Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Summerfolk, National Theatre review - Gorky's self-deluding intelligentsia under sharp comic scrutiny
Heather Neill
Wed, 03/18/2026 - 04:00
Nina and Moses …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 12:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 4, 2025
David Harewood and Toby Jones at odds
Perspectives on Shakespeare's tragedy have changed over the decades. As Nonso Anozie said when playing the title role for Cheek by Jowl in 2004, white a…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:42PM[SHARE]Wednesday, September 24, 2025
Indhu Rubasingham's tenure gets off to a bold, comic start
The word "after" can be elastic when a modern writer is inspired by a classic. Nima Taleghani here stretches it to breaking point, …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:36PM[SHARE]Tuesday, September 2, 2025
Rival Elizabethan playwrights in an up-to-the-minute encounter
The title refers to a line in Henry VI, Part III: the future Richard III boasts that midwives cried, "Oh Jesus bless us, he is …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:48PM[SHARE]Thursday, July 10, 2025
Revisiting Tim Price's dream-set account of the founder of the health service
The National Health Service was established seventy-seven years ago this month. Resident doctors are about to s…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:12PM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Unspoken emotion flows through this late work
Terence Rattigan's rehabilitation - some might almost say deification - as a leading Twentieth Century playwright is complete. As well as academ…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:48PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 19, 2024
Magic is minimised in Jamie Lloyd's pared-back version
Shakespeare must have relished the opportunities brought by the indoor Blackfriars Theatre in 1611: sound magnified in a way impossible…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:24PM[SHARE]Saturday, November 30, 2024
Shakespeare's comedy of identity confusion benefits from a 1940s setting
It's all too easy to underplay the melancholy of Shakespeare's comedy of divided twins, misplaced " sometimes narciss…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:06AM[SHARE]Sunday, October 6, 2024
J Smith-Cameron and Mark Rylance bring the classic characters to life
"Captain" Jack Boyle is a fantasist, a mythmaker, a storyteller. He relishes an audience - usually his sidekick, Joxer. …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:54PM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Adrian Lukis revisits his disruptive character from the beloved BBC television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an actor tends to take a sympathe…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:36AM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 29, 2024
The legendary small-screen drama still resonates in a new medium
Prolific playwright James Graham was born in 1982, the year Alan Bleasdale's unforgettable series was televised. From Notting…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:48PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 9, 2024
Queer themes and music take centre stage in a café setting
In Shakespeare's day theatre was regarded as "wanton" by those of a Puritan disposition who feared boys dressed as girls could eng…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:06PM[SHARE]Thursday, April 4, 2024
Gemma Whelan discovers a mean streak under Charlotte's respectable bonnet
The Brontë sisters and their ne'er-do-well brother will always make good copy. The brilliance of the women constr…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:02PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 21, 2024
Focused on young life in south London, this hit is as energetic and joyful as ever
The reviews of Tyrell Williams' debut play on its first and second outings at the Bush Theatre were univer…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:48PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 11, 2024
Poltergeist activity in the suburbs remains earth-bound
Reports of supernatural events are always met with either willing belief or dismissive scepticism. The "camps" generally don't have mu…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:42PM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 5, 2023
Unsettling investigation of patriarchal family and sexual relationships has uneven force
As the audience enters, thick mist envelopes the thrust stage and jazz music fills the theatre. The s…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:54PM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 22, 2023
A familiar comedy provides Jeeves-and-Wooster period Christmas fun
Oliver Goldsmith was a literary all-rounder - novelist, poet and playwright - remembered chiefly for one example of each di…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:32PM[SHARE]Wednesday, September 13, 2023
Mature actors bring style and poignancy to Coward's brittle comedy
There is a grainy piece of black and white film on YouTube featuring Noel Coward as the celebrity guest on a 1964 edition …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:25PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 9, 2023
The story of an immigrant family's contribution to American capitalism is still captivating
The frantic world of finance moves fast, its giddy successes and thundering crashes causing ripple…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:10PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 15, 2022
The first home-grown offering at this impressive new space is a playful paean to theatre
The scene is set onstage in the first minutes. And it remains a stage throughout this harmonious prod…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:02PM[SHARE]Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Inua Ellams adds contemporary political thrust to a well-loved classic
Antigone, the forceful young woman who takes on the male establishment, has long resonated with idealists; Sophocles' p…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:37PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 19, 2022
Anupama Chandrasekhar argues, with humour and invention, against political extremism
The young Indian man stepping towards us on the vast Olivier stage is unremarkable enough, slight and boy…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:48PM[SHARE]Monday, October 4, 2021
Youthful Elsinore reflects life in present-day London
It is a truism that every Hamlet is different, depending more than any other play on the casting of the lead. Each production moulds it…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:42PM[SHARE]Thursday, September 30, 2021
This serpentine classic is perfectly placed in every sense
Lucy Bailey's production of Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, first staged at County Hall in 2017, has a few years to make up…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:03PM[SHARE]Friday, July 9, 2021
Thoughtful and funny revival of a familiar classic
Pinter wrote The Dumb Waiter in 1957 (although it wasn't seen in London until 1960) the year before The Birthday Party received its notorio…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:18PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 16, 2021
Live performance, film and digital play combine in this misfired interactive experience
There is a promising production struggling to get out of this muddled concept. Creation Theatre (here …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:33PM[SHARE]Sunday, April 4, 2021
Simon Godwin's debut film is part dressed-down rehearsal, part cinematic flourish
Shakespeare's enduring tale of star-crossed lovers is especially pertinent in a pandemic. The fatal plot twi…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:42PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 11, 2021
Innovative technology places actors virtually in the Palace Theatre, Manchester
The story of Romeo and Juliet is well known, worth revisiting endlessly and always relevant. But there is anot…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:32PM[SHARE]Sunday, January 31, 2021
Free reading for charity of Wycherley's first Restoration comedy
Swaggering rakes, posturing fops, sexual intrigue, illicit encounters, wit, artifice, wigs, fans and beauty spots - these ar…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:54PM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Michelle Terry, John Light and Pearce Quigley lead an inventive cast relishing the comic potential of the Elizabethan stage
What could be better for a lockdown summer night "out" than a virt…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:42AM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 11, 2020
Stef Smith brings exhilarating spirit to a familiar classic
Ibsen's Nora slammed the door on her infantilising marriage in 1879 but the sound of it has continued to reverberate down the year…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:12PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
