Rachel Halliburton

"If you’re vegan or even lactose intolerant, possibly this dairy-obsessed panto isn’t for you. If you’re not, this inspired silliness is the crème de la crème." Full Review

"Christopher Nightingale’s ingenious arrangements of the carols performed throughout is the sprig of holly on what remains possibly one of the best Christmas shows you’ll ever see." Full Review

"David Farr’s radioactively intelligent script takes us to the New Mexico desert to explore the uncertain divisions between life and death, love and hate, and humans and artificial intelligence-programmed cyborgs." Full Review

"You leave the theatre feeling nothing but respect for those forced to live this story. " Full Review

"While this play bares its teeth at a whole range of issues, ultimately it fails to bite." Full Review

"It’s a provocation too far to say this is a Joan of Arc with balls, but it certainly revitalises their story for a time that’s far too defined by intransigence and weaponised hate." Full Review

"To watch a Peter Morgan drama is to have a fly-on-the-wall’s perspective of modern history." Full Review

This production valiantly transcends the scratchiness of the script with a bold aesthetic, punchy performances and a well-judged musical score. Even with Khalil’s additions this work will never be ranked as one of Shakespeare’s greats, but it’s worth a look. Full Review

It’s ... a constantly unsettling and enthralling experience that constantly challenges you to push the limits of your curiosity ... where Punchdrunk excels is in demanding as much of the audience members as of the performers. Full Review

The play’s running time is three hours and five minutes, but it is a testament to the acting, staging, and indeed the script that not one of those minutes hangs heavily. Full Review

for a previous production No playwright has a scalpel as sharp as James Graham’s when it comes to dissecting politics; he has a brilliance and edge that strips away all unnecessary material till the beating heart of the matter is revealed. Full Review

Words flow like water in TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, shimmering with allusion, swirling and eddying with the ideas and fractured philosophies of a poet at the height of his powers. Full Review

This shark-tooth-sharp comedy, which has swum relatively seamlessly down to the West End from the 2019 Edinburgh Festival, is an enjoyable three-hander about the near-disasters behind the scenes in the film’s final sequence. Full Review

Despite the increasingly sinister political backdrop, this is a moving and uplifting evening, marked in particular by charismatic performances from Timms, Lynch and Silber. Full Review

You are left with the feeling that while it is immensely difficult to dramatise genius, this is a deeply intelligent and humane investigation of what drove and defined the man who has left us such a profound cultural legacy. Full Review

for a previous production A warm and electric tribute to the book...It's a true achievement to feel the chemistry of a cast whirring into action again.' Full Review

For a riveting, cathartic – and often surprisingly humorous – 50 minutes Ralph Fiennes paces the stage at the Bridge Theatre to deliver an account of Covid-19 that is as political as it is personal.' Full Review

The jukebox musical is a challenge...yet here McPherson gives it a potent force by starkly delineating the kind of socio-economic conditions that produce blues and folk at their rawest. Full Review

Galvanising reinvention of Arthur Miller's classic...Wendell Pierce confirms a performance as exciting as any this theatrical year. Full Review

Bold evocation of a post-truth world...The evening is as devastatingly moving as it is bitingly funny...this play is an outrage, wrapped inside a farce, framed by a bittersweet love story.' Full Review

sci-fi tribute is less rocket, more Reliant Robin...Navigating the script is a bit like going in a car with a driver who's just passed their test. Full Review

Tom Stuart’s sweepingly hallucinogenic companion piece to Marlowe’s Edward II is a delightfully risky venture – a postmodern caper through shifting attitudes to homosexuality. Full Review

Anne Washburn's play for the Almeida achieves lift-off in the West End...Definitely worth the rocket ride. Full Review

"This … is very much a Henry V for our times … It’s something of an antidote to the season’s prevailing bonhomie and tinsel, but this bold interpretation is well worth a visit from those interested in alternative histories and hidden motivations." Full Review

"This is a story in which there are as many shades of good as there are of evil." Full Review

"Christopher Haydon’s production never achieves the giddy heights that are promised." Full Review

"The script is non-preachy, but there are some longueurs and an ongoing Neil Armstrong metaphor misses the mark. That said, this is as human as it is important." Full Review

"This synthetic scream of a musical sweeps up every cliché of an addict’s fall and redemption before bamboozling with an idiosyncratic detour into the merits of cheese." Full Review

"There is much to bewitch young children, and by the end it takes you to another dimension in all the right ways. In a golden age of puppetry in the West End, this joyful interpretation more than holds its own." Full Review

Minimal effects mean the performances and language are allowed to do the heavy-lifting. Beyond Hunter’s resonant central performance, Ryan Donaldson’s Edmund stands out. Full Review

Much of the energy of Shakespeare’s script comes from the fact that the characters are decompressing after a war, and Bailey ensures that we do not forget this, even as we get whirled up in the absurdity. Bailey has marked herself out through her inspirational collaborations with designers and this is no exception. Full Review

There are two important things to note about Restoration comedy; it is not satirical and it is not subtle...Rachel O’Riordan’s production is exuberant and devil-may-care, revelling in the sense of release galloping across the country as the threat of Covid seems – for now – to recede. Full Review

This is a fantastically executed theatrical experiment by the intelligently provocative Rimini Protokoll...for anyone London-based who’s interested in genuinely inventive theatre it will make a return trip here before too long. Full Review

As the production unfolds there is much to love, but its astonishing power comes from the puppetry, which is overseen by Finn Caldwell who has a pedigree that goes back to the National Theatre’s War Horse. Full Review

This isn’t a particularly subtle rendering of the book. The brisk pace also means that dramatic tension can be sacrificed. All that said there are still elements to enjoy ... not least because of some excellent performances. Full Review

'Love and Other Acts of Violence' comes very close to being an amazing evening of theatre, yet a misjudged shift in tone towards the end robs it of crucial energy. It leaves you hungry to see what the performers and Lynn might go on to do in the future. Full Review

Ola Ince’s abrasively modern interpretation, complete with guns and overtones of street gang culture, is a strange mix. Full Review

A production that revels in the joyously absurd while hinting at the play's darker edges. Full Review

This is another inspired evening from Nicholas Hytner... Top class acting and top class writing that shows theatre at its best.' Full Review

This raunchy, gleefully cynical production takes one of Thomas Middleton’s most famous tragedies and turns it into a Netflix-worthy dark comedy...a tart, wittily toxic two and a half hours.' Full Review

Pacy, dagger-sharp rewriting of history...Hickson's play is a thrillingly irreverent reframing of a well-trodden past, brilliantly innovative...' Full Review

While the fate of both Ireland and the rest of the British Isles is hanging on the precise deployment of language, Friel’s devastating insights make for salutary watching. Go, and if you can bear it, take a politician. Full Review

Neil Armfield’s resonant, turbulent production..sing[s] out from the stage of the Olivier like an epic, with its conflicts, culture clashes, and quest for new territories... A resonant tragedy of mutual incomprehension.' Full Review

...a feat of exuberant brilliance, a gender-juggling romp that takes Shakespeare’s subversive text and polishes it so that it glints and shines like a glitterball at a disco.' Full Review

Electrifying mixed-race all-female production...Adjoa Andoh is a magnetic Richard with her hawk-like glare and vigorous swagger. Full Review