The Duchess of Malfi review: Jodie Whittaker can’t save this October 17, 2024 Duchess of Malfi review and star rating: ★★ This overstimulating, overstated adaptation of Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi struggles to find true dramatic depth. Written by English dramatist John Webster around 1612, the revenge tragedy follows the titular Duchess who is widowed but remarries in secret, then has a baby with husband Antonio, who [...]
The Other Place: Life is terrible, the play! October 11, 2024 Greek tragedies revel in stories of rape and incest and trauma and abuse but we’re at least partly shielded from these horrors by 2000 years of distance and the prism of epic heroes and demigods. Transplant those same themes into a modern family home and, well, it hits different. The Other Place is playwright Alexander [...]
Mrs Doubtfire musical on song for West End’s Shaftsbury Theatre October 8, 2024 The success of West End musical Mrs Doubtfire has helped boost the finances of the firm behind London’s Shaftsbury Theatre. The business behind the venue has reported a turnover of £26.2m for 2023, up from the £17m it achieved in 2022. Newly-filed accounts with Companies House also show its pre-tax profit jumped from £1m to [...]
Cush Jumbo: On playing Hamlet and choosing which cake to eat October 3, 2024 There are two types of people: those who already know about Cush Jumbo, one of the finest British actors of her generation, and those who are soon to find out. The star of wildly successful TV shows including The Good Wife, Criminal Record and Deadwater Fell, Jumbo cemented her A-List credentials when she became the [...]
Gaggenau: Luxury home appliance firm seals 10-year West End move October 1, 2024 Luxury home appliance firm Gaggenau has signed a 10-year lease for a new global flagship store
Waiting for Godot review: Ben Whishaw finds joy in Samuel Beckett’s wondrous misery September 20, 2024 Waiting for Godot review and star rating: ★★★★ Waiting for Godot has been called ‘the play of the 20th century,’ but that accolade doesn’t make staging Samuel Beckett’s most significant piece easy. The Irish playwright, who died in 1989, banned tampering with the set or script in adaptations. It hampers creativity somewhat, but even so, [...]
West End: Tourist tax ‘disadvantage’ costs retailers hundreds of millions September 16, 2024 Retail business in London missed out on a projected £220m in the first half of 2024 due to the ongoing effect of the so-called tourist tax, despite continued growth in international visitor numbers. The number of international visitors to London was three per cent above pre-pandemic levels, but spending in the West End fell nearly [...]
Why Am I So Single? review: Six the Musical creators return with the most fun new show in the West End September 13, 2024 Why Am I So Single? review and star rating: ★★★★ “People would say to us, Six is amazing, but when’s the next one coming?” Why Am I So Single? writers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss say in a programme note. The new show from the writers of Six, which has one of the most streamed [...]
The Real Thing play review: Wonderfully, expertly pointless September 4, 2024 The Real Thing | The Old Vic | ★★★★☆ | The term “staginess” is usually meant as an insult but there’s a wonderful staginess to Tom Stoppard’s play of ideas The Real Thing. It’s a twisty, unabashedly academic drawing room drama in which it’s never quite clear whether the room in question is a real place [...]
The pockets of London propping up the prime commercial property market August 20, 2024 The commercial prime market is, for want of a better word, doing OK. In the City, leasing increased by one per cent over its long-term average in the second quarter, while overall demand was 12 per cent below its long-term average. For a sector pummelled by downsizing amid changes to weekly working patterns, it’s not [...]