theater

The theatrical prequel to the Duffer Brothers’ smash-hit Netflix series is to shut down in the West End and on Broadway this winter, after selling more than 1.5m tickets The London and New York productions of Stranger Things: The First Shadow , the theatrical prequel to Netflix’s TV blockbuster, are to both close this winter. The stage spectacular will have run for just over three years in the We…

Audience members said baby’s cooing and gurgling ruined Branagh’s return to the RSC after 30 years, with some seeking refunds Boatswain! The opening scene of Shakespeare’s seminal play The Tempest, in which Prospero conjures up a violent storm to shipwreck his treacherous brother, is enough to wake up anyone – let alone a baby. Audience members at a matinee performance of the Royal Shakespeare Co…

A new West End blockbuster puts Ol’ Blue Eyes in the spotlight and features the superstar’s hits including One for My Baby and Come Fly With Me. Take a first look Photographs by Tristram Kenton/The Guardian Continue reading...

John Lithgow won his third Tony Award for "Giant," while Laurie Metcalf took home her third statue for "Death of a Salesman" at the 2026 Tony Awards.

'Liberation,' Bess Wohl's playful imagining of her mother's feminist consciousness-raising group in 1970s Ohio, deservedly wins the Tony for best play

The Public Theater, New York Susanna Kaysen’s retelling of her time in a psychiatric hospital in the 60s became an Oscar-winning movie in the 90s and now it’s an elegant, if limited, play In 2021, the singer-songwriter Aimee Mann (perhaps best known, as a solo artist, for her contributions to the Paul Thomas Anderson film Magnolia) released an album called Queens of the Summer Hotel, a collection…

Howells puts in a strong turn as Henry Paget, a Victorian marquess who blows his inheritance on hosting wild parties and staging gender-defying theatrical performances Playing the shy Colin in Russell T Davies’s 2021 TV drama It’s a Sin, Callum Scott Howells had to be the humble caterpillar compared to Olly Alexander’s extravagant butterfly. But now Howells gets an upgrade to full butterfly statu…

The Broadway hit delivers all the bangers in telling the R&B star’s New York coming of age story in L.A. premiere.

Pitlochry festival theatre This stripped-down show with a maudlin set of songs makes for the most reluctant of musicals, but this is a production that has the confidence to be silent or stately When Once opened on Broadway in 2012, later to enjoy a run in London’s West End , it was greeted with a degree of surprise. You can see why. In terms of the Great White Way, it is an anti-musical. Based on…

The smutty hockey show gets the Off-Broadway treatment with shirtless scenes, hilarious one-liners and a Liza Minelli send-up Walking into the Culture Club in West Chelsea, New York, for a performance of Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody last week, I was met by three ghosts left over from when the space was called the McKittrick Hotel and it hosted the immersive spookfest, Sleep No …

Brixton House, London Paula Varjack’s kinetic play uses lip syncing and dance routines to show how prejudice turned a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ into a career disaster The year is 2004 and the Super Bowl halftime show is about to begin. What would later become known as “Nipplegate” – in which Justin Timberlake ripped part of Janet Jackson’s bodice, briefly exposing her right breast – will be broadcas…

Soho Theatre Walthamstow, London The Drag Race star brings nuance to the vocals and has a hoot with a frisky script but this bio-drama is too limited and ultimately cramps her style Drag Race fans already know that the series’ “queen of all queens” Jinkx Monsoon does a mean Judy Garland impression from her lurid account of a threesome with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. This revival of Peter Quil…

Royal Exchange, Manchester Rory Mullarkey’s play, expertly directed by James Macdonald, is a bold attempt to encapsulate a whole city in decisive events from across three centuries The theme of the Royal Exchange’s 50th anniversary season is “a homecoming”. But whose home do they mean? Who lives here? Who belongs? Is it, for example, the heavily pregnant Annie Donovan, an Irish immigrant who, in …

'Brigadoon' soars at Pasadena Playhouse but 'Flower Drum Song' only intermittently comes to life at Little Tokyo's Aratani Theatre despite best intentions.

Grayson the Musical will explore ‘identity, creativity and self-acceptance … with life coaching from a six-foot teddy bear named Alan’ Grayson Perry’s life story is to be told in an “outrageous” new stage musical co-created with the composer of Jerry Springer: The Opera. Grayson the Musical is a portrait of the artist from his childhood in Chelmsford to his international fame as a Turner prize-wi…

Bush theatre, London Married aspiring standups confront on stage what they’re concealing in real life, in Piers Black’s compelling two-hander Standup is performance in extremis, self-projection in the raw – and has long appealed to dramatists interested in the faces we present to and conceal from one another. That seems to be the territory of I’m Not Being Funny, too, as we meet two young parents…

Shakespeare’s Globe, London Forgoing Brecht’s usual distanciation, Anna Jordan’s new translation and Michelle Terry’s lovable performance bring out the humanity of a woman doing what’s necessary to keep herself and her family alive This production of Bertolt Brecht’s masterpiece seems to break the first rule of Brecht’s epic theatre, which requires emotional distance. It conjures Brecht’s upside …

Actors Vivica A Fox, Kara Young and Mallori Johnson on subverting revenge tropes as Aleshea Harris’s play storms on to the screen Kara Young remembers the fervor around Is God Is’s off-Broadway run in 2018. Playwright Aleshea Harris’s revenge tale ran at New York’s Soho Rep theater from February through May of that year. Young was performing in a different show at the time, but she knew she neede…

Lyric Hammersmith, London The dissolute aristocrats from 1895 remain sharply funny, and bitingly relevant, in this flamboyant new spin Oscar Wilde’s comedy was billed as a “play of modern life” when it premiered at the Haymarket theatre in London in 1895. It is just as modern now in its central, chiming theme: the clandestine corruptions of outwardly squeaky-clean members of parliament. Sir Rober…

Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, London The detective and his sidekick return for a new case by Joel Horwood in an alfresco setting that playfully refers to nearby attractions Outdoor drama is a pleasure complicated by the plot twists of the season. A day of almost hourly showers left the evening air so ominously moist for Sherlock Holmes that the detective could reasonably have announced: “The ra…