Saturday, April 22, 2023
Giles Terera delivers a dramatic lecture on the legacy of slavery
There's a moment in the opening stretch of Giles Terera's The Meaning of Zong where you think the former Hamilton star has …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:12AM[SHARE]Saturday, April 8, 2023
Eugene O'Hare treads familiar ground with his confessional about alcoholism
Eugene O'Hare's The Dry House is the kind of spare but oddly lyrical three-hander that would have made a good Wedn…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:06AM[SHARE]Monday, April 3, 2023
A terrific ensemble make an exhilarating plea for Black boys with blighted lives
For a show that comes with a trigger warning about the themes of racism, gang violence, toxic relationships, …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:24AM[SHARE]Saturday, March 18, 2023
Pulitzer finalist asks how good an ally is modern technology
Artificial intelligence has become an even hotter topic since Jordan Harrison's Marjorie Prime was first staged in Los Angeles in…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:57AM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Nicholas Hytner and a crack cast deliver a fresh take on the classic musical
It now seems an inevitability that Marisha Wallace will be a frontrunner at next year's theatre awards, not just…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:55AM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 8, 2023
It's more adult panto than mature musical, with the sauce liberally ladled on
If you are hoping for some harmless fun at The Great British Bake Off Musical, probably with a few dodgy jokes a…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:41AM[SHARE]Monday, March 6, 2023
A vivacious cast are great fun to hang out with
Can a play ever be a bit too much like real life? The thought came to me while watching Matilda Feyisayo Ibini's entertaining new play Sleepo…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:49AM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Michael John O'Neill's debut stirs up questions but not emotions
Michael John O'Neill's first full-length play, premiering at the Hampstead's studio space downstairs, is a puzzler. There's t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 12:58AM[SHARE]Monday, February 20, 2023
Affecting revival of Tom Kempinski play about an ailing musician and her therapist
This 1981 two-hander was opened out for a film in 1986, starring Julie Andrews no less, with all its offst…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:33AM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 15, 2023
The dark arts of diplomacy get a makeover as a comedy workshop
Who better to write a piece about the game-playing of a peace-talks negotiation than a former peace-talk negotiator, Daniel Tau…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 01:23AM[SHARE]Friday, February 3, 2023
Danny Robins' clever play gains a creditable star turn in its fifth run
The set of 2:22 A Ghost Story is open to the auditorium when we arrive and locates us at once in gentrification-land. …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:16AM[SHARE]Monday, January 30, 2023
Shakespeare's tragedy as a tight thriller, with its racist elements fully exposed
Frantic Assembly's Othello, originally co-developed with the Lyric in 2008, is back in its third iteration, …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:16AM[SHARE]Friday, January 27, 2023
Told by an Idiot return with a celebration of silent-movie antics and daft gags
Imagine what would have happened if the young Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel were cabin-mates on a transatlan…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00AM[SHARE]Saturday, January 14, 2023
A cast with an infectious gift for fun give this French confection a touch of stage magic
First came Yasmin Reza's 1994 long-runner Art; now another French hit, The Art of Illusion, has arri…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:22AM[SHARE]Saturday, December 10, 2022
Clint Dyer's new take makes Othello a victim of mob mentality
Clint Dyer is the first black director of Othello at the National Theatre, a venue that once staged the piece with its actor …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:06AM[SHARE]Thursday, December 8, 2022
Jonathan Slinger commands the stage in this dark, funny monologue
The American author of The Sarah Book, on which the monologue Sarah is based, is called Scott McClanahan, as is his main cha…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:48AM[SHARE]Friday, December 2, 2022
Tania Nwachukwu creates a warm hour of music and memories with hidden bite
The Bush studio space is proving a fruitful launch pad, not just for new writing but for new performers. It previo…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:36AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Absurdly romantic notions about love and war have never been funnier
For his final bow as artistic director of the Orange Tree, Paul Miller has decided to go out with a bang, amid much gigg…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:48AM[SHARE]Friday, November 25, 2022
Frank McGuinness's new play about T S Eliot and Groucho Marx is a poetic puzzle
The set at the Arcola for Frank McGuinness's Dinner with Groucho naturally features a table with two place set…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:18AM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 2, 2022
★★★★ ELEPHANT, BUSH STUDIO Stirring solo show from rising star Anoushka Lucas
A beguiling debut play with both charm and an angry message
It lasts only an interval-fr…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:12AM[SHARE]Saturday, October 22, 2022
Pearl Cleage's play about thwarted dreams in Prohibition era Harlem gets a stellar production
The cynical might think Pearl Cleage's play had been expressly written to address the over-ridin…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:07AM[SHARE]Friday, October 21, 2022
Jack Thorne's wickedly funny play offers plum roles to two riveting disabled actors
This is not a play for the squeamish: here be blood and cum and unsavoury descriptions of genitalia, male …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:03AM[SHARE]Monday, September 19, 2022
Tanya Barfield reconstructs a simple plot as an absorbing puzzle
A tender love story has arrived at the Kings Head theatre from the US, where its author, Tanya Barfield, is an award-winning…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:33AM[SHARE]Saturday, September 17, 2022
Mrs Thatcher and Elizabeth II slug it out again in this 2013 classic
It's only nine years since Moira Buffini's Handbagged had its premiere at Kilburn's Tricycle theatre (renamed the Kiln i…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:19AM[SHARE]Wednesday, September 14, 2022
Dipo Baruwa-Etti pits a fiery outsider activist against the British-Nigerian middle-class
As Dipa Baruwa-Etti's latest play, The Clinic, reminds us, the Tory party has a strong showing of B…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:25AM[SHARE]Saturday, August 6, 2022
After a hard-hitting 'Oklahoma!', the latest Rodgers & Hammerstein revival stays on the sunnier side
How old is Emile de Becque? Perhaps because my first Emile was the 1958 film version'…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:42AM[SHARE]Thursday, July 21, 2022
Simon Godwin delivers an unexpectedly conventional production, larky and fluffy
After gender-flipping the National's Malvolio, the director Simon Godwin might have been expected to be equall…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:12AM[SHARE]Monday, July 4, 2022
A brilliant balance of raucous comedy and immense pathos
Where should Leila live " Ilford or Kent? It doesn't sound like an earth-shattering decision for a 15-year-old to make, but the stake…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:03AM[SHARE]Wednesday, June 15, 2022
An entertaining but not quite convincing makeover for a tricky play
There probably isn't a more able translator of vintage drama than Martin Crimp, the playwright whose 2004 version of Pierr…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:12AM[SHARE]Monday, May 9, 2022
Playwright Beru Tessema makes a striking stage debut
We are in a room in a simply decorated house in northwest London, where an Ethiopian-British family is gathering for a funeral "tea" for…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:33AM[SHARE]Saturday, May 7, 2022
Rodgers and Hammerstein revival goes to the dark heart of the story
No surreys, fringes or corny chap-slapping: the Rodgers and Hammerstein revival that has arrived at the Young Vic from New…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 01:18PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
