Frida: The Making of an Icon is as much about the creation of a legend as it is about the work of one of Mexico's most recognisable artists. Divided into eight thematic sections, the exhibition not only traces Frida Kahlo's artistic evolution but also interrogates the almost cult-like status she has acquired in the decades since her death. The opening galleries, "Construction/Self-Construction," establish the exhibition's central premise: Kahlo was engaged in a lifelong process of self-invention. Best known for her extraordinary self-portraits, she repeatedly recast her own image, blurring the boundaries between autobiography, performance and myth. It is precisely because of this process of self-fashioning that the exhibition's film footage of Kahlo becomes one of its highlights, offering a rare glimpse of the woman behind her carefully constructed personae. Having established Kahlo's lifelong project of self-invention, the exhibition next considers how o...

“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...

This latest version of The Rivals is one part Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his eighteenth-century social satire, one part P. G. Wodehouse and the Roaring Twenties, plus a dash of topical humour such as references to the television series Survivor . It is not a mocktail that will be to everyone's taste, but it is clearly a labour of love for director Tom Littler. This attempt to reimagine Sheridan’s comedy of manners and modernise its references frequently succeeds, yet it also produces some awkward moments. Elements such as the anachronism of a duel set in the 1920s or the unnecessary aside about nudity in a bathroom scene are jarring and forced. Indeed, too often, the drive to provoke laughter at any cost appears to dominate the production, resulting in moments that feel strained and tonally uneven. This approach undermines the original and intelligent concept of relocating Sheridan’s play to a period whose literature was often similarly dismissed as superficial but which was al...

This year’s big and gloriously gay panto from the “He’s Behind You!” gang has burst into the Charing Cross Theatre, and it has arrived like it owns the place. Beauty and the Beast: A Horny Love Story brings back several familiar faces, including the incomparable Matthew Baldwin, who now plays the mother of two gay children living at a petrol station in the Scottish Highlands. Baldwin is every bit as majestic as you imagine a woman in a fluorescent tabard can be. Laura Anna-Mead playing Bonnie, the frequently ignored lesbian daughter, bounces through the show with a delightful energy, while Matt Kennedy completely charms as Bertie, the titular beauty. As his beastly counterpart Keanu Adolphus Johnson is ferociously fabulous. Chris Lane earns his boos and hisses as Cornelius, the villainous brother whose moral compass has a limp arrow, while Dani Mirels deserves her cheers as the blue-haired enchantress who finds love. However, again this year, it is Baldwin who storms the stage. With a...

In 1925, when Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels was first staged, it was a succès de scandale. The Lord Chancellor, London’s theatre censor, barely approved it; a woman protested against it in the theatre; and the Burgomaster of The Hague shut the production down entirely. A century later, the shock value has largely faded. Women having premarital sex, perhaps sharing a lover, and then getting drunk together and comparing experiences are no longer considered to be quite as scandalous. Yet if the shock of Fallen Angels has largely vanished, its humour endures, along with Coward’s satirical targets: the double standard of expectations for men’s and women’s behaviour, the challenge of sustaining passion in long-term relationships, and the persistent hypocrisy surrounding sexual conduct. The work was one of Coward’s early successes, and the play bears the marks of the playwright’s developing craft. The drunkenness scene is pushed to its limits, while the use of comic devices, such as the overl...

It is easy to misremember Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady as simply another musical romcom, but this superb production reminds us that it is rooted in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion . Along with the beguiling love story, there is a sharp and insightful commentary on class, gender, and the social forces that shape us. This is a transformation tale with something to say, and this first-rate staging gets the balance exactly right between fairy tale romance and pointed social critique. The beloved story of the Cockney flower girl who blossoms into a lady and the brilliant but blinkered academic, who finds he has a heart after all, is presented with uncommon clarity and warmth. It is not only the tale of Eliza’s metamorphosis, a working class woman discovering her independence, her identity, and her voice. It is also about the detached and self assured middle class academic Henry Higgins learning, sometimes painfully, what it means to truly listen. Simbi Akande is a radiant Eliza Doolittl...

John le Carré’s landmark espionage tale remains a defining work of the genre. At the height of the Cold War, spymaster Alec Leamas has just seen one of his most trusted agents killed. Ready at last to abandon the service, he is instead drawn into a final, intricate scheme meant to topple his old adversary, Mundt, head of East Germany’s foreign intelligence apparatus. Leamas is only required to present himself as a whiskey-soaked cynic who is willing to betray his country - a role that comes all too naturally to a man who has grown tired of every trick in the trade. Yet two forces could unravel this cunning plan: the romantic resurrection of Leamas' long-extinguished idealism, or the dawning suspicion that he is a pawn, rather than a player, in someone else’s unforgiving game. David Eldridge’s adaptation and Jeremy Herrin’s meticulous staging capture the novel’s bleak, noir-tinged world with striking fidelity. Even the heavy burden of exposition, required to guide the audience throu...

It seems like an impossible task. Can you really squeeze all of the incidents and characters of one of Dickens' sprawling novels into a two-hour theatrical production and have all of the people played by only three actors? Amazingly, the Guildford Shakespeare Company manages to do just that. This theatrical version of Dickens' semi-autobiographical masterpiece is remarkably faithful to the original story, and somehow the small cast brings to life each of the author's wonderfully eccentric creations. From the ever optimistic Mr Micawber to the unctuous Uriah Heep every figure David Copperfield encounters on his life-journey becomes a believable and engaging personage. As in the novel, we begin at the moment of David's birth and end with his marriage to a paragon of Victorian virtue. Along the way we are introduced to a plethora of weird characters and must navigate a convoluted plot that is riddled with coincidence. Refreshingly in this telling, the familiar Dickensian...

Murder, She Didn’t Write began as a long-form improv experiment by the Bristol company Degrees of Error. Created in the early 2010s as a playful spin on classic whodunnits, it has grown into a fully improvised murder mystery powered by audience input. Every performance becomes a unique story that exists for one night only. This mix of sharp comedy and a cleverly unfolding case has made it a Fringe favourite and has carried the troupe all the way to the West End. Guided by the detective Agatha Crusty, the audience chooses the location, a key prop, the victim and the killer. The performers then build the narrative in real time, turning wild suggestions into a coherent plot. When we saw the show, the cast crafted a tale around an orange artificial leg and a group of suspects in Bradford, while weaving in extra suggestions, such as a support group for Titanic survivors. Scenes stayed tight and punchy, and the troupe bounced off one another with extraordinary skill. They manage to mine eve...

Bryan Cranston’s star shines brightly in Ivo Van Hove’s splendid revival of Arthur Miller’s 1946 masterpiece. Cranston is a completely compelling presence as Joe Keller, the kindly older businessman who plays imaginary games with neighbourhood children. His portrayal is simply remarkable as this pleasant veneer is peeled away and the war profiteer and self-serving sophist beneath it are revealed. The games he shares with the children echo the ones he plays with his family and friends, whom he draws into colluding with his pretence of innocence and with the web of rationalisations he has spun for his past actions. Miller’s work carries an epic weight that Van Hove captures with his sparse staging, and Cranston’s performance evokes the moral authority and emotional force of Greek tragedy. As Joe’s wife, Kate, whose belief in her husband is tied to her certainty that her son survived the war, Marianne Jean-Baptiste also gives an unforgettable performance. The strong cast is completed by P...

End is the third play in David Eldridge's trilogy about couples at different stages of their relationships. In this final instalment, Alfie (Clive Owens) and Julie (Saskia Reeves) confront Alfie’s imminent death from cancer. Their exchanges are at once humorous and deeply affecting as they revisit memories, moments of happiness, regrets, and past conflicts. Plans for the funeral become conversations about dying and tentative imaginings of what might lie ahead. Each of the three plays is set in the morning, a liminal period between night and day that suggests transition and vulnerability. However, in this instance, the strictly limited timeframe feels somewhat contrived. Too much is compressed into a span that in reality would unfold over several days. Dividing the play into a series of distinct scenes with overlapping discussions might have made for greater verisimilitude and prevented some of the abrupt changes in tone and subject matter. Within ninety minutes all five of Kübler...

“Life isn’t a game. It’s a ride.” This zany Canadian musical takes that mantra and blasts it into orbit. The setup is simple: six teens from the Saint Cassian Chamber Choir of Uranium City, Saskatchewan die in a roller-coaster accident. After that, the weirdness ramps up fast. The afterlife is presided over by a robot named The Amazing Karnak, a mechanical oracle who foresaw their deaths and calmly predicts his own. He informs the teens that one of them can return to life, but only if the vote is unanimous. What follows is a series of musical pleas as each teen lays out not just the life they lived, but the one they fantasised about. Their stories spill out in songs that swing between comedy and heartbreak. We meet the town overachiever, the macho Ukrainian immigrant, the closeted Taco Bell employee, the eager-to-please nice girl and even a teen whose identity is a complete mystery. This show is a gem. It sparkles with self-deprecating wit, meta jokes and killer performances. Baylie Ca...

Ani is a successful academic who lectures on Milton and has recently won an award for her latest book. She is in a relationship with a sensitive, gentle man, and on the surface, she seems to have it all. Yet beneath her success, Ani harbours a preoccupation with violent pornography which threatens to undermine both her personal and professional life. Sophia Chetin-Leuner’s drama explores two intertwined themes: the transgressive nature of sexual fantasies which gain their erotic power from being taboo and the fact that obsessive behaviour often stems from unresolved trauma. Ani’s addiction to porn and her excessive masturbation initially serve to numb her grief over her mother’s death. However over time, they begin to erode both her relationships and career. These themes are then developed through literary concepts, primarily drawn from Milton. The play opens with a reference to the Narcissus myth, which is later illuminated in Ani’s lecture on Paradise Lost , where she examines Milton...

In a medium-secure hospital, Naomi introduces a Caribbean cooking class as part of a therapeutic rehabilitation programme. She arrives with an almost naive optimism and goodwill, ready to face the various challenges presented by her three pupils. Ty is verbose, hyperactive, and craving attention. The newcomer, Daniel, is withdrawn and cautious, while the veteran, Leroy, remains stoic and quietly resigned to institutional life. Cooking together tests their social skills and gradually creates bonds none of them expected. Although set in an institution for people who struggle to cope with the outside world, Sophia Griffin’s After Sunday becomes a broader metaphor for human existence in general. The narrative moves through triumph and disappointment, loss and laughter, anger and camaraderie, estrangement and reconciliation. Even when bureaucracy cancels the cooking class, a sense of hope lingers. Change and growth may come slowly, often in small increments, but they do come. After Sunday ...

Coven seeks to transform the seventeenth-century obsession with witches into a musical in the spirit of Six . The historical horror becomes an anachronistic retelling inspired by the Pendle Witch Trials and by the idea that Jenet Device, a child witness in the 1612 trials, later became a victim of the dark arts hysteria in 1633. In the first act, Jenet is imprisoned with several women accused of witchcraft although their 'crimes' really consist of practicing natural healing, assisting in childbirth, or offending powerful men. All are victims of a repressive patriarchy, an authoritarian church, and a deeply corrupt legal system. However, the portrayal of these women and their stories feels heavy-handed, and by the end of Act I the central narrative and main character remain uncertain. Only in the second act, through a flashback that explores Jenet’s psyche, do we learn her history and recognise her as the true protagonist. The scattered plot threads from the first act then begi...

When considering this stage adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley , it is difficult to avoid comparisons with the acclaimed 1999 film starring Matt Damon as Ripley and Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf, or with the understated 2024 television miniseries featuring Andrew Scott in the title role. Yet, even among such distinguished company, this theatrical version of Patricia Highsmith’s psychological thriller manages to hold its own. It does not seek to create the lush atmosphere of the film, nor does it achieve the moody subtlety of the series, but it effectively conveys the erotic and moral tension of the novel. Although the opening felt somewhat awkward, Ed McVey gradually grew into the role of the ingratiating and immoral Ripley, and from his first appearance, Bruce Herbelin-Earle was entirely convincing as the capricious and flirtatious Dickie. Maisie Smith gives a strong performance as the alternately suspicious and gullible Marge and the rest of the cast demonstrates an impressive versa...

Nancy Farino’s debut play Fatherland tells the story of Joy, a young woman persuaded by her impulsive father, who curiously shares the name of George Orwell's protagonist in 1984 , to join him on a quixotic journey of discovery. However, it is a trip that in many ways is also a retreat for both of them from their current reality. Heartwarming and humorous, the play explores a parent and child relationship in which the parent has never truly grown up. Winston is a perennial optimist with a string of failed relationships who has recently reinvented himself as a self-styled life coach and who now finds himself in trouble. Coincidentally, daughter Joy is facing the collapse of both her relationship and her career when Winston convinces her to join him aboard a refurbished school bus and to trace their family roots in Ireland. Their odyssey is filled with humour and affection, offering sharp insights as Joy learns to understand and accept the engaging, irrepressible, and often irrespo...

This exhibition is the first comprehensive showcase devoted to Joseph Wright’s celebrated candlelit works, featuring pieces from 1765 to 1773. Wright of Derby emerges as a master of contrast, using the interplay of shadow and illumination to craft scenes that are both dramatic and thought-provoking. Evoking the intensity of earlier masters such as Caravaggio and drawing on the tradition of tenebrism, Wright’s manipulation of light and shadow imbues each scene with tension and theatricality. Figures gather around an array of objects, from classical sculptures and scientific tools to animal specimens and anatomical curiosities. Through these attentive observers, Wright examines the act of seeing itself, inviting viewers to reflect on curiosity, morality, and human perception. Beyond his technical brilliance in rendering light, he uses nocturnal settings to probe deeper, darker themes, including mortality, melancholy, and the sublime. His work resonates with an underlying sense of questio...

Performed by the exquisite Nederlands Dans Theatre, this brilliant production explores monumental existential questions. Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney have crafted an interconnected trilogy of meditations on existence and extinction. The first sequence confronts the loss of species and natural phenomena as our planet transforms under the pressure of climate change. The depiction of vanished life forms and global shifts is mesmerising. A monologue from a climate change denier, interpreted through a wonderfully loose and expressive performance to spoken word, adds both irony and poignancy. The second sequence reflects on humanity as a species defined by its intellect and suggests what might lead us toward our own extinction. Abstract ideas are translated into movement with remarkable clarity and emotional power, creating an experience that is deeply affecting. Figures in Extinction fearlessly engages with immense themes. As Crystal Pite notes in the programme, “We began with the desir...

This production of Othello marks David Harewood’s return to a role he first played at the National Theatre in 1997. His performance is commanding and engaging as he portrays a man undone both by his devious subordinate and by his own surrender to the “green-eyed monster.” Harewood dominates the stage whenever he appears, offering a richly nuanced interpretation that makes Shakespeare’s tragic hero both terrifying and sympathetic. His remarkable performance is only matched by Toby Jones’ compelling portrayal of Iago, the master of malice. Jones is delightful as he sneers and snarls while manipulating the trusting Othello, and the scenes between the two men are the highlights of the production. Both actors deliver Shakespeare’s lines with clarity and natural ease, making the language feel immediate and comprehensible. It is a refreshing change from the overly formal intonation often heard in classical productions. Unfortunately, Caitlin Fitzgerald’s Desdemona is less effective. At times...