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Twenty years ago, the “bonkers-yet-ingenious” “Avenue Q” – a sort of “‘Sesame Street’ for adults”, mixing cute puppets with jaw-droppingly offensive comic songs – “romped into the West End”, having triumphed on Broadway, said Marianka Swain in The Telegraph. For this revival it has been tweaked a bit, to incorporate references to Netflix, AI and […]

‘Death of a Salesman,’ Winter Garden Theatre, New York City ★★★ “Death of a Salesman has returned to Broadway, yet again in triumph,” said Helen Shaw in The New York Times. It’s been a mere four years since Arthur Miller’s tragedy last appeared on the Great White Way, and that one didn’t have Nathan Lane’s […]

Everyone is familiar with their hits “Cabaret” and “Chicago”, said Clive Davis in The Times. Yet John Kander and Fred Ebb’s later musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman” – “a fiercely intelligent portrait” of two men who form an unlikely bond in a prison cell in Argentina during its Dirty War – “has slipped from […]

For a play that famously ends with the suicides of its two teenage protagonists, Robert Icke’s production of “Romeo & Juliet” feels “outlandishly joyful” and “profoundly alive”, said Alice Saville in The Independent. Fuelled by fizzing performances from its “duo of stars”, Sadie Sink (from “Stranger Things”) and Noah Jupe (“Hamnet”), this is a “richly […]

Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor Is the Villain” was a hit on Broadway and received seven Tony nominations – and “it’s easy to see why”, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage. This “exuberant, perceptive and absolutely essential” play is about a group of teenage girls studying “The Crucible” at the apex of the #MeToo movement in 2018. […]

In Robert Hastie’s “glorious revival” of Maxim Gorky’s tragi-comedy “Summerfolk”, the new regime at the National has its first “bona fide hit”, said Clive Davis in The Times. Written in 1904, the play is a sprawling, plot-light affair with no fewer than 23 characters. In its approach and setting, it has echoes of Chekhov. But […]

The Australian writer-director Kip Williams was behind 2024’s hit West End staging of “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Starring the “Succession” actress Sarah Snook, who played all the parts, Williams used “head-turning live-capture wizardry”, giant screens and pre-filmed sections to mesmeric effect. Now he is back with a […]

The RSC’s “inspiring” new musical is based on William Kamkwamba’s bestselling memoir, which recounts how – as a boy in Malawi – he built a wind turbine to save his village from drought. A bookish teenager who defied philistinism at home and at school, William has shades of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda”, and even of “Billy […]

Ballet Black was founded in 2001 to provide dancers of Black and Asian descent with opportunities in classical ballet. Since then, the London-based company has more than fulfilled that ambition, said Sarah Crompton in The Observer – not least by commissioning some 70 new works. That is an “astonishing” feat, by a company that punches […]

Spring’s touring theater productions are a mix of old standbys and new shows. Relive the 1980s with “Les Miz” and “Phantom”; experience the 1800s with “Hamilton” if you still haven’t seen the long-running phenomenon. Your seats are waiting. ‘Hamilton’ It is hard to believe that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s instant-hit “Hamilton” was birthed at New York’s Public […]