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Arifa Akbar

Arifa Akbar is the Guardian's chief theatre critic

April 2025

  • ‘People like me can do this’ … Sheehy, left, with Hannah Morrish in The Brightening Air.

    ‘To hell with RP’ … how surprise Olivier nominee Rosie Sheehy is following in Richard Burton’s footsteps

  • Here I go again … Sara Poyzer as Donna in Mamma Mia!, a role she played for 10 years.

    Super troupers! How do stars of long-running hits from Mamma Mia! to The Lion King keep the pizzazz pumping?

  • An Asian man looks up, flanked by two Asian women and a man; two of the people are reaching up to his face

    Speed review – comic tale of road rage and race is approachably provocative

  • Millicent Wong as Li Lin in Shanghai Dolls at Kiln Theatre.

    Shanghai Dolls review – treachery and affinity between the women of Mao’s world

  • Midnight Cowboy: A New Musical review – gigolo and conman bromance builds to a shocking climax

  • Manhunt review – strangely plodding examination of life and death of Raoul Moat

  • ‘The violence is relentless. I don’t understand it’: Simon Russell Beale faces up to Shakespeare’s goriest play

  • Container review – avant-garde experiment evokes the vocalised sound of online scrolling

  • The Play’s the Thing: A One-Person Hamlet review – soliloquies that make the skin tingle

  • Just Between Ourselves review – Ayckbourn’s marital malaise comedy has a proto dark side

  • Rhinoceros review – Ionesco’s absurdist classic is taken around the horn

  • (This Is Not a) Happy Room review – Amanda Abbington on the guest list for toxic reunion

March 2025

  • Scarlett Strallen (centre) in Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Musical at Theatre Royal Bath.

    Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Musical review – no frights, no thrills … this mashup is a mystery

  • Like a comical 007 … Ewan Wardrop, centre, in North By Northwest.

    North By Northwest review – Emma Rice takes Hitchcock in delightful new directions

  • ‘I care about how it permeated day-to-day life’ … Pickett at the Almeida, where 1536 will be staged.

    ‘I don’t buy it’ … Ava Pickett on her play about Anne Boleyn’s treason and incest

  • Playhouse Creatures.

    Playhouse Creatures review – backstage banter with the pioneering first women of theatre

  • Karen review – to hell and back with an ex and the office nemesis

  • Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors review – batty antics with a Rocky Horror bloodsucker

  • Cry-Baby, the Musical review – John Waters’ teen rebels will have you in tears of joy

  • Clueless review – all back to the 90s for a musical of the movie? As if!

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