Thursday, May 5, 2022
David Eldridge’s follow up to his 2017 hit, ‘Beginning’, is disappointing
The traditional, and much derided, well-made play is meant to have a beginning, middle and end. Although playw…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:12AMSunday, April 24, 2022
Dominic Cooke’s imaginative revival improves on Emlyn Williams’s 1938 play
Let’s talk repertoire. Over the past decade the range of British plays, especially those from the 17th, 18th…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:06PMTuesday, March 22, 2022
Ruth Wilson is brilliant in Jean Cocteau classic adapted by Ivo van Hove
Is there really such a thing as an unmissable show? Depends on your taste of course, but for sheer hype this event ta…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:18PMTuesday, March 15, 2022
High-energy revival of Mike Bartlett’s 2009 play boasts a dynamic cast
Mike Bartlett’s Cock invites suggestive comments, but the main thing about the play is that it has proved to be a …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:12PMSunday, March 13, 2022
Intriguing new play from Ron Hutchinson capsizes in performance
You can’t keep a great playwright down. Ron Hutchinson, whose award winning stage plays, such as Rat in the Skull (1984) an…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:42PMTuesday, March 8, 2022
Great staging enlivens this well-written monologue about a cross-generational relationship
Love is the most difficult four-letter word. And platonic love is perhaps the hardest kind of emot…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:48PMTuesday, March 1, 2022
Debut play about football and gentrification is pitch perfect
Football stories are never just about a game — they are also about life and how to live it. In Tyrell Williams’s Red Pitch,…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:12PMSunday, February 13, 2022
Misogynoir gets the song and satire treatment in a short but powerful show
Black women often find themselves subject to a double dose of prejudice. Pressure. They face everyday racism as we…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:06PMSunday, February 6, 2022
Energetic debut monologue explores eating disorders, personal identity and sex
Irish teenager Saoirse Murphy has a dirty mouth. And she’s not afraid to use it when talking to the nuns at …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:18PMSunday, January 30, 2022
Time-travelling fantasia boasts a brilliant staging and a spoof playtext essay
Bizarre. Breathtaking. Beautiful. I leave the Royal Court theatre with these Bs, as well as others such as bewi…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:42PMSunday, January 16, 2022
Northern Ireland’s contemporary problems get the meta treatment
History is a prison. Often, you can’t escape. It imprints its mark on people, environments and language. And nowhere is t…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:03PMFriday, December 10, 2021
Revival of American writer Alice Childress’s 1955 anti-racist play shines bright
The National Theatre has a good record in staging classic American drama by black playwrights. James Baldw…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:48PMWednesday, November 24, 2021
Moira Buffini’s state-of-the-nation, climate-change play runs into the doldrums
After all the tides of monologue plays have ebbed, British new writing is now paddling in the pools of state…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:32PMMonday, November 22, 2021
Roy Williams and Clint Dyer bring their monologue sequence to a triumphant conclusion
One of the absolute highpoints of new writing in the past couple of years has been the Death of England …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:12PMThursday, November 18, 2021
Al Smith’s new play was jinxed before it started — and it never really recovers
Why are we indifferent to anti-Semitism? In the past few weeks the Royal Court, a proud citadel of wokenes…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:42PMFriday, November 12, 2021
Powerful play about masculinity in crisis fails to reach a satisfying resolution
After lockdown, the stage monologue saved British theatre. At venue after venue, cash-strapped companies put…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:24PMTuesday, November 2, 2021
New play about love during the Bosnian war is beautifully written and compelling
Is the Bosnian conflict of 1992–95 the war that Europe forgot? Maybe, although most fans of new writing for…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:54PMTuesday, October 26, 2021
New play about gentrification could be regenerated with a make-over
I’ve lived in Brixton, south London, for about 40 years now so any play that looks at the gentrification of the area is…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:54PMThursday, October 14, 2021
Saoirse Ronan makes her UK stage debut in Yaël Farber’s testosterone-fest
Remembering the months of lockdown, I can’t be the only person to thrill to this play’s opening lines, “Wh…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:18PMSunday, October 3, 2021
Larry Kramer’s modern AIDS classic retains all of its passionate glory
Hypocrisy. Is this the right word? I don’t mean the play, but the audience. Of course, in the middle of the current…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:54PMThursday, September 16, 2021
Aleshea Harris’s award-winning play is a thrillingly satirical mash up
God is a tricky one. Or should that be One? And definitely not a He. So when she says take revenge, then vengeance i…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:12PMSunday, September 12, 2021
Sombre revival of Shelagh Stephenson’s 1996 classic about three sisters
Memories are notoriously treacherous — this we know. I remember seeing Shelagh Stephenson’s contemporary classic…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:18PMThursday, September 2, 2021
Poetic play about enslaved peoples and Victorian painter JMW Turner
For more than three decades, playwright Winsome Pinnock has been at the forefront of new writing, often experimenting wit…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:24PMSunday, August 1, 2021
A 4,000-year-old poem reopens this venue, but is more educational than dramatic
The Young Vic, led by the inspiring figure of Kwame Kwei-Armah, is back. After a prolonged closure, during whi…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:06PMWednesday, July 28, 2021
David Mamet’s most controversial play retains its explosive charge
Before seeing this play, I decided to eat a steak. It seemed the right culinary equivalent to David Mamet, one of Americ…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:03PMSunday, June 27, 2021
Ambitious triptych examines the themes of Empire, race and parenthood
It is an index of the ambition of some venues that they are not only reopening their doors, but also staging plays that…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:12PMMonday, May 31, 2021
Debut play about siblings, climate change and space travel is full of ideas
There’s something definitely inspiring about producer Sonia Friedman’s decision to reopen one of her prime We…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:03AMSunday, May 23, 2021
New monologue is a complex and ambiguous account of a digital obsession
After months of watching theatre on screens large, medium and tiny, I definitely feel great about going to see a live…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:24PMSunday, May 2, 2021
Philip Ridley’s new monologue is a dazzling masterclass in storytelling
I think I can safely say that polymath playwright Philip Ridley has had a good lockdown. In March last year, when T…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:06PMThursday, March 25, 2021
Mark Ravenhill’s new play is a fragmentary audio autobiography
Does a subjective theatre piece encourage a subjective critical response? I think it might, especially when it’s a memory …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:18PMMonday, March 22, 2021
Film version of the Oscar Wilde classic is a brilliant critique of the digital age
Let’s face it, most adaptations of classic novels are disappointingly pedestrian. They are so middle-of-t…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:42PM 
