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]Thursday, March 13, 2025
Julia McDermott triumphs as a Californian weather girl coping with fires inside and outside her head
Can Francesca Moody do it again? Fleabag's producer has brought Weather Girl to London, a…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:42AM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Jean-Philippe Daguerre tries to mix a farcical comedy of manners with the holocaust
When Yasmina Reza's cerebral play Art arrived in London in 1996, we applauded it as a comedy. Now another…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:32PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Perfectly judged performances enhance a subtle staging of Nick Payne's two-hander
Nick Payne, the writer of Constellations, has created another 90-minute zinger for two actors. This one is m…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:06PM[SHARE]Friday, February 21, 2025
Tamsin Greig and Celia Imrie shine in a multifaceted portrait of motherhood
The theatre director Anna Mackmin has written and directed an extraordinary play about a mother and daughter relat…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:18PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 6, 2025
Is it a dance piece with added text, or a stripped down play with excess choreography?
The opening scene of the Old Vic's Oedipus is dominated by a giant backdrop of a skull-like face, eyes …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:36AM[SHARE]Friday, January 31, 2025
Still inventive and fun but short on sharp shocks
How excited Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton must have been to learn that the venue for their Inside No 9 stage show was haunted, by an …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:18AM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 14, 2025
An intimate staging and superb casting make this a superior West End production
Into a world of grooming gangs, human trafficking and senior prelates resigning over child abuse cases comes …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:36PM[SHARE]Sunday, December 15, 2024
Matthew Bourne's masterly reinvention has become a classic itself
How do you refresh a masterpiece? Bringing back his first and still greatest hit, Swan Lake, Matthew Bourne seems to have ch…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 01:48PM[SHARE]Friday, December 13, 2024
Lillian Hellman's family feud set in 1900 Alabama doesn't survive a confused updating
The Young Vic has opened under a new artistic director with a puzzle play. The puzzle is, why stage this…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:48PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 11, 2024
Director Patrick Marber does Mel Brooks's 1967 musical proud
There is something deliciously perfect about the timing of The Producers' arrival at the Menier Chocolate Factory. In these twitc…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:06AM[SHARE]Friday, November 29, 2024
Dan McCabe's play about ageing hiphop stars makes a winning European debut
Watching Dan McCabe's 2019 play, older folk might be reminded of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's indelible lyrics, "Ca…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:18AM[SHARE]Friday, November 1, 2024
Rajiv Joseph's play pitting beauty against duty gets an impressive staging
It's 1648 in Agra, and an excitable young guardsman has come up with an idea: a giant flying platform that he calls…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:02AM[SHARE]Friday, October 18, 2024
A magnificent Adrien Brody leads a moving production by Justin Martin
There is star casting, and there is casting the right star " not the same thing. The Donmar's new production, The Fear o…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:42AM[SHARE]Thursday, October 17, 2024
Zinnie Harris's modern take robs the play of its tragic potential
John Webster's sour, bloody tale of brotherly greed and vice has been updated by the playwright Zinnie Harris, who also dire…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:54AM[SHARE]Nathan Englander probes a divide in modern Jewish identity; Patrick Marber directs
An incendiary play has opened at the Marylebone, the adventurous venue just off Baker Street. Bigger houses…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:32AM[SHARE]Thursday, October 10, 2024
Josh Azouz and Kathryn Hunter concoct an uneasy mix of comedy and tragedy
The writer-director Josh Azouz and actor-director Kathryn Hunter have collaborated on a piece exploring the ethics o…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:42AM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Daisy Hall's astonishing debut is both darkly funny and deadly serious
As hurricanes rip into the American Gulf states with increasing ferocity, eastern Europe disappears underwater and eve…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:36PM[SHARE]Friday, October 4, 2024
Changgeuk Company bring an epic poem quality to the familiar tale
What do the cult TV show Squid Game and National Changgeuk Company of Korea's Lear have in common? Oddly, a K-Pop producer, …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:06PM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Pinero's play emerges fresh-minted in an exquisite production
The stock of the late 19th century playwright Arthur Wing Pinero has just received a significant boost, thanks to the brilliant …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:12AM[SHARE]Monday, September 30, 2024
Spirited performances of Elvis Costello's bland songs can't save this new musical
It's hard to work out why Kwame-Kwei Armah chose to end his tenure at the Young Vic by directing this soggy …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 12:06PM[SHARE]Friday, September 27, 2024
Lyndsey Turner's fast-paced production doesn't let the audience engage with its hero
The National's new production of Coriolanus has to be one of the most handsome to appear on the Olivier s…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:18AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
