Friday, May 15, 2026
Stage Kiss, Hampstead Theatre review - amiable comedy full of screwball touches and sly humour
Helen Hawkins
Sat, 05/16/2026 - 10:38
Sarah Ruhl brings a wel…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:05PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 14, 2026
1536 review - sparky tale with a dark underbelly, as three Essex girls take on the patriarchy
Helen Hawkins
Thu, 05/14/2026 - 23:59
Ava Pickett’s debut t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:59PM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Firewing, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs review - potentially touching debut doesn’t quite ignite
Helen Hawkins
Wed, 04/29/2026 - 09:15
David Pearson's firs…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:15AM[SHARE]Friday, April 10, 2026
A Doll's House, Almeida Theatre review - updated version of Ibsen proves a dispiriting watch
Helen Hawkins
Fri, 04/10/2026 - 14:12
★★★ A DOLL'S …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:12AM[SHARE]Monday, March 30, 2026
Jaja's African Hair Braiding, Lyric Hammersmith review - perky Harlem-set comedy with a serious undertow
Helen Hawkins
Mon, 03/30/2026 - 12:31
★★…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:31AM[SHARE]The Old Ladies, Finborough Theatre review - sound, but not quite creepy enough
Helen Hawkins
Mon, 03/30/2026 - 08:00
★★★ THE OLD LADIES, FINBORO…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, October 30, 2025
The RSC adaptation is aimed at children, though all will thrill to its spectacle
On paper, this RSC revival of Ella Hickson's 2013 adaptation sounds just the ticket: a feminist spin on the f…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:12PM[SHARE]Monday, October 27, 2025
Witty but poignant tribute to the strength of family ties as all around disintegrates
There's a line in the late Richard Greenberg's 2013 play that refers to a recently elected showbiz type …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:36PM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Kip Williams revises Genet, with little gained in the update except eye-popping visuals
Jean Genet's 1947 play has been quite a clothes-horse over the years, at times a glamorous confection …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 12:18PM[SHARE]Saturday, September 27, 2025
Will Lord's promising debut burdens a fine cast with too much dialogue
What would it be like to be driven by OCD urges into idolising Elon Musk and aspiring to be one of his tribe of tech b…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:18AM[SHARE]Friday, September 19, 2025
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's version puts Mina Harkness centre-stage
If a classic story is going to be told for the umpteenth time, there is a good bet it will come with a novel spin on it. So it…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:42PM[SHARE]Tracie Bennett is outstanding as a ribald, riotous Tallulah Bankhead
Hot on the heels of Goodnight, Oscar comes another fictional meeting of real entertainment giants in Los Angeles, this t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:54AM[SHARE]Friday, August 29, 2025
Robert Sean Leonard and Paten Hughes make worthy sparring partners
The cult film that director Theo van Gogh left behind when he was killed in 2004, Interview, has already been remade twice;…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:06AM[SHARE]Saturday, August 9, 2025
Lenny Henry is the ideal ringmaster for this exercise in audience participation
The Fringe piece Duncan Macmillan devised with Jonny Donahoe in 2014 has since been round the world and back, …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:36AM[SHARE]Thursday, August 7, 2025
Oscar Levant is an ideal subject to refresh the debate about media freedom
Back in the day, when America's late-night chat show hosts and their guests sat happily smoking as they shot the br…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:54AM[SHARE]Thursday, July 31, 2025
The writer did impressive research but shouldn't have fleshed out Josephine Tey's story
Following confirmation that he was the owner of the bones found in a Leicester car park in 2012, Ri…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:54AM[SHARE]Thursday, July 17, 2025
James Inverne enjoyably reconstructs the rivalry between Puccini and Leoncavallo
Before Luigi Illica wrote the libretti for Puccini's Tosca and Madama Butterfly, he had joined the composer …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:36AM[SHARE]Sunday, July 13, 2025
Beth Steel makes a stirring West End debut with her poignant play for today
The 2024 play at the National Theatre that put writer Beth Steel squarely centre-stage has now received a West End…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:32PM[SHARE]Friday, June 27, 2025
An early Lynn Nottage work gets a superb cast and production
The corset is an unlikely star of the latest Lynn Nottage play to arrive at the Donmar Warehouse, 2003's Intimate Apparel. After …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:18PM[SHARE]Sunday, June 15, 2025
David Adjmi's clever and compelling hit play gets a crack London cast
The tag "the most Tony-nominated play of all time" may mean less to London theatregoers than it does to New Yorkers, but…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:48PM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 10, 2025
This Dream is a great night out, especially for Shakespeare first-timers
It's a sign of the inroads that the term "immersive" has made in theatreland that it now gets jokily namedropped at t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:36AM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Sarah Ruhl turns her bond with a student into a lesson in how to love
In 2012, the award-winning American writer Sarah Ruhl met a Yale playwriting student who became a special part of her li…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:24AM[SHARE]Monday, May 19, 2025
David Ireland pits a sober AA sponsor against a livewire drinker, with engaging results
The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic d…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:12PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Richard Bean has turned Mamet's steel trap into an amusing puzzle
There is so much that is right about Jonathan Kent's new production of House of Games " the casting, the staging, the direct…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:54AM[SHARE]Friday, May 9, 2025
John Lithgow gives a masterclass in delivering a 'human booby trap'
When Mark Rosenblatt was preparing his debut play, the miseries of the assault on Gaza were still over the horizon. Now th…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:06AM[SHARE]Friday, May 2, 2025
The Irish actor Stephen Rea is a silent-movie Krapp to treasure
In the Stygian darkness of a bare room, a table on a low platform with a light hanging overhead starts to emerge. Then a door…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:24PM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 29, 2025
An ideal revisiting of Patrick Marber's play about risking all to move ahead
Patrick Marber's powerful debut about gambling men is 30 years old, born as the Eighties entrepreneurial boom was…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:24AM[SHARE]Thursday, April 24, 2025
De Beauvoir's novel gets an often charming but undemanding staging
The Finborough has once again performed the miracle of creating a whole world in its intimate space: this time, inter-war …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:54PM[SHARE]Monday, April 14, 2025
Amy Ng's take on two Chinese titans needs more dramatic ballast
The writer Amy Ng has made a sterling effort in digging up the true story behind her new play at the Kiln, Shanghai Dolls, but…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:32AM[SHARE]Saturday, April 12, 2025
Writer-actor Keelan Kember floods the stage with a torrent of gags but few ideas
Keelan Kember's play Thanks for Having Me may look like a vehicle for Kedar Williams-Stirling (Sex Education,…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:32AM[SHARE]Friday, March 28, 2025
Johnson Willis captures the anarchic energy and wit of the late guitarist
Resurrecting the origins of old rock stars is becoming quite the thing, After cinema's Elton John, Freddie Mercury…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:36AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
