Sarah Crompton

It's a very 21st century take on the classic … it oddly has the effect of making Dickens more sentimental and more moralising than he is. It also seems to strip some of his anger out of the tale, rendering it more ... easily palatable. Full Review

There are at least a dozen versions of A Christmas Carol due on stage in the next couple of weeks, and all will have their merits...But the productions will have to be pretty exceptional to match the grace of this one...' Full Review

Tamsin Greig... Superbly directed by Marianne Elliott, she catches every mood as the timid Rosemary...Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet... This is Bennett in full humorous flight, mining the tale of a woman and her kinky chiropodist for all its socially observed worth.' Full Review

Ellams, modest and unassumingly downbeat, comes over as an engaging and attractive figure; it is a pleasure to spend time in his company... it feels essential viewing, but it isn't particularly theatrical.' Full Review

...magnificently realised by Fiennes, who under Nicholas Hytner's quietly efficient and detailed direction, uses all his own sensitivity and charisma to create a portrait of a man undone by an illness...' Full Review

If Pretty Woman – The Musical had any conscience it would adapt itself to the actors performing it and to the era in which it has been launched. That it simply wants to be a facsimile of a once popular movie, reveals the ugliness at its core. Full Review

[Lesley Manville's] performance...is quite simply spellbinding... But there's an awful lot of everything and when Manville is not centre stage, the action feels curiously airless.' Full Review

...what I loved about Richard Jones' assured production of Endgame is that he is prepared to dispense with many of the Beckett clichés while remaining true to the author's intent.' Full Review

Ciarán Hinds is powerful as a monstrously egotistical Serebryakov, Anna Calder-Marshall, Dearbhla Molloy and Peter Wight all lend heft and significance to characters that often count for nought. All in all, a glory. Full Review

It has the odd dip, but I've given it four stars...this feels like a breath of bracing air, a real insight into the lives of the girls it depicts. It's terrific.' Full Review

All in all, it's a smart and sophisticated rethinking, a production that gives a new patina and different depths to an old favourite, provoking new thoughts and old feelings in a very Chekovian way. Full Review

It is a triumph, a breathtakingly bold rethinking of a classic in resonant contemporary ways. Full Review

Director Melly Still and designer Soutra Gilmour stage all this with some flair. This is a production full of lovely, imaginative touches... I admired the fluency of the staging but wondered at its purpose.' Full Review

High Fidelity, adapted from Nick Hornby's novel, is an irritating show that feels well past its sell by date... for all their efforts, the show is a miss rather than a hit.' Full Review

Duncan Macmillan's two-hander is a clever, darting thing, and in the hands of Claire Foy and Matt Smith...it is a bit of a wonder.' Full Review

It is Betrayal as I've never seen it before, and like this entire season, it bathes Pinter in a brilliant new light. Full Review

All [of Churchill's] work is precision-engineered but her late plays feel like Picasso's late sketches. The line is so fine, the image ferociously truthful, pared to the bone yet rich in implication.' Full Review

...seems to me an utterly necessary and deeply compassionate depiction of the kinds of lives that it is all too easy to ignore. It seems artless, yet is a superbly delicate and artful piece of work...' Full Review

It's a terrific performance, beautifully realised, burnishing the legend that the star has already created. Full Review

...radical staging at the Open Air Theatre strips away all the glamour and passion that characterised Hal Prince's original version...Over and over again, this is a production that surprises.' Full Review

Despite running at over three hours...this version is never boring... but it doesn't ever quite resolve the mad veering between fantasy and reality...McArdle [is] the main reason to see the play.' Full Review

This jolly musical, on the other hand, based on the first book in Sue Townsend's clear-eyed epic...takes us back to his first, more optimistic incarnation. It's very good fun. Full Review

...the musical soars with [Renée Fleming], achieving unusual resonance and richness. For the rest of the time, it remains a fascinating curiosity, full of good things, but somehow not quite as great as the sum of its parts.' Full Review

It doesn't quite hit the heights, but it does – like the Planetarium in which it is set – offer a glimpse of them. Full Review

“A show that knows exactly who it is pleasing and does so with a lot of energy, if not a huge amount of style. The best things about it are all courtesy of Parton who provides songs, lyrics and tone...There are also some good jokes, a lot of warmth and some terrific songs...It all adds up to brash, enjoyable fun, not quite as classy as Parton herself, but perfectly pitched for its audience who are all out to forget the 9 to 5 and have a really good time.” Full Review

The chorus is terrific and the entire evening whips along...All in all, an excellent entertainment for a Christmas season. Full Review

What makes Nine Lives so attractive is the way that Nyoni's muscular, flexible writing which dips between poetry and intently observed realism, conjures an entire world with a minimum of effort.' Full Review

In their quiet way, they are showstoppers... Staunton is better on stage than on TV, pared back to pure truthfulness...Lucian Msamati takes on Wilfred, the park keeper whose affable demeanour conceals a terrible secret...' Full Review

...Dolan magnificently finds all the notes of love and regret in another wasted life...But it's Bed Among the Lentils that emerges in as a masterpiece... Lesley Manville is extraordinary...' Full Review

The writing is occasionally over-wrought – and as the play wends towards its conclusion it strains for a significance that it hasn't quite earned. Yet the acting is always pitch perfect. Full Review

Polly Findlay's take on A Number, a troubling hour-long inquisition about the nature of family and the possibilities of modern science...a fine and superbly acted rethinking of a provocative and powerful play.' Full Review

It's an evening that leaves many people in tears. It left me profoundly moved but also full of thought and understanding. If it is Stoppard's last play, as he seems to imply, it is a very fine testament to all he has given and all he has learnt. Full Review

Kani in particular paints powerfully a picture of a man whose essential goodness and dignity hides a constant anger at all that has happened to him. He is wonderful to watch. Full Review

The life of the play lies in the vividness of the portrait it paints...it is a brilliant, brave, bold and intelligent three hours in the theatre...often very funny yet at the close, profoundly moving.' Full Review

It's all very efficient and sharp. At its heart is Jon Robyns as a big-voiced and tender-hearted Valjean, catching the character's tortured valour and bringing gentle passion to the quiet "Bring Him Home"... Full Review

All in all, it's a smart and sophisticated rethinking, a production that gives a new patina and different depths to an old favourite, provoking new thoughts and old feelings in a very Chekovian way.' Full Review

Devastatingly intelligent and fiercely passionate, Fairview is a vital contribution to the debate around identity politics. It's also a very good play.' Full Review

The iconic musical makes a welcome return to the West End...Although it often conjures the movie, the stage show undoubtedly has its own tart tone. Full Review

You have a sense of everyone working very hard to make something fly. Vassa remains resolutely earthbound, not quite funny enough or black enough to make its mark. Full Review

The pace is always slightly too fast or too slow for the gags...Subtlety and true wit, there is none. Full Review

Lucian Msamati...is such a wonderful actor, really one of our very best, and he is magnificent here... One of the many extraordinary qualities of the play is how brutally honest Fugard is...' Full Review

...shafts of light are lost in dialogue that is often inert, and generally unrealistic... Amidst all this Wanamaker and Cvitešic still shine, holding the attention.' Full Review

Political, engaged theatre of such scope is rare; theatre that presents its case with such flair, power, humour and emotional punch is rarer still. It's very wonderful.' Full Review

It's never not watchable and is full of nuance about the mystery of human relationships...But in terms of drama, its even-handedness counts against it. Full Review

The Bridges of Madison County is a so-so sentimental novel...now...a so-so slushy musical, directed by Trevor Nunn with enough glacial slowness to stop a heat wave.' Full Review

...an intimate drama based on Thorne's own family, which resolutely refuses to fly...there are a lot of clever lines, but they often seem imposed on the characters rather than arising naturally from their thoughts.' Full Review

And then he's written Bitter Wheat, which is not really a play at all but an unfocused and tawdry howl of anger which unforgivably wastes the talents of its greatest asset, its leading man John Malkovich. Full Review

Its most striking quality, in a tightly focused and brilliantly acted production, is its uncompromising honesty...The play is passionate and heartfelt, but it is also long...' Full Review

It's a long, wordy piece, with the heavy three-act structure of its time, but Findlay and the cast make it compelling, wringing every ounce of meaning and sense out of each line.' Full Review

...although it has wild energy, and is full of sharp and devastating observations, it doesn't quite land either as comedy or as satire. It is too broad and noisy to hit its targets – and not quite funny enough.' Full Review