In 1896, Puccini adapted Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème into his opera La Bohème , telling the story of a group of young artists living in poverty in nineteenth-century Paris, where they faced hardship, illness and tuberculosis. Almost a century later, Jonathan Larson adapted the same material to the lives of marginalised young people in New York City, where poverty was compounded by drug addiction and AIDS. Tragically, Larson never saw Rent become a hit. He died aged 35 on the morning of its first preview in January 1996, but the show went on to transfer to Broadway, where it ran for 12 years and more than 5,000 performances, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and four Tony Awards. It transferred to London in 1998 and was embraced worldwide as a portrait of a generation at the turn of the millennium. This latest production brilliantly captures the anger, angst and affection that bind this group of young people together. It does not explicitly draw parallels with the con...

Avenue Q first arrived on Broadway in 2003 and, the following year, won the Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical. Now, twenty years after its London debut, it returns in a lightly updated production that retains the joy and warmth of the original. While some audience members will no longer know who Gary Coleman is, this Sesame-Street-for-adults show has lost none of its relevance. Its themes of underemployment, self-acceptance, mutual respect and the search for connection feel just as timely now as they did then. Sharp satire is wrapped in the velvet glove of a puppet-show-for-grown-ups and delivered with wit and affection rather than accusation. Songs such as “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” and “It Sucks to Be Me” continue to land well, presenting uncomfortable truths in a disarmingly approachable way. “The Internet is for Porn!” still earns knowing laughter, while “If You Were Gay” remains both funny and unexpectedly touching. The staging and...

“That Italian artist who makes clothes.” Attributed to Coco Chanel, this remark about Elsa Schiaparelli neatly captures the contrast between the two women’s approaches to couture. Chanel is synonymous with elegant simplicity, whereas Schiaparelli’s work immediately brings to mind terms such as “theatrical”, “shocking” and “eccentric”. Born in 1890, she brought a bold, provocative edge to fashion that was utterly distinctive. This remarkably comprehensive exhibition charts her rise from the practical, understated Pour le Sport range, through the chic and functional Pour le Ville, to the gloriously extravagant and dramatic Pour le Soir. It shows how she was shaped by the artistic movements of her time, particularly Dada, and how she in turn influenced them. Highlights include the Jean Cocteau-inspired coat and Salvador Dalí’s lobster dress, alongside Picasso’s painting of Nusch Éluard in a Schiaparelli outfit. The exhibition also explores her work in film and her costume design for actre...

Georges Seurat’s seascapes offer a quietly mesmerising encounter with one of the most distinctive imaginations in modern art. Immediately recognisable, his pointillist technique remains as striking now as it must have been when it first appeared. Rather than blending colour on the palette, Seurat places tiny touches of pigment on the canvas and allows the viewer’s eye to complete the image. The effect is both precise and atmospheric, creating paintings that feel calm, detached and radiant with light. This exhibition is especially rewarding because it shows Seurat working through his method from sketch to finished canvas. That progression makes clear how carefully he observed the sea, the sky and the shifting conditions of light before translating them into paint. The preparatory drawings and studies reveal an artist patiently refining composition and colour, while the completed works display a controlled harmony that never feels mechanical. The two studies (nos. 19 and 20) for "Th...

In 1879, Henrik Ibsen first staged A Doll's House . The play was a social provocation, and the breakdown of Nora and Torvald’s marriage was widely seen as an attack on patriarchy and a challenge to the roles imposed on women in marriage and society. It shocked audiences and provoked moral outrage across the ideological spectrum. In Anya Reiss’s twenty-first-century adaptation, however, the concerns are markedly different. Both partners are recast as mean-spirited, materialistic narcissists, and the collapse of their marriage stems less from structural injustice than from their own shallow values. It is more likely to leave audiences despairing at the state of the contemporary world that has produced such self-absorbed individuals. The tentative hopefulness present in Ibsen’s original, the sense that society might be reshaped for the better, is entirely absent. Instead Reiss offers a bleak, almost fatalistic vision, and her reworking of Ibsen’s characters and plot carries a tone of ...

In 1941, the physicist Werner Heisenberg, best known for formulating his uncertainty principle, visited his mentor Niels Bohr in occupied Denmark. The purpose of that meeting remains mysterious and, even with access to the later letters of the two men, their recollections of what took place differ considerably. At the heart of the matter lies the failure of Germany’s efforts to develop a nuclear weapon and Bohr’s role in the Allies’ success in this endeavour. Questions of patriotism and the moral neutrality of scientific inquiry are explored in the context of the individual’s broader ethical responsibility to humankind, set against the temptations of personal ambition. These are complex issues, and coming to terms with them is not made easier by the fact that the scientific territory itself remains opaque to most of us. Michael Frayn’s play attempts to render the physics more accessible, while also reflecting some of its underlying principles. As Frayn observes in the programme notes, ...

In The Print chronicles a turning point in the history of Britain’s labour movement. In 1984, when Brenda Dean became the first woman to head a British union, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was already advancing an agenda to curb the power of organised labour. On becoming general secretary of SOGAT, the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades, Dean found herself navigating not only bitter internal struggles between rival unions, but also the growing influence of Rupert Murdoch, owner of four of Britain’s most powerful newspapers. The play capably traces this complex conflict between management-driven modernisation and a union determined to protect its members’ pay and conditions. However, it too often tells rather than shows. Excessive narration drains the drama of urgency, with scenes feeling less like lived experience and more like illustrative fragments in a historical lecture. Much of this narration falls to Claudia Jolly as Dean, and while she brings intelligence and flashes of ...

Spoilt, rich people whose sole occupation is scheming to destroy the lives of the naïve and gullible. No, this is not a dramatised version of the Epstein files. Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ eighteenth-century epistolary novel, depicting amoral aristocrats on the brink of the French Revolution, has inspired many incarnations, yet it continues to shock and, at times, to delight. Christopher Hampton’s stage adaptation, first presented in 1985, streamlines the narrative, focusing on the rivalry and tangled emotional connection between the two master manipulators: the Marquise de Merteuil, played by Lesley Manville, and the Vicomte de Valmont, portrayed by Aidan Turner. Together they engage in a vicious game, with Valmont attempting to seduce both the innocent Cécile de Volanges and the devout Madame de Tourvel. It is wickedly entertaining material, and it proves just as intriguing in this context as it does in the well-known teen film, Cruel Intentions . There are, however, some issues with...

When some 18th-century diaries written by the founder of Harford House are discovered, his descendant Fenella calls in two academics, Abi and Marva, to examine them. The manuscripts, which detail Harford’s involvement in the slave trade, soon prove to be far more than a mere catalogue, and the complex history of Britain’s role in the enslavement of Africans acquires a distinctly human face. The subject is a fraught one, with strong, often ahistorical and unnuanced opinions drowning out the complicated reality. Winsome Pinnock has written a fascinating and richly funny play that shows how this heritage touches three women, each in a very different way. Pinnock manages to explore the complexity of her subject with extraordinary humour and humanity. This is theatre at its finest, taking on a difficult subject, humanising it, making it dramatically compelling and avoiding the needlessly didactic. There is much to learn and much to ponder in this play, but it is also deeply entertaining. Sy...

When a class of students meets to study The Crucible , the play takes on a radical new interpretation and some small town secrets begin to surface. Kimberly Belflower has crafted a work that updates Arthur Miller’s allegory, in which the Salem witch trials prefigure 1950s America’s obsession with communism and Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare, a period that smeared the reputations of many innocent people. Set in 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, John Proctor is the Villain explores sexual exploitation and the challenge of persuading others to believe what cannot easily be proven when the powers that be are not on side. While Miller’s commentary focused on mob hysteria, which reinforced the prevailing orthodoxy, Belflower examines the other side of the question. How do the voiceless assert themselves in the face of entrenched authority? Dónal Finn is utterly compelling as the cool young English teacher Mr Smith, who draws the best from his class. It is a performance that will reso...

When the timid and impecunious Miss Beringer moves into her new lodgings, she is warmly received by her sympathetic and kindly landlady, Mrs Amorest. However, her relationship with her fellow lodger soon proves far more fraught. It becomes clear that the formidable, almost malevolent, Mrs Payne covets Miss Beringer’s sole possession of value, a piece of amber given to her by a friend who has moved to India. Written in 1935 by Rodney Ackland and adapted from Hugh Walpole’s earlier novel, the play is a slender Gothic thriller that faintly echoes the macabre sensibilities of a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The narrative itself is insubstantial, and the piece relies heavily on atmosphere and sharply etched characterisation. In both respects, this production proves strikingly effective. Juliette Demoulin’s set design conjures a vivid sense of shabby, faintly sinister decay, while Carla Joy Evans’s costumes are impeccably judged, ranging from the frayed gentility of Mrs Amorest and the uno...

Written in 1979, David Hare’s tale of a 1960s rock icon who has watched the summer of love dissolve into a nightmare of drugs and disillusionment is potent stuff. Maggie Frisby, inevitably reminiscent of Janis Joplin, drinks to excess and has been reduced to performing at a spring dance at Jesus College, Cambridge. The singer is at her lowest ebb, bitter, volatile, and narcissistic. When her sober, sensible ex-husband, who wrote most of her songs, and her cynical, exploitative agent arrive nothing bodes well for this gig. With Frisby and her agent, Saraffian, Hare evokes two of the most enduring stereotypes of the rock 'n' roll world, and Rebecca Lucy Taylor, aka Self Esteem, and Phil Daniels inhabit them with relish. Taylor is mesmerising as the drunken, unpredictable Maggie, while Daniels could rival Uriah Heep in sheer unctuousness. Both performances are captivating, and when Taylor strides onstage to belt out her hits, the energy is nothing short of explosive. The rest of t...

Although Monet would eventually become one of the most beloved artists of all time, his work was initially derided by the artistic establishment. When he attempted, alongside Renoir and Degas, to exhibit through official channels such as the Paris Salon, run by the Académie des Beaux-Arts , his paintings were repeatedly rejected. In response, these artists participated in the Salon des Refusés of 1863, an exhibition that helped bring attention to what would become Impressionism. A Mirrored Monet presents a musical retelling of the painter’s life, exploring the interplay between his personal experiences and his artistic commitment. At its heart is Monet’s profound love for his first wife, Camille, who served as both muse and model. The production uses the familiar device of an older Monet, convincingly played by Jeff Shankley, reflecting on the actions of his younger self. Through this lens, he recalls with regret how his obsessive dedication to art led him to neglect his wife and fami...

In July 1955, Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Despite serious concerns about her mental state and the abuse she had endured, the nightclub hostess was convicted of murdering her lover, David Blakely. The government refused to stay her execution. Her death is widely regarded as a watershed moment in shifting public opinion against capital punishment. Ruth The Musical frames her story in retrospect, as Ellis revisits her life in conversation with the man who will ultimately act as her executioner. Bibi Simpson brings a raw, brittle intensity to the imprisoned Ruth, while Hannah Taylor’s portrayal of her younger self captures both vulnerability and reckless longing. Connor Payne is chillingly effective as David, exuding the careless cruelty of a cad accustomed to having his own way. John Faal impresses both dramatically and vocally as Ruth’s hapless admirer, Desmond. The production gestures towards weighty themes such as class, gender, and the morality of capita...

The first performance of Maxim Gorky’s Summerfolk took place in 1904, on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War and the turbulent events of Bloody Sunday, when, in January 1905, Russian troops fired on peaceful protesters. Perhaps foreshadowing these events, the play presents a seemingly blissful world in which Russia’s small middle class retreat to summer chalets, passing their days in idle gossip, romantic entanglements and domestic squabbles. While the characters, unlike the audience, are largely oblivious to the gathering political and social storm, Varvara, the wife of the lawyer Sergei Bassov, and her brother, Vlass, are beginning to question the purpose of their cosseted existence. Nevertheless, for most of the summer folk, the absorbing realities of business, family life and flirtation provide more than enough occupation. This National Theatre production vividly captures that rarefied, artificial milieu, with a typically imaginative set design and resplendent costumes. The impressi...

Vincent van Gogh spent two distinct periods in London. He stayed for two years from 1873 to 1875 before returning briefly in 1876. During his first stay he lodged with Ursula Loyer and fell in love with her daughter, Eugénie, who rejected him. Nicholas Wright’s play Vincent in Brixton reimagines this episode, deepening it into a more intricate emotional entanglement for the young art dealer’s assistant who would later become one of the most celebrated artists of all time. The play presents Van Gogh as a blunt, almost gauche young man with a striking lack of social restraint. His speech is impulsive, unguarded, and at times painfully direct, yet this very openness lends him a disarming vulnerability. Wright uses this quality to explore the tension between naivety and perception, suggesting that the same emotional candour that isolates Vincent also sharpens his artistic vision. The result is a thoughtful meditation on the inner forces that would come to define both his work and his stru...

This latest offering from the English National Ballet presents two works loosely connected by the theme of body and soul. The first, by the renowned choreographer Crystal Pite, is titled Body and Soul (Part 1). Set to a French text that largely describes the dancers’ movements, it unfolds across eight brief scenes. The piece is at its most evocative when Pite deploys a large group of dancers, creating exquisite passages such as the mirroring of the rhythmic surge of waves against the shore. However, the work lacks the narrative richness found in some of Pite’s finest creations, such as Revisor and Assembly Hall . While there are undeniably striking moments and some fine pas de deux , the production also fails to attain the level of her more abstract achievements, such as Figures in Extinction . Even so, encountering Pite’s choreography remains a consistently rewarding experience. The second piece, Proper Conduct , is a new work by Kameron N. Saunders. Divided into three parts, it unf...

Florence Foster Jenkins remains an extraordinary subject for drama, a figure both absurd and oddly admirable: a wealthy socialite who pursued operatic glory with unwavering conviction, but who possessed a voice that was frequently off-key and strained at the top. Her legend rests not only on that mismatch between ambition and ability, but also on her kindness and generosity, which complicate any easy attempt to turn her into a mere figure of ridicule. This production, however, leans too heavily towards the superficial. If the issue for Jenkins was that her performance did not rise to the material, the issue for Glorious!  is that the material does not rise to the level of the performance. Wendi Peters delivers a committed and energetically comic portrayal, but the script gives her limited scope to explore the contradictions that make Jenkins interesting. The arias are amusingly rendered and skilfully judged, yet they are asked to carry a play that too often settles for repetition r...

Imagine the headline, "Cure for Cancer Found." If only it were that simple.... Playwright Aaron Loeb invites us to imagine a world in which such a miraculous medical breakthrough takes place while he exposes the tangled, often troubling web of commerce, science, and ethics that shapes how innovations actually reach the public. The piece carries an almost allegorical force, and its three central figures embody the triad of competing interests that inform late capitalism. Willa, a gifted doctor, has developed a genetic diagnostic tool capable of detecting and potentially eradicating disease. At first she seems motivated by intellectual curiosity and the exhilaration of discovery, yet her personal ambitions gradually appear more opaque and troubling. Paul, an older venture capitalist, has built a company that seeks profit while professing a commitment to social good. However, he sees no real moral issue in using the new discovery to create designer babies. His business partner M...

Sam Morrison’s stand-up comedy show Sugar Daddy hilariously points out some of the foibles and absurdities of the gay community. It also tackles more serious issues such as the culture's intolerances, particularly when he reflects on his own attraction to older men with bellies. Beneath these sharp observations, however, the true centre of the monologue is Morrison's grappling with the loss of his partner during the Covid-19 pandemic. The show runs for only sixty minutes, yet Morrison traces his relationship with Jonathan from their first awkward meeting in Provincetown to the final leave-taking in hospital and the amusingly complicated scattering of the ashes. Along the way, the audience shares a remarkable emotional roller coaster. There are tender moments recalling time spent with Jonathan on a rooftop, weirdly funny episodes such as when Morrison is attacked by seagulls, and painfully vivid recollections of the speech delivered at Jonathan’s deathbed. The humour is dark an...