Hugh Bonneville is devastating as CS Lewis in his return to the West End

This moving revival of William Nicholson’s Shadowlands turns a love story into a powerful exploration of grief, illness and shaken faith

Yes Minister returns to tackle dementia, trigger warnings and the woke brigade

Griff Rhys Jones and Clive Francis revive Hacker and Sir Humphrey in a topical farewell that probes a changing Britain

Rattigan’s Man and Boy feels eerily relevant after the Epstein scandal

Power, money and sexual leverage drive the revival at the National, but it strains too hard to jazz things up experimentally

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry deserves to be a West End hit

Stoppard’s masterpiece makes a dazzling return to the stage

Men Behaving Badly’s return is a dose of nostalgic merriment

This slick American Psycho is a triumph of style over substance

The Tempest reinvented as a breath of fresh air

Experimental theatre-maker Tim Crouch turns Shakespeare’s valedictory play on its head in a gimmicky but compelling fashion

This gut-wrenching play moved me deeply – but grief porn is perverse

By making you feel rather than think, Luke Norris’s Guess How Much I Love You? is something of a creative cop-out

Michael Sheen launches Wales’s new National Theatre in triumphant style

With a few minor changes, the actor makes Our Town, a 1930s classic about American small-town life, feel closer to home

Is this show about a working-class Cambridge student the new Fleabag?

This adaptation of High Noon could never rival the classic film

Sheridan Smith is mesmerising in Ayckbourn’s nightmarish comedy

Patricia Hodge is a gloriously daft Mrs Malaprop in this comic masterpiece

Christopher Biggins is criminally sidelined in this brash Robin Hood

I initially felt sorry for him, but perhaps he’s better off sitting this one out in his dressing-room

Catherine Tate’s smutfest panto is for adults with money to burn

Is the London Palladium’s Sleeping Beauty worth the £275 ticket? Oh no it isn’t!

This Top Hat is a sparkling, glamorous dose of escapism

Tap-dancing its way to London, the buoyant stage version of the 1935 Fred and Ginger film is a glitzy Christmas treat

Oh, Mary! boasts the funniest performance in the West End

The camp frivolity, arch gags and OTT antics of this comedy about Abraham Lincoln’s wife bring the year to a screamingly silly end

This blissfully funny JB Priestley revival is an absolute blast

The real joy of Timothy Sheader’s adaptation of When We Are Married lies in his cast’s masterful performances

This year’s Royal Ballet Nutcracker has the best Sugar Plum Fairy I’ve ever seen

It’s worth seeing this spellbinding production, however Crimboed-out you’re currently feeling

This Jewish family drama captures the dread-filled mood of 2025

Sam Grabiner’s Christmas Day yields a mass of provocations about Israel, identity and trauma

Felicity Kendal returns to Stoppard for a poignant trip down memory lane

Two weeks after the playwright’s death, this production of Indian Ink takes on an undeniable pathos

Paranormal Activity on stage will make you jump in your seat

Punchdrunk’s reworking of the original horror film is a spook-a-thon mounted with devious technical finesse

Only a Scrooge could fail to smile at Christmas Carol Goes Wrong

With wobbly scenery and roaring egos, Mischief’s take on Dickens is delightfully daft – but is their formula wearing a bit thin?

This tuneful Treasure Island is destination theatre at its heartiest

Bristol Old Vic’s swashbuckling staging of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic is the perfect show for Christmas

Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan can’t save this near inaccessible version of the Irish classic

JM Synge’s poetry was not well served in this staging of The Playboy of the Western World

Forget panto, Into the Woods is theatre’s classiest Christmas show

This beautiful production of Stephen Sondheim’s fairytale musical is good enough to outlive the festive season

Last night, a talking tiger taught me a lesson I’ll never forget

Kathryn Hunter is a dazzling last-minute lead in the Young Vic’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

This BFG adaptation is fun, but sanitised. Would Roald Dahl approve?

While the puppetry and visual feats are impressive, the RSC’s show lacks crunch and bite

The RSC’s Forsyte Saga is a gorgeous, beautifully acted epic

Forget the recent TV travesty, get to Stratford-upon-Avon to see this superb take on Galsworthy’s sprawling study of the upper-middle class

This enchanting Pinocchio is one of the best family shows of the season

The timeless tale of a mischievous boy puppet gets a splendid overhaul in this musical version at Shakespeare’s Globe

The Ugly Sisters and a Rachel Reeves gag steal this panto

The Hackney Empire panto has lost some of its characteristic cheeky swagger this year

This festive, feel-good Singin’ in the Rain is a brolly good show

Raz Shaw’s staging of the classic musical at Manchester’s Royal Exchange is brilliantly executed and a total crowd-pleaser

A Christmas Carol so vital it improves on the original

This inventive new version of Charles Dickens’s classic cautionary tale draws on Sheffield’s own carols

Janie Dee brings a dash of Ab Fab to this Noël Coward gem

Paddington The Musical is a funny, feel-good sensation that looks set to run and run

The theatre is alive once again with this glorious Sound of Music

A cocaine-snorting Bottom turns Shakespeare’s Dream into a nightmare