REVIEW: Theatre Picasso

In a suite of rooms on the fourth floor of the Blavatnik Building, Tate Modern’s autumn exhibition is tucked a bit out of the way. It is a good location for the behind-the-scenes entrance to Theatre Picasso, an imaginative new ‘staging’ of Tate’s fantastic Picasso collection by Wu Tsang and Enrique Fuenteblanca.

Walk in, past a short video of Picasso dressed as Carmen, struggling to light a cigarette and contain his giggles, past wire storage racks displaying some theatrically obscene sketches, a voraciously snogging couple and some of the most astonishingly beautiful paintings of the 20^th century. The almost casual nature of how they are hung brings you up short and makes you look at the familiar images with fresh eyes.

Turn a corner and walk along the back of a flimsy black studded wall that could easily be the back of a theatre set and walk into the darkness, confronted by the fleshy curves of The Painter and the Model. There are portraits, film clips, set designs and drawings to entrance as you gradually come out onto the main stage itself. Here, you are greeted by the reason for staging the show in the first place, The Three Dancers, painted a hundred years ago this year. You can walk off the stage and look back at this wonder of fluidity, colour and movement or take a seat and watch some of the celebrated 1956 film, The Mystery of Picasso.

It is a triumph. Our teen reviewer adored it. One grouch. The vast majority of the work on display is in the Tate’s permanent collection which is free to visit (albeit it not necessarily on show). It has been brilliantly brought together to entrance a new generation BUT tickets are £15 adults, £5 ages 12–18. That is £40 for a family of four for an exhibition that should perhaps instead have been ‘the new Picasso Rooms at Tate Modern’, a highlight of this fabulous FREE museum.

Theatre Picasso Tate Modern, 17 September–12 April 2026

Tickets: £15 adults, £5 ages 12–18 (and Tate Collective 16–25), U12s free.

Emily Turner