Plenty of worthy messages that, jumbled together without enough kid-friendly dazzle, never quite achieve lift off

Apparently one of the biggest hits in the New Vic’s history, this musical’s 60s/70s pop hits go down well with the old crowd. It’s essentially a three-star show, but good golly the shoddy storytelling is so all over the place that it becomes an incoherent slog

I clearly drew the short straw in the Exeunt reviews round-up: National Theatre special, covering The Authenticator, which I found naff, muddled and misleadingly marketed

Private Lives at the Royal Exchange Theatre – review Blanche McIntyre’s revival of the Noël Coward classic runs until 2 May as part of the theatre’s 50th anniversary programme

Private Lives is a problematic play and I don’t really know why you’d revive it in 2026 (if McIntyre does have an answer, it doesn’t come through). But I thought this is about as good a production as you can stage, and Steve John Shepherd is particularly great

www.whatsonstage.com/news/private...

Three hours, five decades, one brilliant Liz White. Leo Butler’s ambitious new play is overlong (ending at least six times), baggy and with a clumsy, cursory approach to politics. But with an edit, it could be a fantastic state-of-the-nation drama

It’s a short (85-minute) walk up the garden path for a starchy staging that’s more concert performance than true musical. The songs are well performed, and I gave some of the ropey direction the benefit of the doubt, but it doesn’t really unlock the story’s magic

It gets a little slow and laboured towards the end of its 3+ hours, but I thought this production from Matthew Xia was really irresistibly lovely – and better than the National’s, for my money

Crime and Punishment at Chroma-Q Theatre, Leeds: endless gloomy Read our review of Crime and Punishment review at Chroma-Q Theatre, Leeds: Dostoevsky’s huge novel is compressed into a gruelling and confusing two-hour production

The design and central performance are reasonably effective, but losing so much of the psychology as a result of condensing the novel makes this a punishingly dreary evening

www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/crim...

Reviewed Broken Glass at the Young Vic which I found a bit starchy and fragmented until it goes for broke at the end

Two at Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot: depressingly regressive Read our review of Two review at Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot: Jim Cartwright's pub-set two-hander feels shallow and dated

Unfortunately timed, coming directly on the back of the Royal Exchange’s tremendous Road, this revival of Two shows the precipitous decline in the quality of Cartwright’s writing. In this flimsy production, all this pub-set two-hander serves is stale ale

www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/two-...

Reviewed the touring Memory of Water which gets a cosy production where depth sits alongside shallowness

I think the best time to see Operation Mincemeat has been and gone. What you now get is an easy, breezy romp (that needs to be funnier to sustain two and a half hours) whose original idiosyncrasies have been minced up in the process of becoming an outsize commercial hit

Great to chat to two of the brilliant minds behind Imitating the Dog – the OGs of live camerawork on stage – about their (underrated, imho) new War of the Worlds adaptation and what they think about their imitators: Jamie Lloyd, Kip Williams, Katie Mitchell et al

Reacting to the grimly predictable announcement of a Traitors stage adaptation, Rebecca Watson writes: “Culture’s job seems increasingly to be about déjà-vu comfort rather than originality … Artistic directors need to trust that the audience is out there.”

“A critic without criticism is PR … If everyone just oozes blandishments, the crimes committed are worse than negativity.”

See also: theatre reviews

This had an incredible look and concept, brilliantly reworking the Lady Macbeth character. With more dramaturgy and richer writing, it could’ve been extraordinary

There will be a 6pm curfew. You are advised to avoid all theatres in and around Greater Manchester.

Rightly sounding like a PSA

Reviewed Guess How Much I Love You? which didn’t floor me as much as most critics (although I’m not a parent, which must make a difference), but I thought the performances, design and ending were really great

🎵 I’m loving angles instead 🎵

(For reference, the next show in the season is max £48. So this is a 56% hike)

Regional theatre not immune to dynamic pricing, it seems, with Manchester’s Royal Exchange upping top-price tickets for Road to £75 (let’s call it £80 by the time you’ve paid fees on top). A lovely gesture for the opening show of its 50th anniversary season…

I’ve seen these actors do great work. But I really think a revival of a dated 1930s comedy of manners needs some driving idea behind it, otherwise it’s just a revival of a dated 1930s comedy of manners

A clear and coherent creative vision for the venue remains MIA. And I’m not sure when they’ll realise that their increasingly stubborn resistance of anything recognisable as theatre continues to disillusion audiences and result in patchy attendance

Another scattershot season announcement from Factory International. Bewildering for, among other things, calling “spring” the months between May-September. Big names aside (ENO, Ai Weiwei, Kip Williams doing opera), there’s once again no theatre to be seen, and shows running for max three nights

I also loved Romans (Almeida), Mojo (Kings Arms), The Maids (Donmar), Inter Alia (NT), Giant (West End), The Seagull (Barbican) and Till The Stars Come Down (West End) this year

To which I’d also add honourable mention of Escaped Alone/What If If Only at the Royal Exchange – both mesmerising in their own ways, and both thrummed with the buzz of great writing. When the set literally cracked open, it felt like something similar was happening in the theatre itself

Shared a couple of highlights and lowlights from 2025

Reviewed Christmas Day at the Almeida - another great anti-festive show, even if it could’ve done with being a bit more decisive about the eerie abstract elements that decorate it like strange, dark baubles

There’s little fun of the fair in Oldham Coliseum’s Christmas show. A dull and fusty Jim Cartwright revival with none of the bravery and risk-taking of the theatre’s manifesto that we’re handed on our way out