Sunday, January 11, 2015
The Downton Abbey actor keeps a surprising array of puppets and musical instruments in his shed in Enfield, north London
SOURCE: The Telegraph at 02:02AMTuesday, March 19, 2013
Terence Rattigan's beautifully spoken characters are a passionate lot in this gripping story of a father's fight to prove his son's innocence. Lindsay Posner's production of the 1946 play su…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:47PMSunday, March 17, 2013
Staged in 1931, The Man Who Pays the Piper appealed to women who had gone to work (and become the master of the house) while men were fighting in the First World War, but were subjugated onc…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:01PMWednesday, March 6, 2013
Five male Filipinos in Tel Aviv live double lives. By day, they care for dying Orthodox Jews; by night, they are a drag act, the Paper Dolls. Based on real life, this play tells an incredibl…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:02PMFriday, February 22, 2013
This stylish, witty musical celebrates the 50-year love affair between the first openly gay film star, William Haines, and Jimmy Shields, a set decorator. It embraces the fashion of the Twen…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00PMSunday, February 10, 2013
In a draining first work, Ailís Ní Ríain infuses a coming-of-age saga with Irish folklore. The outline sounds gripping enough: burdened with caring for their ill parents, two teenage…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:27PMFriday, February 1, 2013
There is never a dull moment in this three-hour historical epic, even if it is not always clear what is going on. Directed by Gregory Doran, of the RSC, Anjin follows the 17th-cent…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:24AMMonday, January 28, 2013
Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo put him in the running for a Pulitzer in 2010. Deservedly so. Set during the Iraq war and featuring a talking tiger (played with verve on Broad…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:05PMWednesday, January 16, 2013
For all its ruminative merits, Richard Vergette's drama is not the “searing political thriller” it purports to be. It raises lots of interesting questions, but they get in the way of any…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:49AMSaturday, January 5, 2013
“What should it matter to us if a few words, then a few more and then a language just go,” asks Ian Finlay Macleod’s richly textured play. Somersaults may end in a shrug of i…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:57AMFriday, December 21, 2012
"Doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That's farce. That's the theatre. That's life." So says one of Michael Frayn's characters in&…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:03PMMonday, December 17, 2012
It sounds unlikely but The Dance of Death makes the perfect Christmas play. Half a minute with Strindberg's squabbling couple makes the ordinary family row over underdone/overdone turkey see…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:15PMTuesday, November 27, 2012
Love and loneliness, broken homes and broken hearts, child abuse and communities clinging on through war... This adaptation of Michelle Magorian's children's book treats the darkest and most…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:05PMTuesday, November 13, 2012
Even a cameo by Tamsin Greig cannot redeem this painful adaptation of Euripides' The Trojan Women. For an hour and a half, it screams with anguish, verging at times on the parodic. The …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 01:53AMFriday, November 9, 2012
Howard Barker is hardly known for light entertainment. In The Europeans, a raped woman gives birth on stage. In Scenes from an Execution, currently at the National, a Ren…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:10PMSaturday, October 27, 2012
Set at the start of the US and UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, Clare Bayley's Blue Sky follows an old-school journalist pursuing justice at the cost of neighbours and friends. Jane, p…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:21PMWednesday, October 3, 2012
Our Boys shines a light on young war veterans in a military hospital in the early Eighties. A hit at the Donmar Warehouse in 1995, this new revival balances brash humour alongside some …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:05PMWednesday, September 19, 2012
When Hindle Wakes opened in 1912 in London, the script was burned in the street. Stanley Houghton, a member of the Manchester School of playwrights, had exposed one of society's double stand…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00PMSaturday, September 8, 2012
The Kander and Ebb musical Cabaret, inspired by the Berlin stories of Christopher Isherwood, is soon to return to the West End with Will Young. It's less well-known source is John Van Druten…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:20AMTuesday, August 28, 2012
Affairs, arguments, accidents. Feminism, marital failure and a fear of ageing. Jumpy has plenty of conflicts and issues, dunked in a wonderful bittersweet humour. But while Angel de Angelis …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:05PMTuesday, August 7, 2012
The curators encourage you to come to Bush Bazaar with an open mind to explore the value of theatre. But I found this cluttered evening a lesson in the value of saying no.
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:54AMTuesday, July 31, 2012
Britain may be in grip of Olympic fever, but two playwrights are questioning our unqualified cheer: should we really break out into an excited sweat, they ask, at the mention of beach volley…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:24PMMonday, July 23, 2012
Alan Ayckbourn refuses to write down to children, and it shows. The Boy Who Fell into a Book is as sophisticated in structure as it is family-friendly in content. The narrative follows nine-…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 12:52AMThursday, July 19, 2012
“I'm here because I'm concerned,” says scientist Stephen Emmott in direct, measured tones. “I'm concerned about the state of our planet. I think the situation that we're in right now c…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:49AM 
