Tuesday, February 4, 2025
New play about mental breakdown is a mix of acute distress and poetic writing
In a world tainted with racism and homophobia, the Bush theatre is something of a refuge from prejudice. As one …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:54PMSunday, January 19, 2025
South African satire about racism, sexism, home ownership and community politics
Most Brits don’t know much about South Africa today, but we do know about house values, so this new comedy…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:06PMTuesday, December 17, 2024
Tom Stoppard’s classic evocation of Victorian golden age Oxford stars Simon Russell Beale
Can men really love each other — without sex? Or, to put it another way, how many different form…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:02PMFriday, December 13, 2024
Gig theatre piece about the pain and redemption of a pioneer reggae artist
I live in Brixton, south London. To get to the tube, I have to cross Windrush Square. Since 2021, I go past the Ch…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:36PMFriday, November 29, 2024
New play about a paedophile ring foregrounds the voices of British-Pakistani women
British theatre excels in presenting social issues: at its best, it shines a bright light on the controver…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:31PMThursday, November 21, 2024
This venue’s annual festive classic is seasonally joyous, but its writing is frankly patronizing
This Dickens classic is an annual treat, or a Christmas trial — depending on your point …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:42PMFriday, November 15, 2024
New play about young black men and cryptocurrency is sadly predictable
Cryptocurrency is like the myth of El Dorado — a promised land made of fool’s gold. Despite its liberatory potenti…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:12PMThursday, November 7, 2024
The latest in Forced Entertainment’s 40 years of experiment is a thought-tickling farce
Can experimental theatre survive the decades? This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Forced Ent…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:12PMThursday, October 31, 2024
Hanif Kureishi classic gets a compulsively comic makeover from Emma Rice
Hanif Kureishi’s 1990 novel The Buddha of Suburbia begins like this: “My name is Karim Amir, and I am an English…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:24PMSunday, October 27, 2024
Richard Bean’s new work play revisits the Hull fishing industry of the 1970s
“Don’t take a piss in the house of a woman you have made a widow.” The mixture of earthy comedy and tragi…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:36PMSunday, October 13, 2024
Lorraine Hansberry classic is both a historical gem and a play for today
Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is not only the first play by a black woman to premiere on Broadway, back…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:02PMThursday, October 10, 2024
New play about the consequences of a plane hijack is energetic but unconvincing
Air travel is bad for us. Yes, yes, I know we need planes to take us long distances, but look at the downside…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:32PMSunday, October 6, 2024
Two all-time 1950s classics, 'Look Back in Anger' and 'Roots', get super revivals by young directors
Why should we not look back in anger? With the Oasis reunion tour in the news recently, …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:06PMThursday, October 3, 2024
Tanika Gupta’s new play is a beautifully heartfelt mix of comedy and tragedy
Queenie is in trouble. Bad trouble. For about a year now, this 68-year-old Indian woman has been forgetful. Lo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:06PMTuesday, September 24, 2024
Brilliant revival of this key absurdist play stars Lucian Msamati and Ben Whishaw
Modernism is us. Today. For the past two decades plays by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter – which once u…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:32AMWednesday, September 18, 2024
Slender new play about political and gender prejudice in 1950s American science
British theatre has a proud heritage of science plays. From 1990s classics such as Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (1…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:48PMFriday, September 13, 2024
Waleed Akhtar’s new play is about platonic love in a contemporary context
Platonic love should be simple — basically you’re best mates. And without the complications of sex, what coul…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:32PMSunday, September 1, 2024
Award-winning new writing is full of mystery and metaphor, but a bit too literary
I live in Brixton, south London; in my street, for many years, a pair of trainers were up in the sky, hangin…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:54PMFriday, August 16, 2024
Debut two-hander explores a gentle love story of two practicing Muslims
At one point, in John Fowles’s 1977 novel The Magus, the guru character in the story compares sexuality before and …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:18AMSunday, June 30, 2024
New play about the death of the most famous American woman of the Camelot era
The death of Marilyn Monroe is a wet dream for conspiracy theorists. Like the assassination of JFK in the follo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:54PMMonday, June 24, 2024
New play about secrets from the past is both funny and profound
Following the huge success of Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, which transfers soon to the West End, the Bush Theatre is riding h…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:18PMWednesday, June 19, 2024
New history play about football has a flawed second half
Every day this week I’m watching a football match, and now — after April’s production of Lydia Higman, Julia Grogan and Rachel …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:36PMThursday, May 30, 2024
Dublin Fringe Festival hit from 2022 comes to London’s main new writing theatre
Faye is okay. Or, at least she says she’s okay. But is she really? And, if she really is, like really oka…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:12PMTuesday, May 28, 2024
Taboo-tickling comedy about both conceiving a baby and life as empty nesters
“Welcome to motherhood, bitch!” By the time a character delivers this reality check, there have been plenty o…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:54PMMonday, May 27, 2024
Katie Mitchell’s staging of Maggie Nelson’s bestseller is neither original nor beautiful
When does creativity become mannered? When it’s based on repetition, and repetition without dev…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:42PMWednesday, May 22, 2024
Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Pulitzer-Prize winner finally makes it to London
It’s often said that contemporary American playwrights are too polite, too afraid of giving offence. But this acc…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:02PMFriday, April 19, 2024
New play-with-songs version of Dickens’s 'Our Mutual Friend' is a panoramic Victori-noir
“He do the police in different voices.” If ever one phrase summed up a work of fiction, and th…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:02PMMonday, April 15, 2024
Latest from American penman Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is less than the sum of its parts
I’ve never been one for school reunions, but even if I had kept in touch with former classmates I thin…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:42AMTuesday, February 27, 2024
New comedy about masculinity and music is predictable and clumsy
One island off the coast of Spain has more cultural oomph than all the rest put together. I’m talking about Ibiza, the sun…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:36PMMonday, February 26, 2024
New play about love and memory is exquisitely written and beautifully acted
For the past ten years, Black-British playwrights have been in the vanguard of innovation in the form and content …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:36PMWednesday, February 7, 2024
Lemn Sissay’s adaptation of the Franz Kafka classic is just too wordy
Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” is a novella whose cultural resonance has echoed loudly down the years. As a mode…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:36PM 
