★★★★★ FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, REGENT'S PARK OPEN AIR THEATRE As entertaining and poignant as ever, 60 years on Unique venue adds a new dimension to canonical mu…
Michael Bennett's 1975 hit has plenty of pizzazz but not enough emotional oomph A Chorus Line reigned supreme on Broadway from 1975 to 1990, a bold, bare-bones piece that for once put musica…
Two strong Fringe shows merge truth with fiction - to very different ends The Mosinee Project, Underbelly Cowgate ★★★★ In May 1950, a small US town awoke to hamme…
★★ FRANKIE GOES TO BOLLYWOOD, SOUTHBANK CENTRE Small town girl makes good in Bollywood, then takes on the patriarchy Bhangra-inspired musical let down by storyline and singing…
From post-breakup blues to sweet-shop conflagrations in three early Fringe shows Heartbreak Hotel, Summerhall ★★★★Â
Timely arrival for Lucas Hnath's play about the cost of winning Before Lucas Hnath wrote Red Speedo, he had heard a 2004 speech at a hearing investigating baseball doping that declared the p…
Nassim Soleimanpour's latest 'cold read' work is a unique experience The Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour is many things, some seemingly contradictory: a) a clever, poetic playwright w…
Katori Hall is back in her native Memphis with an exuberant ensemble piece There's an exuberant comedy from the start in Katori Hall's The Hot Wing King, which comes to London after an initi…
An imperfect show arrives boasting a quasi-immersive charm The Baker's Wife closed on the way to Broadway in 1976, since which time Stephen Schwartz's stubbornly resistent if sweetly scored…
   Operettaish bitter-sweetness raised to the sublime in a miracle of perfect timing Jerry Herman is the king of pep. Way too much of it in the first 20 minutes of the recent re…
Cardboard Citizens shine an unforgiving light on poverty in the UK A stark end-title at the end of this collection of short films sums up the dire situation the UK is in: one in five people,…
Christopher Hampton's love of Stefan Zweig's text becomes a drawback Who was Stefan Zweig? It's likely that it's mostly older folk who studied German literature at A-level who have encounter…
Two awkward science nerds and a violent alcoholic father are oddly likeable company Sarah Power, the writer of Grud, now in the Hampstead's smaller space, is a self-confessed geek who…
A fine cast spell out the cost of survival in today's ailing industries For a long stretch of its first half, Dominique Morrisseau's 2016 award-winner, Skeleton Crew, seems a conventional…
★★★ NEXT TO NORMAL, WYNDHAM'S THEATRE Technically superb show gets ovation and tears Award-winning comes to West End - bring your handkerchiefs We open on one of tho…
Complicité's reflection on memory, connection and storytelling remains as potent as ever I'm sitting in the Olivier waiting for the show to start, comfortable in the knowledge that I've see…
Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1980s spectacular skates into a new era The reinvigoration of Andrew Lloyd Webber continues apace. New York is now hosting a ballroom culture, drag-inflected Cats, and…
New play about the death of the most famous American woman of the Camelot era The death of Marilyn Monroe is a wet dream for conspiracy theorists. Like the assassination of JFK in the follo…
Fans of the film will love it, but it's like being in a pink fever dream Nothing anybody over the age of 30 says about the new Mean Girls musical, spawn of Tina Fey's witty script for the 20…
A production with a green message for younger audiences It's a bold move by Regent's Park Open Air Theatre to tackle Frances Hodgson Burnett's children's classic, a story that's been notably…
New play about secrets from the past is both funny and profound Following the huge success of Benedict Lombe's Shifters, which transfers soon to the West End, the Bush Theatre is riding hig…
'Brush Up Your Shakespeare' brings the house down in a strongly cast lineup Lincoln Center's Bartlett Sher is back in town to direct the Barbican's latest summer blockbuster, Cole Porter's c…
New history play about football has a flawed second half Every day this week I'm watching a football match, and now " after April's production of Lydia Higman, Julia Grogan and Rachel Lemon'…
This 'Shrew' has many fine elements but ultimately they don't coalesce A recent Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that 2.1 million people in the UK had been victims of domestic ab…
★★★★ MISS JULIE, PARK THEATRE Sparks fly across class and gender divides that persist today Much adapted play gets a traditional staging fuelled by electric leads …