London theatre reviews

The streets between Soho and the West End are excellent places to get drunk. But few of us will indulge ourselves in central London like playwright and novelist Partrick Hamilton, the well-known boozer best known for his 1929 play Rope about the real-life murder of a 14-year-old boy (later turned into the classic 1948 Hitchcock film). But not to worry, one can now experience such dangerous states of inebriation in a new stage version of Hamilton’s books this autumn at Southwark Playhouse Borough…

This musical version of Thelma & Louise has many things going for it, notably some thrilling songs from alt-country legend Neko Case, a great cast led by Amy Lennox and Rachel Turner, and some sparking dialogue from Callie Khouri, screenwriter of the classic 1991 Ridley Scott feminist road movie…

Almost a century on and I think we can be adult about the fact that 20th century American playwright Clifford Odets was never in the same league as the older Eugene O’Neill, or the younger Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller (who both clearly owed him a debt). Golden Boy, from 1937, is a fine play but clunkier than any of those writers at their best…

Comedies that are 400 years old and French don’t always age that well. Adding a comedy vicar with false teeth helps a bit, but doesn’t entirely save this Moliere remix…

TOWIE meets Blasted by way of the Iliad in this breezily provocative fourth play from rising star playwright Ava Pickett.

Heavyweight director John Caird - most famous for the original production of Les Mis - has been trying and in many ways succeeding in getting his musical version of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre off the ground for something like 30 years now.

As the world around us has burned or flooded this summer, the environmental themes of Lucy Kirkwood’s pointedly allegorical drama The Children have only grown more relevant in the decade since it debuted – as Lyric Hammersmith artistic director Rachel O’Riordan’s anniversary revival production makes clear.

Kimberly Akimbo has the sort of outlandish premise that makes you wonder if it’s going to be another entry in the annals of ‘mad things that only Americans are interested in’. But any  musical that wins five Tony awards and tempts the legendary Maria Friedman out of unofficial retirement is probably going to be alright, isn’t it? Well yes.

Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss act up a storm in this slightly wonky bundling together of Sophocles and Bergman.

Fifty years on, For Colored Girls still hits. Ntozake Shange’s 1976 choreopoem arrives at the Yard Theatre with all the love, rage, grief, humour and sisterhood that made it a landmark — and thematically, not nearly as dated as you might expect…