Category: Uncategorized

• HIGH NOON – ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Billy Crudup and Denise Gough lead enjoyable stage version of the classic Western movie

  

  HIGH NOON

  by Eric Roth

  based on Stanley Kramer’s High Noon, screenplay by Carl Foreman

  directed by Thea Sharrock

  Harold Pinter Theatre, London – until 6 March 2026

  https://highnoontheplay.com

  The original 1952 movie is such a classic of the Western genre, with its sense of blazing, unforgiving sunlight and wide open, barely habitable plains, that it might seem foolhardy to attempt a stage version of it. Although Thea Sharrock’s production immediately immerses you in the world of High Noon, I spent the first twenty minutes or so wondering what was the point of turning this story into a play, despite the obvious stagecraft employed. Playwright Eric Roth and director Sharrock won me over though, turning this tale of lawlessness and self-sacrifice into a sonorous, atmospheric thriller that winningly conveys the claustrophobia as well as the community of a small township where life is equally informed by the ongoing threat of violence as fear of God Almighty.

  Tim Hatley’s slatted wooden set and period costumes and especially Neil Austin’s stunning, evocative lighting are instrumental in the production’s success. So is Chris Egan’s rather gorgeous music, heavily referencing the rock of Bruce Springsteen as well as the bluesy twang of classic Western soundtracks, of which there is so much that one almost wishes they’d gone the whole hog and given us High Noon – The Musical. Courtesy of choreographer Lizzi Gee, there’s line dancing, a bit of a hoedown and, perhaps unnecessarily, a smattering of interpretive dance, culminating in death by gunfire, which unfortunately drew a few inappropriate titters from the front stalls on the night I attended.

  There’s no unwelcome laughter at the magnificent central performances however, which consistently sell this sometimes overwrought script for rather more than one suspects it might really be worth. In an exquisitely textured and detailed turn, Billy Crudup is very different from Gary Cooper in the movie, but no less effective. He makes town marshall Will Kane, choosing between leaving with his strong-willed, pacifist new bride Amy (Denise Gough) or staying to face the newly released murderous criminal he helped put away who’s returning to wreak vengeance, into a fully rounded figure, heroic but plagued by doubt. 

  Gough delivers beautiful, powerful work as Amy, torn between her principles and her devotion to Kane, a modern woman in a world ill-equipped to cater to her. She sings frequently (and wonderfully) but it feels less like breaking into song, more an incantation, an expression of feeling when prose is inadequate. 

  Rosa Salazar impressively nails the stoic pragmatism and dormant passion of discontented saloon owner Helen Ramirez, and Billy Howle, all glower, swagger and nerves, is wonderful as Harvey Pell, Kane’s hot-headed youthful deputy. Some of the supporting performances, though nicely energised, tend to broad, generalised strokes  but, in fairness, the Western milieu is a tricky one for British actors to capture.

  Roth’s script and Sharrock’s fluid staging lack the propulsion of true stage drama – you’re frequently aware that this is based on a screenplay – but the tension ratchets up effectively as the clock suspended above the stage ticks inexorably towards the fateful midday when the train carrying Kane’s nemesis is due to arrive. High Noon finds modern day relevance in its depiction of the power of community and, especially in Amy’s case, the realisation that sometimes one’s most noble principles may have to be compromised for the greater good. A line of dialogue about the temerity of expecting to trust the people you voted for provokes ironic laughter.

  This is an attractive, genre-blurring piece of theatre. It’s not essential viewing perhaps but Crudup and Gough are such a dynamic central pairing that High Noon ultimately packs quite a punch. 

  January 27, 2026

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• WOMAN IN MIND – ⭐️⭐️ – Sheridan Smith leads this revival of Ayckbourn’s ponderous mental health tragicomedy

  

  WOMAN IN MIND 

  by Alan Ayckbourn

  directed by Michael Longhurst

  Duke of York’s Theatre, London – until 28th February 2026, then Sunderland Empire 4 to 7 March 2026,  Theatre Royal, Glasgow 10 to 14 March 2026

  running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval 

  https://womaninmindplay.com/

  Sheridan Smith’s acting has an emotional availability and sparky comic aplomb that resonate irresistibly with audiences, and her versatility is admirable. She seems oddly miscast though as Susan, a vicar’s wife desperately losing her grip on reality and her sanity in this revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1985 tragicomedy Woman In Mind. Smith delivers an endlessly watchable, occasionally moving performance, but her pert wit, doll-like features, tattoos and mop of blonde hair collectively render her too modern, too glossy and rather too young to fully convince as the mother of grown-up children (one real, one imaginary) and the spouse of Tim McMullan’s brilliantly realised, terminally pompous Gerald.

  Julia McKenzie won the Evening Standard Best Actress award for her turn in the original London production, and both she and her replacement Pauline Collins had a useful homely quality that cast a melancholy shadow over the scenes depicting Susan’s fantasised idyllic existence with her impossibly glamorous imaginary family. That same perceived ‘ordinariness’ rendered Susan’s descent into erotic and hysterical abandon all the more shocking. By contrast, Smith has a brassy glamour that makes her seem altogether more at home with Sule Rimi’s flamboyantly dressed alternative husband and Safia Oakley-Green’s doting but not-real daughter, at least until things turn nasty, than she does with their infinitely more pallid real life counterparts. 

  Smith does however have an extraordinary gift, used potently here, for allowing deep emotions to well up and sit momentarily on her face before being ruthlessly sucked back down into the depths of her being. When finally those feelings overwhelm her, as they do in the play’s unsettling final scene, and all reason is lost, it’s impossible not to be affected. 

  Ayckbourn’s script, which begins and ends with dialogue that is total gibberish reflecting Susan’s heightened mental distress, felt daring and profound when it premiered forty years ago, but attitudes towards women’s agency and possibilities and mental wellness, have thankfully come a long way since. It’s not that Woman In Mind is a misogynistic play, despite the depiction of Susan’s utterly weird grieving sister-in-law Muriel (an admirably committed Louise Brealey), Ayckbourn is too compassionate and even-handed for that. But it does feel dated now in a way that even the last West End revival, in 2008 with an incandescent Janie Dee, didn’t.

  Romesh Ranganathan makes an energetic, if slightly one-note, West End debut as a gormless GP smitten with Susan. Chris Jenks and Taylor Uttley are very good in roles (Susan’s imagined brother and estranged real life son) that are more improbable sketches than fully realised human beings, although in fairness the former is only a figment of our heroine’s imagination.

  Director Michael Longhurst scored a triumph a couple of years ago with another study of a woman in mental freefall – the Broadway musical Next To Normal at the Donmar then in the West End – but that material had an urgency and emotional clarity largely missing here. Set in a realistic garden against a backdrop of trees that warp and distort as a reflection of Susan’s tortured mind (design by Soutra Gilmour with video by Andrzej Goulding), Longhurst’s staging excels at building an atmosphere of comic chaos with an underlying sense of real threat and disquiet.

  Smith’s inherent likability does a lot of heavy lifting here but neither that nor Longhurst’s energised staging can disguise that Woman In Mind, for all its ambition and empathetic heart, is a bit of a slog.

  January 21, 2026

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• THE PRODUCERS – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – the Menier production of Mel Brooks’ outrageous tuner continues in the West End

  

  THE PRODUCERS 

  Book by Mel Brooks and Mark Heenehan

  Music and lyrics by Mel Brooks

  directed by Patrick Marber

  Garrick Theatre, London – until 19 September 2026

  running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval

  https://theproducersmusical.com

  “It was shocking, outrageous, insulting…and I loved every minute of it.” So reads Andy Nyman’s unscrupulous Broadway producer Max Bialystock from a review of his new show, the astonishingly bad taste “Springtime For Hitler”, which he needs to flop epically so that he can pocket the investors’s cash, having deliberately over budgeted to the tune of $2 million. That same statement pretty much sums up Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan’s The Producers, revived for the first time in late 2024 by the Menier Chocolate Factory and now happily ensconced in the West End. 

  You’ve got to hand it to him, Brooks is an equal opportunities offender. This rambunctious slice of Broadway, lovingly adapted from his 1967 movie, takes comic potshots at so many pockets of humanity (senior citizens, gays, Jews, theatre luvvies, Europeans, even Jesus this time around who turns up as a loincloth-wearing cocktail server in an exceptionally camp household) that it’s hard to know what to be affronted by first. Or maybe just buckle up and enjoy the ride of this high octane tuner that is as well-crafted as it’s crazy, and was hailed at its 2001 New York premiere as a glorious example of old school musical comedy in the grand manner. 

  Susan Stroman’s original staging of this tale of an attempt to create a bona fide Broadway disaster, was a glossy, huge affair; Patrick Marber, directing his first musical, goes for a much more downbeat aesthetic, leaning heavily into the innate Jewishness of the material. When Paul Farnsworth’s costumes turn on the dazzle dazzle, such as for the tap-dancing chorines or the statuesque German clichés served up as frothy flights of fantasy in the show-within-a-show section (“don’t be stupid, be a smarty! Come and join the Nazi Party!”) complete with giant pretzels, sausages and steins of beer, they’re a marvel to behold, but overall the emphasis is more on grit than glamour. 

  Scott Pask’s unit set of a massive metal grid reminiscent of those lightbulb-filled advertising hoardings that sit atop the theatres of Manhattan’s west 44th street underneath a golden Broadway marquee, is mainly transformed by a few simple additions. If the show is sometimes a little underwhelming visually now it’s on a proscenium stage as opposed to the Menier’s studio space, the fun still flows freely, and Marber’s production whips along at a cracking pace. Furthermore, Lorin Latarro, currently represented recently on Broadway by the financially successful Chess revival, has created dynamic choreography, energised but mindful of tradition, that more than matches Stroman’s original work.

  The treatment of the Nazis throughout is (rightly) merciless: Hitler is carted on as a golden, high camp amalgam of himself, Caligula and sundry Broadway divas (“I’m the German Ethel Merman don’t you know”); we get dancers dressed as U-boats, tap dancing stormtroopers…it’s truly ridiculous. With the global emboldening of neo-Nazis and their extreme views, the show now exists in a very different world from the one that the original production opened in, and this gives Marber’s staging a real edge, even as it admirably demonstrates Brooks’s theory that the best way of disempowering something is by laughing at it. And laugh we surely do, even while occasionally cringing.

  Brooks’s tunes sound like something from the Golden Age of Broadway, and Larry Blank and Mark Cumberland’s orchestrations package them with punchy energy but finesse. The quicksilver lyrics, ranging from witty to crude, have a rare brilliance and Paul Groothuis’ sound design ensures we can actually hear them. 

  This is a show that, for all its snark, is in love with the theatre, and the vivid gallery of characters Brooks created in egotistical director Roger De Bris (“that whole second act has to be rewritten. They’re losing the war? Excuse me? It’s too downbeat!“), his “common law assistant” Carmen Ghia, and their household of camp creatives are recognisable tropes. Also, for all his kvetching and bawling, Nyman’s Bialystock feels like a legit theatrical type who takes a bizarre pride in his ability to con little old ladies out of their money to put on his appalling productions.

  Already terrific when the show opened fifteen months ago, Nyman’s Max has evolved into a transfixing masterclass in comedy playing. More low key than Nathan Lane and his successors in the original, he is uproariously funny but never lets us doubt that there is so much at stake for this sweaty chancer. There’s a palpable desperation and desolation, his comedy rooted in truth rather than the vaudevillian ‘business’ of his predecessors. He deservedly stops the show with ‘Betrayed’, the tour de force eleven o’clock number where the jailed shyster recaps the entire show in three minutes flat.

  As the other titular producer, nebbish Leo Bloom, the put-upon accountant seduced by the bright lights of showbiz, Marc Antolin has dialled up the face-pulling and physical paroxysms several notches but still turns in a gorgeous study of somebody in a permanent state of anxiety, his body bent out of shape, his eyes wide and swivelling, his limbs somehow seeming too long for his torso. He’s totally endearing and even dances in character: his awkwardness giving way to something fleet-footed and entrancing when he gets together with his beloved Ulla. 

  The Ulla character, the Swedish blonde bombshell secretary-cum-starlet employed by Bialystock mainly because he fancies her, was very much a product of the time in the movie (original actress Lee Meredith was required to do little more than go-go dance in a bikini) but thankfully book writers Brooks and Thomas Meehan gave her more agency and material in the musical. Marber and his leading lady Joanna Woodward go even further, making her more wise to Max’s lechery and amused by the idiocy of the men she’s dealing with. It’s a subtle change, but it’s welcome, and she is clearly smitten with Antolin’s charming goofball from the get-go. Woodward brings an irresistible joie de vivre, a preposterous accent and a sensational singing voice to the role, as well as a knowingness that suggests that this stunning young woman is way smarter than Leo or Max realise. She’s fabulous. 

  Another interpretation that continues to improve on the original is Harry Morrison’s Franz Liebkind, the lederhosen wearing, tin helmeted Nazi sympathiser (and Springtime For Hitler author) hiding out in Greenwich Village with his pigeons and a massive chip on his Teutonic shoulder (“the führer was BUTCH!”). Morrison plays him like a psychotic manchild who turns on a dime from guileless grinning idiot to gun-waving maniac, with a booming operatic voice and an imposing presence. As before, the performance is alive to the lunacy of its surroundings but infused with an unsettling sincerity and real sense of danger that makes him all the more hysterical. Sadly, that’s not true of Trevor Ashley’s over-the-top yet oddly lazy turn as flamboyant director Roger De Bris, who’s now so divorced from reality that he’s more exhausting than hilarious.

  Minor quibbles aside though, this remains a classily outrageous show, tightly drilled and constructed. A thumping good night out, guaranteed to gently offend and delight practically everybody.

  January 14, 2026

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• INTO THE WOODS – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – the magic, mayhem and unease of the Sondheim-Lapine masterpiece are served up with real style in this timely revival

  

  INTO THE WOODS 

  Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim 

  Book by James Lapine

  directed by Jordan Fein

  Bridge Theatre, London – until 30 May 2026

  running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval

  https://www.bridgetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/into-the-woods/

  The impact of great art can vary considerably at different moments in history. Despite the medieval picture book aesthetic of the Bridge Theatre’s splendid new Into The Woods, the 1987 Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine Broadway tuner has seldom felt more timely. That’s especially true of the post-Happily Ever After second act where the safety and wellbeing of the many are threatened by the ego and lust for vengeance of the few. Feel familiar? Jordan Fein’s dark, handsome production is no didactic slog though; on the contrary, it’s an almost constant pleasure, but it’s too raw and truthful to function as mere escapism, and the piece itself is a meditation on culpability, compromise and yearning for a happier past, that remains startlingly relevant.

  As with his devastatingly good Regents Park Fiddler on the Roof, which just completed a successful national tour, Fein looks at a canonic musical with fresh eyes and produces a version that satisfies traditionalists but has a vitality and imagination that feel original. Sondheim and Lapine’s creation sends beloved fairytale characters (Cinderella, Little Red Ridinghood, Jack…) into Jungian woods to sort out their familiar stories and find their expected ‘happy endings’. That’s act one, then act two is what happens next, and the musical enters territory not just uncomfortable but downright apocalyptic. Into The Woods disturbs as much as it delights and this version embraces its duality with real aplomb and flair.

  Fein and designer Tom Scutt start out by setting the storied dramatis personae, costumed like peasants in a Bruegel painting rather than the Disney-esque fairytale figures of Lapine’s own original production, in a jet black, liminal space. Dominated by a rising platform that also serves as a kitchen table and a hideyhole for Jack and his adored cow Milky White, it’s a place where witches and beanstalks can appear unexpectedly out of the gloom, and which can magically dissolve into lush foliage. Scutt’s woods, lit with breathtaking beauty by Aideen Malone, are a thing of wonder in the first half but come to resemble a devastated graveyard in the second, as the body count builds up, trees are decapitated, and a vengeful giant runs amok. The colour and warmth drains from the lighting and it feels as though we are looking at a war zone.

  Also outstanding is Adam Fisher’s sound design which is loud enough to rouse and excite but nuanced to ensure that every beat and syllable of Sondheim’s deft, complex lyrics register, and that Jonathan Tunick’s peerless original orchestrations comes across with irresistible sparkle. When the jump-scares happen (no spoilers but anybody familiar with the show will know what I’m talking about), the volume level increases so dramatically and unexpectedly that a sense of genuine fear and panic ensues. Musical director Mark Aspinall’s band of a dozen, placed on either side of the stage, is wonderful, precise and crisp.

  There’s a certain received wisdom with Sondheim that it’s hard to cast performers who can act the roles with the requisite depth as well as sing the (frequently technically complex and rangy) scores to an ideal level, and either dramatic finesse or musicality gets compromised. The late, great Sheridan Morley, reviewing the original London Company, noted that the cast “owe their allegiance to the stage itself rather than the orchestra pit underneath it”. Casting director Stuart Burt has done a fine job with this Into The Woods though and we get performances that are, mostly, as delightful to the ear as they are searing to the heart and pressing to the funny bone. They also throw up some interesting new insights on characters regular Sondheim viewers will have seen multiple times.

  Jamie Parker and Katie Brayben’s Estuary-accented Baker and wife are gloriously relatable: practical people doing their best under less-than-ideal circumstances. Parker gives his Baker more pent-up anger than in other iterations I’ve seen but it makes absolute sense; Brayben’s pragmatic, hearty, jolly-but-tough Baker’s Wife is the perfect yang to his ying. I could have done without Brayben’s poppy vocal stylings at certain points, embellishments that this quicksilver-and-steel score really doesn’t need. She has a terrific voice, but, at least here, a tendency to push that doesn’t add anything. That’s also true, but to a slightly lesser extent, of Chumisa Dornford-May’s tomboyish, altogether entrancing Cinderella. 

  Kate Fleetwood’s Witch, more humanly eccentric and sad than grotesque prior to her transformation, is a superb creation, finding the truth as well as the camp. It’s a shame that her reversal to the beauty she had prior to being cursed, isn’t a little more flamboyant. With her long black hair and flowing white robe, she looks more like the young woman who used to crawl out of TVs in the Ring horror film franchise than the fantastical glamourpusses Bernadette Peters and Julia McKenzie became in the original New York and London versions respectively. It’s still a fabulous performance though.

  Gracie McGonigal’s brutal, gore-spattered Little Red is something of a revelation. Lapine has written her as a diminutive survivor but here she’s a real bruiser in a riding hood, so ballsy and forthright that when she cracks open to reveal the frightened child within during the ‘No One Is Alone’ section, it’s shockingly moving. Jo Foster’s Jack, toting Milky White around like a moth eaten ventriloquist puppet, is very effective, and Julie Jupp is a beguiling mix of sympathetic and unhinged as Jack’s exasperated mother. Oliver Savile and Rhys Whitfield as the preening, priapic but endlessly precious Princes are spot on, their competitiveness borne of ennui rather than machismo, and Michael Gould’s lugubrious narrator also makes a potent impression. I also loved Jennifer Hepburn’s gorgeous, self-obsessed Stepmother (to Cinderella): all done up like everyone’s idea of a medieval noblewoman but with the sensibility of one of TV’s Real Housewives. 

  There’s a seething energy and saturnine magic to this staging that excites and disquiets. It may be because of the world we’re living in right now, but the sense of order being undone and division equalling disaster is more keenly felt than in any Into The Woods I’ve seen since Richard Jones’ original West End production, set in a gradually disintegrating Freudian nursery, and staged at a time (1990) when world politics seemed similarly to be careening towards doomsday. This is bold, thought-provoking entertainment, richly enjoyable even as the smile freezes on your face. Irresistible and essential.

  January 13, 2026

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• INDIAN INK – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – sensuality, intellect and nostalgia collide to enchanting effect in this rare Stoppard revival

  

  INDIAN INK

  by Tom Stoppard

  directed by Jonathan Kent

  Hampstead Theatre, London – until 31 January 2026

  running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval 

  https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2025/indian-ink/

  Arriving less than a month after his death, this rare revival of Tom Stoppard’s 1995 drama Indian Ink could hardly have been timed more appropriately or poignantly. Stoppard is generally regarded as one of the most intellectual and literate of modern playwrights, but pieces like this, along with The Real Thing, Arcadia (often perceived as his masterpiece and receiving a new production at the Old Vic in early 2026) and his final, emotionally charged Leopoldstadt, make a great case for the beating heart beneath the crackerjack brilliance and verbosity.

  Indian Ink was originally a radio play entitled In The Native State, and the multiple changes of location and time period continue to strongly suggest that. Jonathan Kent’s visually arresting production is great at pointing Stoppard’s pithy dialogue, which is sharp and witty then suddenly surprisingly heartfelt, and just occasionally winningly crude. The bluey-black hues of the visual aesthetic are attractive and appropriate: Leslie Travers’ rising and falling flower-bedecked sets and Peter Mumford’s lighting evoke both ink and the skin colour depicted by traditional Indian painters when portraying the supreme Hindu deity Krishna, whose loric presence runs throughout the text.

  This version also excels at exploring the complexities of the central characters: plucky, forward-thinking 1930s poet Flora Crewe (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis) travelling through late Colonial India for her failing health and, in the 1980s, her younger sister Eleanor (Felicity Kendal, who originated Flora in 1995), now in her dotage and reflecting back on her sister’s adventurous life. Then there’s Nirad Das (Gavi Singh Chera), the sensitive Indian artist painting Flora and whose attitude to her is complicated and ambiguous, and, fifty years later, his son Anish (Aaron Gill), also an artist, helping Eleanor to piece together their joint family histories.

  The production is less successful when dealing with the duality of time frames, too often submerging half of the stage in twilight while the action of the moment unfolds on the other side of the playing area, which gets a little samey. Peter Wood’s original West End staging had a gorgeous, impressionistic sweep but Kent’s production is more prosaic, and inadvertently points up how Stoppard’s text, while mostly engrossing, tends to meander. A strong case is made for cutting some of the extraneous characters who extend the show’s playing time while adding little to the overall story.

  There’s so much here to savour though. Ashbourne Serkis, reminiscent of a young Helen McCrory, is unshowy yet entirely riveting as Flora, capturing unerringly her kindness, intelligence and unconventional spirit. She’s sensual, vulnerable yet powerful, the kind of young woman you’d immediately want as a friend but with whom you wouldn’t want to mess.

  Kendal is a wonder as Eleanor, spiky, charming, vain but with a rare emotional availability that genuinely touches. She’s a fascinating mix of eccentricity and laser sharp focus, dropping names like Modigliani from her sibling’s storied past to the avid excitement of Donald Sage Mackay’s loquacious American biographer. She is also entirely plausible as the surviving younger sister of the marvellous, long deceased Flora. Margaret Tyzack was also terrific in this role back in the first production but didn’t have the same sense of connection to Kendal’s original Flora as we get here. Kendal and Stoppard have long been a winning theatrical combination, and it is tremendously moving to be reminded of that with this Indian Ink.

  Singh Chera beautifully delineates Das senior’s quicksilver mood changes, and Gill delivers convincing, intelligent work as his more grounded son. Tom Durant Pritchard steers a winning path between ex-pat David’s stiff-upper-lip solicitude and romantic fixation with Flora. Irvine Iqbal has a delicious cameo as a wealthy, cosmopolitan Rajah, smitten with our heroine but with a troubling hint of coercive control.

  Stoppard in the last decade of the twentieth century had a penchant for juxtaposing different timelines as he considered romantic loss and the nature of nostalgia, as evidenced in Arcadia and The Invention Of Love. Indian Ink is part of the same thematic pattern, but is also about the legacy of art and the contrast in approach between Western and Indian artists. It’s also an exploration of colonialism, both sociopolitical and artistic: “you’re trying to paint me from my point of view instead of yours” observes Flora to Nirad, frustrated at his subsuming of his own culture to an all-pervasive European one. 

  The uneasy post-British Raj relationship between the United Kingdom and the Indian subcontinent makes for interesting subject matter: “we made you a proper country, and when we left you fell straight to pieces like Humpty Dumpty!” cries Eleanor, from a decidedly partisan viewpoint. If it isn’t presented here in a particularly dramatic way (Stoppard himself observed that Indian Ink is a play devoid of villains), it’s still absorbing enough to be worth our time, especially with such fine writing and the performances at the heart of Kent’s handsome staging. 

  This isn’t perhaps top-tier Stoppard, but even at less than his best, the late, great playwright is still more stimulating and impressive than many other dramatists. Although a tad overlong, and at times unfocused, Indian Ink remains a fragrant, thought-provoking pleasure, skilfully balancing poignancy and intellectual buoyancy. With its scenic challenges and large cast, it doesn’t get done often, so even if this Hampstead production wasn’t as good as it unquestionably is, it would still be worth seeing. Ruby Ashbourne Serkis is a star, and another opportunity to see Felicity Kendal drive Stoppard’s dialogue with such wit and elegant potency, makes it pretty much unmissable.

  December 20, 2025

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• WHEN WE ARE MARRIED – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – a glorious festive gift from the Donmar

  

  WHEN WE ARE MARRIED 

  by J B Priestley 

  directed by Tim Sheader

  Donmar Warehouse, London – until 7 February 2026

  running time: 2 hours including interval 

  https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/whats-on/when-we-are-married-rg17

  Although the only reference to Christmas is as an oft-used expletive in lieu of something much more blasphemous, there is still something cosily festive about J B Priestley’s When We Are Married, written in 1934 but set three decades earlier, especially as presented in this glowing Donmar revival. Under director Tim Sheader, a vintage play comes up fresh, funny and engaging, punctuated by blasts of contemporary pop, at odds with the period frocks and suits but wittily commentating on the action.

  A trio of wealthy Northern couples, the dignitaries and do-gooders of their Yorkshire town, get together to celebrate their joint twenty fifth wedding anniversary, only to discover that the clergyman who married them wasn’t fully qualified so they’ve effectively been living ‘in sin’ for quarter of a century. It’s a dated premise but the vitality of the performances and Sheader’s sparky approach ensure that this Priestley seldom creaks.

  Instead of treating the play like a museum piece, Sheader plays fast and loose with it, while keeping in tune with the essence of what Priestley wrote. A beloved character (the wry maid Ruby Birthday) is cut, anachronistic pop divides scenes (watching the three crestfallen wives enter to Beyoncé’s ‘All The Single Ladies’ is as hilarious as almost anything in the script) and each act begins with a Music Hall favourite from the period that the play is set in. 

  Visually, it’s in period but heightened and stylised, from the crazed mustard yellows and deep purple of Peter McKintosh’s drawing room set, dominated by a cartoonishly huge aspidistra, to Anna Fleischle’s elaborate costumes which are on the garish side of pretty. If it’s not as thorough refresh of an antiquated play as Nancy Carroll’s version of the Pinero Cabinet Minister at the Menier last year, one suspects that the Priestley doesn’t need as much help. This is a definite treat, and one of those clever revivals that satisfies traditionalists as well as audience members wanting something a bit more daring.

  The production’s most effervescent success is in the casting. Each couple (Siobhan Finneran and John Hodgkinson as the grander Helliwells, Samantha Spiro and Jim Howick as the unequal Soppitts – she’s a spitfire, he’s a sweetie, and Sophie Thompson and Marc Wootton as the wildly mismatched Parkers) is wonderfully discrete from the others, and the longstanding friendships ring entirely true. The women are particularly strong: Spiro is a hilarious, fiery ball of indignation as snobbish Clara, and few actresses do baleful disapproval with a naughty edge as irresistibly as Thompson. Finneran’s performance just makes you wish she did more stage work; her descent from stentorian confidence to insecure disillusionment is brilliantly managed: when she tremulously asks Hodgkinson’s gimlet-eyed Alderman if he still loves her, it knocks at the heart a little. 

  Ron Cook delivers some of the greatest ‘drunk acting’ I’ve ever seen as the permanently soused photographer arrived to capture the celebrations. Tori Allen- Martin is just gorgeous as a vivacious gold-digger and Janice Connolly’s righteous livewire of a domestic servant, thrilled at having one over on her pompous employers,  is a glorious creation. Leo Wringer as a Caribbean accented priest, and Rowan Robinson and Reuben Joseph as a pair of ardent but illicit lovers, all produce bright, witty work. It’s a smashing company overall and one suspects they’ll gel even more as the run progresses. 

  This is a thoroughly lovely romp, sumptuously produced and acted. The Donmar has given theatregoers a life-enhancing Christmas gift.

  December 19, 2025

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• OH, MARY! – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – oh, Mason! what a star you are

  

  OH, MARY!

  by Cole Escola 

  directed by Sam Pinkleton

  Trafalgar Theatre, London  – until 25 April 2026

  running time: 80 minutes no interval 

  https://ohmaryplay.co.uk/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22983789061&gbraid=0AAAABBK72OfzT3Uw1NDWmwxJGvPKpzmIH

  When a multidisciplinary artist writes a piece of work for themselves to perform, there is often a sense that watching anybody else play it is somehow settling for second best. That appears not to be the case with Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! though. The cultish New York smash about Abraham Lincoln’s troubled wife has seen a succession of big names succeed Escola as the titular Mary in the perpetually sold out Broadway production, including Jinkx Monsoon and Titus Burgess. The role’s present occupant over there, Jane Krakowski, delivers a weirdly endearing First Lady not that far removed from her Jenna Mulroney role in TV’s 30 Rock. 

  London’s Mary Todd Lincoln is Mason Alexander Park, one of the current Cabaret’s most acclaimed Emcees and whose outlandish Ariel stole the Jamie Lloyd Tempest right out from under Sigourney Weaver’s nose. Park is firing on all cylinders here, and is the principal, but not the only, reason why Sam Pinkleton’s anarchic, confident production is an unmitigated West End triumph, and every bit the equal of the New York version.

  Oh, Mary! remains utterly, joyfully ridiculous as it gleefully takes a queer hatchet to conventional straight sensibilities and themes, and casually rewrites American history. The Civil War is frequently referenced but pales into insignificance compared to the Uncivil War being waged between the Lincolns. Giles Terera invests upright, repressed gay Abraham with a furtive intensity and sad-eyed gravitas, forever leering at the male domestic staff when he thinks nobody’s looking and desperate to keep his wife in check. Mary is an easily triggered, vicious alcoholic with a victim complex and  a longing to return to the cabaret stage which her marriage forced her to abandon, that’s outdone only by her loathing for her husband and determination to get herself around the nearest bottle. This Mary is more than quite contrary, she’s absolutely unhinged but, as embodied by a mercurial, riveting Park, a multi-layered figure, as sympathetic as she’s screamingly funny. 

  Clad in the funereal hoop dress and jet black ringleted wig (created by Holly Pierson and Leah J Loukas respectively) that have already become icons in queer theatre, Park’s Mrs Lincoln has a wildfire energy supercharged by malice and fury. There’s also a pleading wistfulness and palpable desolation that throws the comic brilliance into stunning relief: when she says she wishes she was dead we actually believe her, and her speech about her impossibly handsome acting coach (Dino Fetscher, irresistible) being a force of unattainable positivity is genuinely moving. Escola crafted Mary in their own image and as an extension of Cole’s persona, and delivered an unforgettable turn. Park is perhaps more nuanced; for all the absurdity and scenery-chewing wildness, this is an acting performance with truth and some danger at its core and elevates what can sometimes come across as a superior Saturday Night Live sketch on steroids into a full-blooded play. Two parts depressed princess to one part thug, they are utterly sensational: Park is incontrovertibly confirmed as an authentic theatre star, and a very fine actor. 

  That Terera’s grandstanding, lecherous Lincoln and Fetscher as the wired hottie who ends up playing a bigger part in the unfolding history than one might imagine, more than hold their own against such a whirlwind is remarkable. I also loved Kate O’Donnell’s as a perky chaperone with an ice cream based shame that’s never to be spoken of (which means basically that Mary can barely shut up about it) and, later, a whiskery benign barkeep. Oliver Stockley is the fifth member of this merry team as the assistant that President Lincoln can’t seem to get enough of.

  Pinkleton’s staging never misses a comic beat and, if its brief running time of eighty minutes leaves you wanting more, you’re unlikely to feel shortchanged, when you account for your sides and face aching from laughing. All in all, it’s a potty-mouthed, acid-and-honey mash-up of vaudeville, high camp, and twisted history lesson. The glitzy final section, where the set by dots and Cha See’s lighting design undergo a total transformation to match Mary’s mood, needs to be seen to be believed and if you’re not in love with Mason Alexander Park by that point then you probably need a hospital bed and an oxygen mask. An absolute blast.

  December 19, 2025

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• PARANORMAL ACTIVITY – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – stage distillation of the film franchise is a horribly good time

  

  PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 

  by Levi Holloway

  based on the films written and directed by Oren Peli

  directed by Felix Barrett

  Ambassadors Theatre, London – until 28 March 2026

  running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval 

  https://paranormalonstage.com/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23197313702&gbraid=0AAAABBk00Ej02iVJ-L_2YzRothXQiLRSD

  Abject terror isn’t the easiest thing to convey in the theatre. There’s something about the artificiality of the medium that tends to keep audiences at arms length, as opposed to the screen where close-ups and jump cuts can draw viewers into the heart of an unfolding nightmare. First seen in Leeds last year and now on a major USA tour, Paranormal Activity, this creepy-as-hell stage cousin to the seven popular horror movies, is the genuine article though. Forget 2:22 A Ghost Story, and even, to a lesser extent, The Woman in Black, this really is frightening.

  Punchdrunk’s Felix Barrett, directing Levi Holloway’s terse, tense script, transcends traditional play-making to create a bone-chilling piece of ‘total theatre’ where the sections sat in total darkness listening to Gareth Fry’s deeply unsettling sound scape are just as important as the onstage scenes. There are similarities to Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s frequently revived Ghost Stories in that it’s the build-up of tension to all hell breaking loose that really gets the audience on edge, but whereas in that earlier show the pay-off was sometimes a let down, here the action just gets nastier and more imaginative. Yes, it’s essentially preposterous but good luck with telling yourself that when you’re sitting there in the gloom with your sphincter clenched and listening to the rest of the audience cry out in panic and fear.

  The basics of the plot will be familiar to fans of the films. Young American couple James (Patrick Heusinger) and Lou (Melissa James) have relocated from Chicago to London partly because of his career but also because she was having issues back home that were attributed to her mental health, although any horror aficionado will know full well that there’s gonna be more to it than that. They’re living in a house (grungy, impressive split level set by Fly Davis) that on first impression appears charmingly ramshackle but which becomes less and less cosy and appealing with every (frequent) blackout.

  Heusinger’s disintegration from masculine self assurance to terrified self-abasement is superbly managed. The writing for Lou isn’t as nuanced but James has genuine presence and an ambiguous, aching intensity that is tremendously effective. Although the characters are essentially created to further the plot, Jackie Morrison as a benignly efficient psychic and Pippa Winslow as James’ God-fearing mom make potent contributions. 

  Technically, the show is, to put it inelegantly, stonkingly good. Chris Fisher’s illusions and Luke Halls’ video designs make you doubt the evidence of your own eyes, and Anna Watson’s lighting transforms and tantalises. If Holloway’s script is more efficient than inspired as writing and drags a bit in act one, it does an excellent job of planting the seeds of demonic mayhem and using repeated motifs that seem innocuous at first but end up loaded with chilling significance. It’s not always clear what should be funny and what is intended to be deadly serious, but that duality is part of the fun in a show where an overstimulated audience occasionally make more noise than anybody on stage.

  Overall, this is a huge success in terms of achieving exactly what it sets out to do, and is likely to be a major West End hit. I can’t remember the last time a piece of theatre made all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up through sheer fear, but this one did. Twisted good fun.

  December 16, 2025

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• DRACAPELLA – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – this crazed Dracula musical comedy is literally a scream, and the cast is spectacular

  

  DRACAPELLA

  written by Jez Bond and Dan Patterson

  directed by Jez Bond

  Park Theatre, London – until 17 January 2026

  running time: 2 hours 10 minutes including interval 

  https://parktheatre.co.uk/events/dracapella/

  World class clowning, exhilarating beatboxing, killer vocals, cheesy but beloved rock and pop standards, groan worthy jokes….and vampirism: welcome to Dracapella, probably one of the most unusual festive theatrical offerings in the capital this Christmas, and certainly one of the most fun. Imagine, if you dare, a benignly deranged mash-up of nutty comedy that revels in its own preposterousness (think Mischief on stage, the Naked Gun and Airplane movie franchises on screen, with a dash of improvisation à la TV’s Whose Line Is It Anyway thrown in), swoonworthy vocals and gothic horror, and you’ll have some idea of what’s sending Park Theatre audiences home on a mirth-induced high, their faces aching from laughter. 

  If the slapstick comedy and heinous puns of Jez Bond and Dan Patterson’s script, which still manages to do a decent job of retelling the Dracula legend, are the calling card of Bond’s whip-smart production, the singing is the secret weapon. Ian Oakley’s vocal arrangements are exquisite and matched by septet of world class vocal talents including Olivier award winners Stephen Ashfield and Lorna Want, and stage and screen star Keala Settle. There’s no band, just ABH Beatbox (full name: Alexander Bulgarian Hackett), a one man treasure trove of beats, foley effects and sheer charm, but the sound threatens to blow the roof off the theatre. Standards like Queen’s ‘Find Me Somebody To Love’ and Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Holding Out For A Hero’ come over with breathtaking vitality and assurance.

  The whole thing is infused with a sort of lunatic magic that keeps the audience on side, even when you can see the jokes coming from a mile off, and it surely helps every member of the supremely talented cast seems to be on the exact same page. Ashfield displays a fabulous gift for physical comedy as a squeamish, neurotic Jonathan Harker, prone to frequent debilitating injuries, alongside a wonderfully rangy, versatile voice. Opposite him, Lorna Want is a sparkling delight as a knowing heroine Mina, whose resemblance to Dracula’s deceased lover drives the plot, tinged with a smattering of modern day feminist awareness.

  Ako Mitchell’s all-American Dracula strikes exactly the right balance between sinister and suave, and is particularly hilarious when his dignity is abandoned. Settle has a stupendous voice but also an unexpected skill at deadpan comedy as Mina’s best friend, the surprisingly voracious Lucy. Philip Pope excels in a variety of roles, and Monique Ashe-Palmer and Ciarán Dowd are gloriously gross as Dracula’s tormented domestic servants doomed to mutual celibacy until their master is set free. Dowd all but walks off with the second half as a vowel-mangling, Dutch accented Van Helsing, whose ineptitude is matched only by his penchant for coming out with impenetrable aphorisms and adages that apparently lose everything in translation to English. He’s terrific, but then, they all are.

  This is exhilarating, laugh-out-loud stuff, performed and presented with imagination and technical brilliance. It is a little too long, and the interval saps some of the energy briefly, but these are minor quibbles. The low comedy works because it’s put over with so much skill and if you don’t find one moment funny, there’ll be another one along in a moment which will slay you, and there’s always the next thrilling musical interlude to look forward to. Everything gets hurled at the wall and the vast majority of it actually sticks, silliness is raised to an art form. Literally bloody marvellous.  

  December 14, 2025

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• ALL MY SONS – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Ivo van Hove’s searing production of Arthur Miller’s great American tragedy is a must-see

  

  ALL MY SONS

  by Arthur Miller 

  directed by Ivo van Hove

  Wyndhams Theatre, London – until 7 March 2026

  running time: 2 hours 15 minutes, no interval 

  https://allmysonsplay.com

  So, it turns out lightning really can strike twice. I’m not just talking about the meteorological kind, symbolically hitting then tearing down the tree in the Keller family’s yard before the main action of Arthur Miller’s 1947 masterpiece (a term that gets bandied about too freely, but truly applies to All My Sons). I’m also referring to the fact that Belgian auteur director Ivo van Hove, who exploded onto the British stage in 2014 with a shattering, stark, mould-breaking A View From The Bridge, another Miller study of flawed protagonist railing at fate as the American Dream collapses in on him, has done it again. This All My Sons has its own flavour, but the sense of a classic being looked at through entirely fresh eyes, fully in tune with every nuance and beat of it but untrammelled by tradition and rich in imagination, is similarly palpable.

  That earlier production transferred to Broadway, and it’s inconceivable that this coruscating revival won’t follow its sibling across the Atlantic, especially given the presence of Bryan Cranston, one of the greatest American actors of his generation. He’s delivering here the kind of work that should be required viewing for anyone studying the craft of acting but there’s not a weak link in this cast. Miller’s creation is brought roaring back to spellbinding, searing life. 

  With its themes of hubris, disgrace and the sins of the fathers being visited on their offspring, All My Sons is essentially Greek classical tragedy reimagined in mid twentieth century American terms. van Hove and his long-time design collaborator Jan Versweyveld seem to embrace that with a timeless aesthetic (a giant tree in front of a monumental back wall with one door and a circular aperture like a portal through which characters watch or appear like so many deux ex machina) that could equally serve a Medea or an Electra. 

  An D’Huys’ costumes are contemporary but not distractingly so. Versweyveld’s lighting sets out with a golden naturalistic glow as Cranston’s Joe Keller and Zach Wyatt’s affable neighbour Frank assess the damage to the fallen tree the morning after the storm, then stark and unforgiving at moments of high drama, before giving way to roiling greens, pinks and unsettling darkness as the play grinds inexorably toward its devastating climax. Music and sound (superb work by Tom Gibbons) thrums over, under and through the dialogue, at times soothing, at others like a dull ache and occasionally as a jarring shock. It sets mood and amplifies tension but, crucially, never undermines the urgency and muscularity of Miller’s text or the subtle brilliance of the performances. There’s real magic in the silences, when you can feel the audience breathe as one, totally wrapped up in the play: it also makes you realise how seldom that happens in the theatre these days.

  If you’re unfamiliar with All My Sons, it plays out like a thriller, but if you’ve previously seen or read it, this remarkable rendering has moments bordering on the revelatory. As patriarch Joe, Cranston’s descent from measured bonhomie to snivelling wreck is charted with such precision and psychological truth that it barely feels like acting. You watch a man crumble before your very eyes: it’s painful to witness but the sheer bloody artistry is exhilarating. 

  Paapa Essiedu is every bit his equal as the son whose idealism is ripped out of him as his father’s wartime misdemeanours are uncovered, in many ways his trajectory more tragic than Keller Sr.’s as he has little idea of what’s coming to him. Essiedu invests Chris with an appealing awkwardness suggestive of a sensitivity that I’ve never seen in the character before, and when his world is shattered, his rawness takes the breath away. Observe how he stares, stricken, at his father as though he has never even seen him before. 

  Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Kate Keller, the mother holding it all together in a state of ongoing denial, is initially less fragile than some of her predecessors (Julie Walters’ stunning, award-winning portrayal in Howard Davies’ 2000 version at the National seemed permanently on the verge of a breakdown) but is tremendously effective. She’s savage in her aggression towards Ann (a sublime Hayley Squires, projecting a beacon of kindness and dogged determination), the daughter of Joe’s discredited business partner and girlfriend of the son Larry lost in the war, her smile stopping short of her eyes, and the look of desolation on her face as she realises what’s unfolding is utterly haunting. When she warns Joe to be smart or attempts to reassure him that he won’t be punished if he confesses to past misdemeanours, one gets the distinct impression that she doesn’t believe the words coming out of her own mouth. I’ve seen more moving Kate’s than Jean-Baptiste but few as powerful.

  It’s indicative of the sheer quality of the production that every supporting performance is well nigh perfect. Tom Glynn-Carney delivers a finely tuned account of neurosis mixed with fury as Ann’s brother George, arriving from the back of the theatre like a heat-seeking missile in a hoodie, hellbent on destroying the Kellers but disarmed by his lingering affection for Kate. His brief reunion with Aliyah Odoffin’s lovely, slightly eccentric neighbour Lydia, with whom he has romantic history but who is now married to eternally nice guy Frank (a spot-on Wyatt) with young children, is heartbreaking. Odoffin has little stage time but creates a remarkably detailed picture of a sunny young woman more complicated than she initially looks. Cath Whitefield is impressive and similarly multi-layered as pragmatic, increasingly embittered nurse Sue, frustrated that Chris’ unattainable, innate goodness is having a deleterious effect on her doctor husband (Richard Hansell, also excellent). 

  Intense then cathartic, and shot through with unexpected but welcome laughs, All My Sons retains its ability to rouse and to provoke thought; it raises uncomfortable questions about culpability and how far to go for people one loves. Under Ivo van Hove’s guidance, it grips like a vice then explodes like a thunderclap. There’s little else on the London stage right now that achieves this level of tension or that demonstrates so potently the magic of ensemble acting. This is an All My Sons that looks nothing like its predecessors but is one for the ages.

  December 5, 2025

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