Noël Coward Theatre

Is Coogan’s Dr Strangelove as good as Sellars’s? Of course not

2 November 2024 9:00 am

Stanley Kubrick’s surreal movie Dr Strangelove is a response to the fear of nuclear annihilation which obsessed every citizen in…

Reinforces the caricatures it sets out to diminish: Slave Play, at the Noël Coward Theatre, reviewed

3 August 2024 9:00 am

Slave Play is a series of hoaxes. The producers announced that ‘Black Out’ performances would be reserved for ‘black-identifying’ playgoers…

Player Kings proves that Shakespeare can be funny

20 April 2024 9:00 am

Play-goers, beware. Director Robert Icke is back in town, and that means a turgid four-hour revival of a heavyweight classic…

Actors will be in trouble if the Bridge Theatre's latest experiment catches on

23 January 2021 9:00 am

Flight has been hailed as a new form of dramatic presentation — prefab theatre. It’s great to look at. A…

An astonishing treat: Dear Evan Hansen at the Noël Coward Theatre reviewed

30 November 2019 9:00 am

Dear Evan Hansen, by Steven Levenson, opens as a standard American teen-angst musical. Evan is a sweaty geek with a…

Ira Mandela Siobhan as the horse Nugget, and Ethan Kai as Alan

The play’s dated badly – but the horse is exquisite: Equus at Trafalgar Studios reviewed

27 July 2019 9:00 am

Equus is a psychological thriller from 1973 which opens with a revolting discovery. An unbalanced stable-lad, Alan, spends his evenings…

Enclosure act: Es Devlin’s terrific set for The Hunt at the Almeida

A crowd-pleasing pantomime: Present Laughter at the Old Vic reviewed

6 July 2019 9:00 am

Present Laughter introduces us to a chic, louche and highly successful theatrical globetrotter, Garry Essendine, whose riotous social life is…

The worst Arthur Miller play I’ve ever seen

23 February 2019 9:00 am

All About Eve is Cinderella steeped in acid rather than sugar. Eve, or Cinders, is a wannabe star who uses…

Sam Troughton and Claudie Blakley in Nina Raine's Stories. Photo: Sarah Lee

The Inheritance isn’t theatre — it’s mesmerically boring TV

27 October 2018 9:00 am

Stories by Nina Raine is a bun-in-the-oven comedy with a complex back narrative. Anna, in her mid-thirties, had a boyfriend…

Haydn Gwynne gallantly plays the ageing sexpot Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World at the Donmar Warehouse

Some fairly rich people rip off some very rich people. Who are we rooting for? Quiz reviewed

21 April 2018 9:00 am

Quiz by James Graham looks at the failed attempt in 2001 to swindle a million quid from an ITV game…

Perishable goods

14 October 2017 9:00 am

  Labour of Love is the new play by James Graham, the poet laureate of politics. We’re in a derelict…

She makes Medusa look like a dinner lady: Kate Fleetwood as Tracy Lord in ‘High Society’

Fine production of a painful play: Death of a Salesman at the Noel Coward reviewed

23 May 2015 9:00 am

Here come the Yanks. As the summer jumbos disgorge their cargoes of wealthy, courteous, culture-hungry Americans, the West End prepares…

Jude Law's Henry V is a buccaneer leading a stag-night raid across the continent — but he'd be a great Macbeth

14 December 2013 9:00 am

Henry V is the final show in Michael Grandage’s first West End season. The theatre was full to bursting on…