauty, the design suggests the wide open wonder of the countryside and the dark, claustrophobic inner workings of a troubled soul with equal vividness and skill. Gareth Tucker’s sound design ensures every lyric is heard although the company numbers could sometimes use a little more oomph. 

  The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry isn’t a perfect musical, but it is a richly enjoyable one. It’s a crowd pleaser full of heart, melody and humanity, and Addy is giving a performance for the ages. Go, and remember to bring hankies.

  February 20, 2026

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• 1.17am, OR UNTIL THE WORDS RUN OUT – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – world class talents working in a tiny space as the Finborough scores again

  

  1.17AM, OR UNTIL THE WORDS RUN OUT 

  by Zoe Hunter Gordon

  directed by Sarah Stacey

  Finborough Theatre, London – until 7 March 2026

  running time: 75 minutes no interval 

  https://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/productions/117am-or-until-the-words-run-out

  On paper, Zoe Hunter Gordon’s one act, two character, one set tragicomedy looks like a pretty minor work. In performance though, 1.17am, or until the words run out reveals itself as a hugely satisfying watch, more layered than one might expect, packing rich seams of insight, truth and humour into its fleet, relatable seventy five minutes. The writing is terrific: pithy, potty-mouthed, concise and so so true.

  It examines the limits of grief and friendship – surely likely to be primary forces in the lives of much of any audience – through the prism of a pair of uneasy best friends, a family bereavement and a couple of revelations that feel as regretfully credible as they are riveting storytelling beats. It’s female focussed (the entire cast and production team are women) but it speaks to everyone.

  Early twenty-something Katie (Catherine Ashdown) is packing up the room of her late brother, killed in a car crash, when she’s disturbed by her estranged best mate Roni (Eileen Duffy). Ashdown, nervy and defensive, and Duffy, warm and simultaneously strong but vulnerable, entirely convince as a pair of friends whose mutual affection has corroded, but probably not irreparably, through mistrust and miscommunication. It swiftly emerges that Roni has had a sexual relationship with Katie’s brother, though she’s since moved on to cohabiting with a young man with a similar Eastern European background to her own, while Katie struggles with her grief and bewilderment. Meanwhile, a party merrily rages upstairs as Katie’s brother’s flatmates have a last hurrah before eviction. 

  Despite the friends being at loggerheads, Sarah Stacey’s terrific staging is suffused with affection. The audience becomes as invested in these young women reconnecting as the characters themselves are. Neither of the unseen men attached to them are necessarily what they initially seem and the family backgrounds of Katie and Roni are skilfully, naturalistically revealed. Hunter Gordon has an unerring skill for making utterly fascinating the minutiae of apparently ordinary lives, and the performances and production here match her work perfectly.

  Watching the balance of power shift between Ashdown and Duffy is thrilling, as the recriminations and revelations fly. Ashdown could perhaps tone down some of the neurotic body language but she makes vivid and credible the waves of grief passing through this tortured young woman, and nails Katie’s neediness and flashes of anger. Duffy delivers a beautiful portrayal of an essentially kind soul with a wild streak, and the sense of loss and dislocation when she finally reaches the end of her tether is superbly done. Both young actors look like stars-in-the-making.

  Sharp, touching and refreshingly contemporary, this is a really fine addition to the roster of new writing currently on the London stage. Totally worth the trip to Earls Court, and another example of why fringe theatre is so important. 

  February 16, 2026

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• CASH ON DELIVERY – ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – belly laughs and benefit fraud equal crowd-pleasing post-dinner entertainment

  

  CASH ON DELIVERY

  by Michael Cooney

  directed by Ron Aldridge 

  The Mill at Sonning, Sonning Eye near Reading – until 4 April 2026

  running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

  https://millatsonning.com/Events/cash-on-delivery/

  It would be all too easy to over-analyse Michael Cooney’s benefit fraud farce Cash On Delivery, given a spirited revival by farce expert Ron Aldridge for the delightful Mill at Sonning. It’s essentially a cheeky romp with one foot in TV sitcom and the other in the frenetic comic crowdpleasers which Cooney’s much-missed Dad Ray specialised in for decades: Cooney Sr even directed the star-studded West End premiere of this play in 1996, and the Mill’s auditorium is named after him.

  But this thirty year old comedy, while undemanding, interestingly comes from a point in history where society, and accordingly the world of entertainment, was changing. The lingerie-clad young women and marital infidelities that characterised earlier examples of the farce genre, and so brilliantly satirised by Michael Frayn in Noises Off, were starting to look outdated and glaringly sexist, so Michael Cooney instead spins an elaborate yarn about Eric Swan, a Home Counties landlord who makes a living via numerous fraudulent state welfare claims pertaining to fictional tenants and lodgers. The proverbial chickens come home to roost when a DSS inspector turns up, followed by his overbearing boss, a grief counsellor, an undertaker and the fiancée of the one genuine lodger Swan has.

  Cash On Delivery doesn’t entirely break the antiquated mould though: a smack in the face with a door renders an elderly character incapacitated for most of the play, and the audience is expected to find the concept of cross dressing, in and of itself, utterly hilarious. Of the female characters, two are harridans and the other two have little agency. However, Cooney, like his legendary Dad, unerringly understands the mechanics of farce, so that, even if dialogue, verbal jokes and characters are more functional than inspired, it’s impossible not to marvel as the comedy machine gets into gear and the merry mayhem picks up pace. 

  At the press performance I saw, Aldridge’s staging still felt like it was running at 80% energy rather than the full 100% needed to really make the show fly, but there’s every indication that the production will reach that level once the actors get a few more performances under their belts. Looking at times uncannily like Bradley Walsh who originated the role in the West End, the hugely likeable Steven Pinder steers a canny path between insouciance and swivel-eyed panic as deceitful Eric. Natasha Gray makes something surprisingly sympathetic out of the underwritten role of his wife Linda, suspicious of, well, almost everything yet with no idea about Eric’s financial shenanigans. James Bradshaw is very funny as their lodger Norman, his hitherto contented life devolving rapidly into an ever-mounting tsunami of disbelief and outrage.

  Harry Gostelow delivers note-perfect work as the unexpectedly benign man from the DHSS and is a pleasing foil to Felicity Duncan’s bellowing, fearsome boss. Rachel Fielding’s well meaning but clueless relationship guidance counsellor is another enjoyable creation as is Norman’s naive yet naughty fiancée, delightfully played with an appealing zing of sweetness, heart and camp by Melanie Gutteridge. 

  Alex Marker’s door-heavy (this is farce after all) domestic set and Natalie Titchener’s costumes, slightly too garish to be fully realistic, add to the overall sense of the entire show being contained in a time capsule, harking back to decades when things were more straightforward and less PC. This is a classic example of a show that achieves exactly what it sets out to do, there’s not much “there” there, but the Mill at Sonning audience, fuelled by an excellent dinner, roars its approval. 

  February 14, 2026

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• THE VIRGINS – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – teenage angst and embarrassment is never this much fun in real life

  

  THE VIRGINS

  by Miriam Battye

  directed by Jaz Woodcock-Stewart

  Soho Theatre, London – until 7 March 2026

  running time: 85 minutes no interval 

  https://sohotheatre.com/events/the-virgins/

  “It is a massive thing. I can literally feel it… It’s so heavy I feel like I’m wiping the floor with it… I’m surprised I can even walk with it.” That’s hyper-anxious sixteen year old Phoebe talking about her own virginity in Miriam Battye’s outrageously entertaining but thoughtful new play. The Virgins centres on a group of teenage girls preparing for a night out where the aim of “pick one boy each to pull…then come home and eat chicken dippers” takes a more extreme turn when an older, more sexually experienced young woman turns up, all knowing sass and attitude, and the race is on for full scale loss of virginity.

  At first it feels like a modern day answer to Willy Russell’s Stags And Hens, the girls primping and preening in the bathroom while just across the hall a pair of boys play computer games and engage in half-hearted banter. The detailed, mostly realistic set and entirely plausible costumes are by Rosie Elnile.

  Battye’s writing for these kids is eye-wateringly accurate and deliciously funny. The dialogue bounces off the stage with a rare vitality and relatability, and the playwright’s affection for these stroppy, clueless, lovable youngsters is palpable. Jaz Woodock-Stewart’s sparky, supremely well cast production, punctuated by blasts of bombastic classical music in witty counterpoint to the lower brow concerns of the characters, matches the potty-mouthed dynamism of the text.

  Every member of the youthful acting company is outstanding, mining the script for every scrap of humour but never playing it for the laughs which, goodness knows, are coming thick and fast anyway. Anushka Chakravarti and Ragevan Vasan fully convince as siblings whose mutual loathing is probably only on the surface, and Ella Bruccoleri finds so many layers and colours to quirky, independent-minded Jess. Zoë Armer suggests with real pathos the trauma and hurt hiding just under the surface of apparently confident, slightly older Anya, and Alec Boaden raises diffident coolness to an art form as a bemused lad also with hidden depths. Molly Hewitt-Richards is a neurotic delight as uncertain Phoebe (“I’ve done a test run and I know if I have three single vodka lemonades on no dinner I’ll be fun and not vulnerable”).

  Aside from the copious belly laughs, The Virgins has a genuine gravitas as it touches on peer pressure, sexual violence, the objectification of young women and the bewilderment of young men. It’s a compelling mix but the lurches into serious territory, though essential to the play as a whole, could be refined somewhat. A mutual masturbation scene should be awkward, as should the closing moments where two youngsters start to have sex but are impelled to use the physical and indeed aural language learnt from exposure to porn. But a reflective speech for Boaden’s Mel where he talks, almost accusingly, about his disillusionment with the opposite sex, although terrifically well played, feels shoe-horned in and a tad ponderous. 

  The Virgins is still a tremendously accomplished piece of writing though, a rollicking good time with very sharp fangs and moments of authentic pathos. It should be required viewing for mid- to late-teenagers, but probably not with their parents. The embarrassment, y’know…. Enthusiastically recommended.

  February 9, 2026

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• GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU? – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – the Royal Court kicks off 2026 with a searing masterpiece….yes it’s really that good

  

  GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU?

  by Luke Norris

  directed by Jeremy Herrin

  Royal Court Theatre, London – until 21 February 2026

  running time: 100 minutes no interval 

  https://royalcourttheatre.com

  It’s awfully early in 2026 to be proclaiming that something is the play of the year, but any other new piece of writing, central performances and overall production in the next ten months will really have to be going it some (technical term) to match this no-holds-barred stunner. Luke Norris is a very good actor, but on the basis of his script for Guess How Much I Love You?, premiering on the Royal Court’s main stage in a shattering production by Jeremy Herrin, he’s a truly great playwright. 

  He writes naturalistic dialogue that pulses with raw emotion, crackles with wit that sometimes winds you with its stark cruelty, and reveals painful truths about the characters speaking it, even when they don’t necessarily realise how much they’re giving away. Rosie Sheehy and Robert Aramayo play a young couple expecting a baby whose lives are transformed when their twenty week scan reveals an irregularity in the foetus. There’s a bleak poetry to the writing too: “can you close the curtains please? The sun doesn’t make any sense” said by one of the characters in the depths of their sadness, is a line that will stay with me for a long time.

  Guess How Much I Love You? deals with the emotional and spiritual fallout from such a devastating discovery. Sounds harrowing? Well, yes it is, inevitably….but it’s also deeply, bloodily humane, surprising, darkly humorous, suffused with love, pain, and masterful visual and verbal storytelling that takes the breath away with its dexterity and invention. Theatrical alchemy happens when writer, cast, director and creative team are all singing from the same tear-stained hymn sheet, and that, thrillingly, is what’s happening here. 

  It’s not fair to give away what happens beyond the first scene which finds the young couple in a hospital’s ultrasound room awaiting their consultant’s return, killing time by playing an increasingly spiky and exasperated game of Twenty Questions. It’s the perfect introduction and set-up for a riveting rollercoaster of compassion, trauma and cold hard truth, best experienced by the audience when, like the principal characters, they don’t know what’s coming next. There’s nothing cheap or sensationalist about Norris’ or Herrin’s work though, but part of the play’s raison d’être is to examine, unflinchingly, how humans absorb and rebound from, the unthinkable. 

  Sheehy’s extraordinary ability to access an almost unfathomable well of deep feeling has seldom, if ever, been as persuasively demonstrated as it is here. Whether screaming blue murder with the vehemence of a thousand furies, masking her agony with scabrous sarcasm, or her face slack with despair, she is unforgettable. Aramayo matches her every step of the way, as the young man at her side even as she’s pushing him away. He makes his grief vivid and heart-stopping, and manages the not inconsiderable feat of portraying a thoroughly good human but ensuring that he is also utterly fascinating. 

  There’s beautiful, sensitive work from Lena Kaur as a NHS midwife (“imagine this but it bankrupts you” says Sheehy’s character at one point). Herrin’s staging is brilliantly modulated, giving full rein to every beat, detail and colour in the text, and goes at a hell of a pace. The lengthy breaks between scenes isn’t just to change Grace Smart’s realistic sets, it’s to give the audience a chance to decompress. Smart’s sets are interesting, they look like actual rooms but claustrophobically hemmed in somehow, as though to visually represent the grim choices facing the couple, until, that is, the very last one when the playing space expands and you can feel the audience members around you allowing themselves to breathe.

  Anybody thinking about seeing this remarkable piece of theatre should check the trigger warnings on the website. If you’ve been through some of the experiences depicted here, it may be too distressing to bear. Alternatively, it may provide authentic catharsis, as great art can do: and this IS great art. I am still reeling. 

  February 7, 2026

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• LOST ATOMS – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – stunning performances and bravura staging elevate a memory play about love

  

  LOST ATOMS 

  by Anna Jordan

  directed by Scott Graham for Frantic Assembly

  Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London – until 28 February 2026

  running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval

  https://lyric.co.uk/shows/lost-atoms/

  Frantic Assembly’s signature blend of thought and feeling expressed through ecstatic, expansive movement melds with Anna Jordan’s beautifully observed tragicomedy charting the highs and lows of a relationship in Lost Atoms. If it sometimes feels that the choreographed sections in Scott Graham’s visually arresting, beautifully performed production feel more grafted onto the text than arising organically out of it, it’s impossible not to admire the skill and indeed to feel the feels.

  Robbie (Joe Layton) and Jess (Hannah Sinclair Robinson) look back on their stormy but frequently heartwarming relationship from coffee shop meet-cute through joyful sex, awkward in-law introductions, insecurities, potential parenthood to trauma and regret. Jordan writes her characters, flawed and relatable as they are, with an abundance of affection and has them express themselves in language terse, humorous and natural, shot through with devastating shards of cruelty when the emotional stakes become high. 

  Robbie and Jess seem to be recalling their past from some sort of liminal space – Simisola Majekodunmi’s lighting snaps back and forth between sepulchral pallor and warm realism – so as to comment on the unreliability of memory (they frequently contradict each other) and, quite movingly, to imagine potential futures for each other, but not necessarily together. The shadow of Nick Payne’s Constellations sometimes seems to hang over Lost Atoms although, textually at least, this is a less ambitious affair. 

  The chemistry between Layton and Sinclair Robinson – him cautious, grief-tinged but touchingly open-hearted, her fearlessly running at life with healthy doses of sunshine and attitude – is quite something to behold. Whether cradling each other in a stunning “bed ballet” viewed from above, confiding things they’ve told no one else, or bickering with the passion of people who really matter to each other, they entirely convince, and it’s impossible not to care about them, even at their most insufferable. The tenderness takes your breath away…and so does the brutality. Jordan gently upends traditional romantic notions by casting the go-getting Jess rather than the more reticent Robbie as the dominant force in the relationship. “You’re my knight in shining armour” he points out wryly, and, for all his insecurity and issues, when things go asunder, for a number of reasons, she is the prime mover.

  Layton and Sinclair Robinson, as athletic as they are riveting to watch and truthful, are so good that they almost divert attention from the script’s second act meanderings into soap opera territory, although a joint trauma, which I won’t spoil here, is sensitively handled. It’s also a little long: what could have been a punchy ninety to a hundred minutes is bloated into nearly two and a half hours including interval, and it might verge on the interminable without such cracking performances and the considerable pleasures of Graham’s bravura staging. 

  Apparently unimpeded by gravity or indeed vertigo, the actors bounce, glide, clamber and ricochet all over Andrzej Goulding’s neon-edged, multilevel set of dozens of drawers that can pop open to reveal props or become steps and platforms, while also evoking a cityscape at night. It’s exhilarating to watch and occasionally very affecting as the airborne movement conveys the heady euphoria of new-found love before devolving into the treachery and danger when that connection is under threat.

  Intriguing, engaging and ultimately frustratingly elliptical, Lost Atoms doesn’t fully satisfy as a play, although it has some wonderful things in it. See it for the astonishing performances, Jordan’s unerring grasp of how real people talk, and the uniqueness of Frantic Assembly’s vision and house style.  

  February 6, 2026

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• AMERICAN PSYCHO – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – grab your plastic raincoat…the all-singing, all-dancing serial killer Patrick Bateman is back

  

  AMERICAN PSYCHO

  Music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik

  Book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa 

  based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis

  directed by Rupert Goold

  Almeida Theatre, London – until 21 March 2026

  https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/american-psycho-2026/

  You can’t accuse the Almeida’s outgoing artistic director Rupert Goold (he leaves in the autumn to take up the reins at the Old Vic from Matthew Warchus) of resting on his laurels. His 2013 musical version of Bret Easton Ellis’ gory, controversial novel American Psycho was an absolute smash hit (well ok, not on Broadway where it tanked after less than three months) but it was the hottest ticket in London town during the original run starring a ripped, wittily unreadable Matt Smith. Surely it must have been tempting to repeat the winning formula but this 2026 iteration is no carbon copy of the first version, despite using the same creative team. 

  The musical has been streamlined, brought into sharper focus and almost completely restaged. There are new songs (including the belting, haunting opener ‘Selling Out’ created for the New York production), sequences and scenes reordered and characters reconsidered. It’s still defiantly, pleasingly weird though, like a waking nightmare unfolding in a sea of neon, chrome, brick and glass where humanity is in short supply but ego, image and cheap thrills are in abundance.

  Is it actually better than before? Not necessarily, but it remains a chilling and thrilling night out, one that captures the unique atmosphere of paranoia, icy cynicism and flamboyant consumerism of the 1980s. Duncan Sheik’s synth-heavy, mordantly melodic songs, more minor than major key, are so irresistibly redolent of the period that somebody unfamiliar with late twentieth century pop might have a hard time working out where the score ends and the actual chart hits of the time begin:  Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’, Phil Collins’ ‘In The Air Tonight’ and New Order’s ‘True Faith’ are all included.

  2026’s Patrick Bateman, the designer label-obsessed, emotionally disconnected Wall Street banker who may or may not be a serial killer, is Arty Froushan in a tremendously accomplished musical theatre debut. He imbues Bateman with an edgy charm, and a wide-eyed, almost child-like watchfulness that troubles far more than his urban playboy swagger. Unlike his predecessors in the role (including Benjamin Walker on Broadway and Christian Bale in the 2000 film), Froushan suggests that Bateman never quite feels ‘enough’, that he is somehow at sea in the world of wealth and privilege his financial position has put him in. When, at the beginning, he describes his well-appointed apartment, he feels less smug and more eager to impress. When his chic downstairs neighbour laughs at him for hanging an expensive painting upside down, his reaction is fear of exposure as much as fury. He makes vivid and all too credible the gulf between Bateman’s slightly withdrawn social stance as a privileged but perpetual outsider, and the simmering mania that periodically boils over with a mixture of glee and total abandon. He looks older than the 27 years that the text repeatedly reminds us he is, but this really is a terrific central turn. 

  Between Froushan’s performance and the revised staging, which replaces fake stage blood (the original was awash with it) with scarlet fabrics, lighting and video effects, it seems more clear this time around that Bateman’s graphic murder fantasies are just that, not actual events. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s book is a skilful distillation of the original novel, managing to evoke real horror and revulsion while seldom becoming a hard watch, and it’s often bleakly hilarious.

  This time around, the chasm between satirising the snobbish shallowness of extreme wealth (“I will not have an odd number at my dinner table, Patrick! This isn’t Brooklyn!”) and the fratty, misogynistic bants of the corporate financial bros, and the little bits of genuine feeling on display, feels more pronounced. That does lead to a certain unevenness but it also, tellingly, throws the humanity of the victims into sharper relief: it’s impossible not to be moved by Joseph Mydell’s homeless man, sobbing pitifully over the bank note Bateman has tossed down in front of him, or not to feel pity for the sex workers (Hannah Yun Chamberlain and Millie Mayhew, both hugely effective) who are reduced to twitching cadavers. Yep, as ‘dark’ musicals go, this one is right up there with Sweeney Todd.

  In theatricalising a story as gory as this one, there is inevitably a degree of artifice required that is perhaps best served by the distance lent by a proscenium arch; the original version had that, but this one doesn’t. Es Devlin’s set is a sleek black runway extended into the Almeida stalls and ending in a forbidding-looking tunnel that suggests a railway arch but also the urban-chic downtown nightclubs where Patrick and his cohorts go on their coke-fuelled binges. It’s very striking, especially as excitingly lit by Jon Clark and enhanced by Finn Ross’ sophisticated video floor, but it paints the staging into a bit of a corner, with actors constantly masking each other, and repetitive scene changes (things rise up through the floor ad infinitum). It’s only possible to really take in Lynne Page’s dynamic, unsettling choreography if you’re front centre in the circle, but equally if you’re up there you miss the immediacy of having performers centimetres away from you in the stalls. Still, it’s a glossily attractive eyeful, and Katrina Lindsay’s elegant (even when ripped to shreds) costumes evoke the 1980s without sending them up.

  There are some great voices in the cast but this isn’t a score that requires steel-lunged belting, and it’s the acting choices that really impress here. Emily Barber and Tanisha Spring bring a brittle glamour and surreal humour to, respectively, Bateman’s moneyed girlfriend and her best mate (who he’s also sleeping with, of course). Anastasia Martin, wonderful, and looking uncannily like a young Dianne Wiest, is the steady, decent heart of the piece as the secretary in love with Patrick and possibly the only person capable of helping him. Kim Ismay is a deadpan hoot as his soignée, heavily medicated mother and the incredulous Russian dry cleaner charged with removing bloodstains. There’s superb work from Daniel Bravo, smooth as silk as Bateman’s professional nemesis, and Olly Higginson, splendidly obnoxious as the cockiest of his colleagues, also providing a bang-on impersonation of Patrick’s idol, one Donald J Trump. Zheng Xi Yong is cute and appropriately bonkers as a lost soul in thrall to Bateman.

  Thunderous, poisonous, and just occasionally a little ponderous, this is a musical that refuses to play by the rules. There are brief moments, usually involving dance beats and Page’s barnstorming yet macabre choreography (the glam rock-adjacent ‘Killing Spree’ which sees our anti-hero, mic in one hand, knife or shotgun in the other, slaughter the entire company, is a prime example), where it capitulates, almost, to traditional musical theatre exhilaration. For the most part though, American Psycho is a piece that invites us to meet it on its own terms, and, perhaps surprisingly, it works. Something this nasty and cynical has no business being so much damn fun.

  February 4, 2026

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