These Theatre Thoughts

  Date: 7th March 2025  Seat: Stalls Slips 12 Stars: 5 There’s a moment, halfway through Jamie Lloyd’s Much Ado About Nothing , where Tom Hiddleston - suave, composed, effortlessly cool - finds himself completely buried under an avalanche of pink confetti. He writhes, he flails, he attempts (and fails) to maintain dignity, and the audience, already on the edge of riotous laughter, absolutely loses it. That’s the show in a nutshell. After a few years of restrained minimalism, Lloyd is back in full technicolour chaos mode, and thank God for that. This isn’t Shakespeare treated like a precious artifact. It’s Shakespeare like a house party - messy, sweaty, loud, and, crucially, fun. From the second you step into the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, the atmosphere is different. The pre-show playlist isn’t the usual classical filler - it’s a blast of 90s club bangers, the kind you forgot you knew every lyric to. The audience is already buzzing before the play even starts. Then - boom - ...

  Date: 3rd March 2025  Stars: 2 Revenge. Bloodlust. Family trauma. And, apparently, the urgent need to assault the audience with as much noise, nonsense, and meaningless theatrics as humanly possible. Welcome to Elektra at the Duke of York’s Theatre - a production so aggressively self-indulgent that I started wondering if it was some elaborate social experiment to see how long people could endure it before walking out.  Brie Larson, Oscar-winner, Marvel superhero, and now, victim of a director with too much creative control, commits fully to the role. She stomps, she wails into microphones, she twists herself into contorted poses like she’s trying to summon a demon. She sings the word ‘no’ every time it comes up. It’s raw, it’s relentless, and it’s utterly exhausting to watch. You can practically see the emotional turmoil radiating off her, but after a while, it just starts feeling like screaming for the sake of screaming.  And then there’s the production itsel...

  Photo credit: Karla Gowlett Date: 28th February 2025  Stars: 4 You know that moment when a toddler kicks off mid-flight, and you think, thank God that’s not my kid ? Well, in Son of a Bitch , it is Marnie’s kid. And worse still, the internet is watching.  After turning heads at the Edinburgh Fringe, Anna Morris’s razor-sharp one-woman play has landed at Southwark Playhouse Borough, bringing with it a tidal wave of dark comedy, brutal honesty, and the kind of social commentary that makes you squirm while you laugh. This isn’t your mum blog version of parenting. This is motherhood unfiltered, uncensored, and completely off the rails.  Marnie is a yoga teacher. Or at least, she was before she found herself at the centre of a viral scandal so big it could make a Kardashian blush. One second, she’s just another busy (overwhelmed) mum juggling life. The next? She’s been caught on camera, mid-air, calling her four-year-old son… well, let’s just say, it’s not a term o...

  Date: 26th February 2025  Seat: G2 - EM Forster Theatre, Tonbridge  Stars: 5 There’s always a slight hesitation when watching a stage production on screen. Will it still feel as magical? Will the comedy still land? Will Lady Bracknell’s entrance still feel like an event? But from the moment this National Theatre production of The Importance of Being Earnest begins, any doubts vanish. What made it such a triumph on stage - the razor-sharp wit, the pitch-perfect timing, and the sheer joy of the performances - is all beautifully preserved, and if anything, the camera adds an extra layer of intimacy, pulling us in closer to relish every arched eyebrow, every perfectly timed pause, and every deliciously ridiculous moment of Oscar Wilde’s most beloved comedy. A Classic with a Contemporary Spark Director Max Webster has taken Wilde’s famously witty and wonderfully absurd play and given it a fresh, dynamic energy that makes it feel as lively and relevant today as it must have ...

  Photo credit: Mariano Gobbi Date: 22nd February 2025  Seat: Unallocated Stars: 3 We all know reality TV is fake, right? The sob stories, the rigged votes, the contestant who just happens to forget their lyrics at the most dramatic moment – it’s all carefully curated chaos. But what if, in the middle of all that, someone snapped? What if a contestant broke through the illusion, turned to the cameras, and told the audience exactly how much of a scam it all is?  That’s Miss I-Doll .  Written by Tobia Rossi and Oliver Lidert and directed by Ruthie Stephens, this new musical at The Other Palace takes the glossy, auto-tuned world of X Factor and splices it with Squid Game levels of absurdity. Contestants are pitted against each other in increasingly bizarre challenges, all under the watchful eye of “Big Sis,” a disembodied, omnipotent host voiced with eerie cheerfulness by Natalie Casey. It’s camp, it’s chaotic, and it’s utterly unhinged.  Anchoring all this madne...

Photo credit: Mark Senior Date: 7th February 2025  Seat: K28 (Stalls) Stars: 3.5 If you’ve ever sat in a waiting room and thought it was absolute chaos then DocDoc takes that feeling and dials it up to eleven. This internationally acclaimed comedy – having had audiences in 37 countries laughing themselves into a medical emergency – has finally checked in for its UK debut. And trust me, it’s just what the doctor ordered.  The premise is comedy gold: Dr. Cooper, a world-renowned specialist in obsessive-compulsive disorders, is running late so his patients, each with their own quirks, anxieties, and neurotic tendencies, are left to their own devices. Meanwhile, poor Anna (Isabella Leung), the practice’s long-suffering assistant, is desperately trying to keep things from spiralling into total bedlam. Spoiler alert: she fails spectacularly. Instead of a calm and orderly queue, this bunch of misfits take self-help to a whole new (and completely misguided) level, resulting in misun...