Theatre review: Guess How Much I Love You?

The Royal Court opens its seventieth anniversary year with one of its most notorious memes, although I'm not sure I would even count Luke Norris' Guess How Much I Love You Question Mark as part of that tradition, and not just because it doesn't take place in the Upstairs Theatre: The venue has traditionally used dead babies for shock value, but Norris' story takes the possibility of a baby dying and goes somewhere a lot more human and moving. It opens with an unnamed couple halfway through a pregnancy scan, playing Twenty Questions and discussing baby names, partly to distract them from the fact that the sonographer left them abruptly to get a second opinion, and has been gone for an unusually long time. We next meet Her (Rosie Sheehy) and Him (Robert Aramayo) during a sleepless night, after they've received a devastating diagnosis.

Theatre review: High Noon

Billy Crudup has returned to the West End, which could be seen as a brave move but at least he's learned his lesson and is doing his own accent this time. And it's the most American of genres, the Western, as Eric Roth adapts the 1952 movie High Noon: Crudup plays Will Kane, the beloved sheriff of a small New Mexico town, who wants to get his oats and so has married a Quaker. Amy's (Denise Gough) beliefs mean she wouldn't agree to marry him unless he gave up his violent job, and the show opens with a double ceremony on a Sunday morning as the couple get married, followed by Will handing in his badge and gun. But no sooner has he done so than news arrives of unnamed politicians pardoning Frank Miller (understudy Noel White,) the outlaw and right-wing comic book writer who terrorised the town until Will brought him to justice five years earlier.

Theatre review: Already Perfect

It's not explicitly described as an autobiographical show, but Levi Kreis (book, music and lyrics) and Dave Solomon's (additional book and direction) musical Already Perfect stars its Tony Award-winning actor/musician co-creator Levi Kreis, as a Tony Award-winning actor/musician called Levi Kreis, whose boyfriend dumps him by text, apparently because he can't handle his HIV+ status. As a result Levi has a bad matinée and reaches straight for the crystal meth wow that escalated quickly. He does call his Narcotics Anonymous sponsor first and Ben (Yiftach 'Iffy' Mizrahi) arrives in time to stop him from relapsing. As they're in a Broadway dressing room, Ben suggests they use the magic of Dame Theatre to conjure up his younger self so he can confront the things he did back when his name was Matthew (Killian Thomas Lefevre.)

Theatre review: Most Favoured

Three shows into 2026 and I'm already finding the unwelcome theme of shows that are really hard to review - whether that's because they're so impenetrable or because it's barely possible to say anything about them without spoilers. Most Favoured falls firmly into the latter category, a show that's best approached knowing as little as possible, but which is so concise that beyond the very basic premise - a man and woman have a one-night stand, the next morning they both have things to reveal that throw a very different light on what's just happened - it's hard to even approach without giving things away. Even the blurb gave me clues about the major twist, so, basically, you've been warned if you read on. David Ireland's plays have mostly been haunted by the long shadow of sectarianism, but here there's a playful look at the very core beliefs that those religious sects are built on.

Stage-to-screen review: Good Night, and Good Luck

Former Golden Girls guest star George Clooney made his Broadway debut last year in Good Night, and Good Luck, an adaptation of one of his own films from twenty years earlier. One performance was broadcast live on CNN of all places, and that recording has now been added with very little fanfare to Netflix in the UK - possibly to make sure everyone forgets about Jay Kelly a little bit quicker. For David Cromer's production Clooney and Grant Heslov adapt their own script, with Clooney moving up to the lead role of Edward R. Murrow, the 1950s CBS news reporter whose team took on the, at the time seemingly all-powerful, Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy's HUAC witchhunts, most famous on stage as the inspiration for The Crucible, used a panic they themselves had largely created about Communist spies hiding in America, to build a culture of fear where McCarthy was the ultimate arbiter of what was true and who was loyal.

Theatre review: A Ghost in Your Ear

While Paranormal Activity extends in the West End, Hampstead Theatre has its own go at the ghost story with the return of writer/director Jamie Armitage to the Downstairs space, and two ghost stories in one: A man visits the remote house where his estranged father lived and died, to clear out his belongings. He discovers a strange mix of the spartan and the luxurious, with the dead man having apparently lived in dingy quarters, avoiding the grand hallways and well-appointed library - the only room in the house whose contents seem worth anything, but also the one the will demands should be destroyed entirely. While going through the books the narrator starts to find old photos and evidence suggesting his father led a more complicated life than he realised - and as night draws in and he looks into the house's dusty old mirrors, it seems those complications are going to haunt him too, in a very literal sense.

Theatre review: Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

I'm starting 2026 with a show that's already had some upheaval, as Omar Elerian's production of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo is on its third actor in the title role after a month on stage. Peter Forbes is now playing the Tiger, once an apex predator but now starving in a bombed-out cage in Baghdad in 2003. Most of the animals have fled the zoo - generally ending up shot dead soon afterwards - but the Tiger has stoically stayed behind until the arrival of two US marines: Tommy (Patrick Gibson) goads the animal and gets his hand bitten off for his trouble, and Kev (Arinzé Kene) shoots and kills the animal. But Rajiv Joseph's metaphysical drama isn't done with him, and the ghost of the Tiger stalks the ruined city, searching for meaning in an afterlife it never believed in, and haunting the man who killed him until Kev starts to go mad.