Southwark Playhouse

Like an episode of Play School: Dr Semmelweis, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed

2 September 2023 9:00 am

Bleach and germs are the central themes of Dr Semmelweis, written by Mark Rylance and Stephen Brown. The opening scene,…

The show works a treat: Globe's The Tempest reviewed

27 August 2022 9:00 am

Southwark Playhouse has a reputation for small musicals with big ambitions. Tasting Notes is set in a wine bar run…

Right play, wrong place: The Fellowship, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed

9 July 2022 9:00 am

Roy Williams’s new play is a wonky beast. It has two dense and cumbersome storylines that aren’t properly developed. Dawn…

Paul Bettany's Warhol is a tour de force: The Collaboration, at the Young Vic, reviewed

5 March 2022 9:00 am

The Collaboration is set in the 1980s when Andy Warhol teamed up with the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat to create bad…

An amazing technical achievement: Life of Pi at Wyndham's Theatre reviewed

11 December 2021 9:00 am

Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi is a complicated organism. The action starts in southern India where we meet a…

Glib and snarky: Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella, at Gillian Lynne Theatre, reviewed

4 September 2021 9:00 am

It’s a rum beast the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Cinderella is set in Belleville, a European city of 18th-century…

One for hardcore Tennessee Williams fans only: The Two Character Play reviewed

31 July 2021 9:00 am

It can be difficult to remember that Tennessee Williams, the great songster of the Deep South during the 1950s, was…

Enjoyable in spite of the National's best efforts: Under Milk Wood reviewed

3 July 2021 9:00 am

Before the National Theatre produced Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood they had to make a decision. How could they stuff…

Do theatres actually read scripts before agreeing to stage them?

8 May 2021 9:00 am

Money is a new internet play about financial corruption starring Mel Giedroyc. She appears on-screen for less time than it…

Unhappy blend of melodrama and allegory: Southwark Playhouse’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice reviewed

6 March 2021 9:00 am

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a musical fantasy set in a Nordic town near the Arctic circle. Johan is a magician…

How Facebook became a freedom-gobbling corporate monster

30 January 2021 9:00 am

Southwark Playhouse is beating the latest lockdown with a zingy new musical about social media. The performers, Francesca Forristal and…

Skilful and riveting: Poltergeist at the Southwark Playhouse reviewed

28 November 2020 9:00 am

Sasha is angry. He’s a gay artist on his way to his niece’s birthday party and he keeps popping codeine…

The jackboot zealotry of ushers is ruining theatre

17 October 2020 9:00 am

Southwark Playhouse has revived an American show, The Last Five Years, whose run was cancelled in March. In advance, I…

Worth watching for the comments thread alone: NT's Twelfth Night livestream reviewed

2 May 2020 9:00 am

‘Enjoy world-class theatre online for free,’ announces the National Theatre. Every Thursday at 7 p.m. a play from the archive…

Heavy-handed

29 July 2017 9:00 am

Oliver Cotton is an RSC stalwart who looks like a man born to greatness. Google him. He has the fearless…

Sister act: Zawe Ashton and Uzo Aduba in Jean Genet’s ‘The Maids’

Jean Genet’s fascinating play, The Maids, is botched at Trafalgar Studios

19 March 2016 9:00 am

The Maids is a fascinating document. Written in 1947, Jean Genet’s drama portrays a pair of serving girls who enact…

Is there a difference between being prejudiced and being a connoisseur of prejudice?

23 January 2016 9:00 am

Paul Minx ventures boldly into Tennessee Williams country with The Long Road South. It’s 1965 and the Price family are…

Volpone and his coterie of misfits, L–R from the back: Julian Hoult (Castrone), Ankur Bahl (Androgyno), Henry Goodman (Volpone) and Jonathan Key (Nano)

Trevor Nunn’s Volpone reviewed: Henry Goodman bewitches the audience by doing nothing wittily

18 July 2015 9:00 am

Easy playwright to get on with, Ben Jonson. His world is simple, his tastes endearing. He likes golden-hearted swindlers and…

Radiant Vermin at the Soho Theatre reviewed: a barmy little sketch posing as a revolutionary satire

21 March 2015 9:00 am

Philip Ridley is best known as the screenwriter of The Krays, in which Gary and Martin Kemp played Ronnie and…

Muswell Hill reviewed: a guide on how to sock it to London trendies

28 February 2015 9:00 am

Torben Betts is much admired by his near-namesake Quentin Letts for socking it to London trendies. Letts is one of…

Paul Barritt’s stunning design for ‘The Golem’ resembles ‘a ketchup-splattered bumble bee’

Young Vic's Golem: its status as a cult hit fills me with troubled wonder

10 January 2015 9:00 am

The Young Vic produces shows that please many but rarely me. Its big hit of 2014, A Streetcar Named Desire,…

The recruitment company to go to if you've got no arms or legs

6 December 2014 9:00 am

When to launch? For impresarios, this is the eternal dilemma. Autumn is so crowded with press nights that producers are…

Stage rage: Kristin Scott Thomas as Electra

Were the cast of the Old Vic’s Electra clothed by Oxfam?

11 October 2014 9:00 am

First, a bit of background. Conquering Agamemnon slew his daughter, Iphigenia, in return for a fair wind to Troy. This…

A wizened Victor Mature: Matthew Kelly in Toast

Bent bureaucrats, ‘fake dykes’ and bad bakers — this week’s theatre

6 September 2014 9:00 am

Eye of a Needle, by newcomer Chris MacDonald, looks at homosexuality and asylum. Gays from the Third World, who’ve suppressed…

Dolts, Doormats and FGM: theatre to make you physically sick

30 August 2014 9:00 am

Wow. What an experience. A 1991 movie named Dogfight has spawned a romantic musical. We’re in San Francisco in 1963.…