Thursday, July 11, 2019
James McArdle's lead, strong ensemble and David Hare's Ibsen adaptation compel
Like Hamlet and both parts of Goethe's Faust, with which it shares the highest peak of poetic drama, Ibsen's Pe…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:42AMFriday, June 21, 2019
Ivo van Hove reinvents Visconti's fable about a 1930s German House of Atreus
Is the terrifying past of Germany in 1933 also our future? Having had nightmares about the brilliant dystopian TV…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:54AMWednesday, May 29, 2019
1930s setting for Falstaff's escapades wins out only in song and dance
Need Shakespeare's Falstaff charm to be funny? Those warm, indulgent feelings won by Mrisho Mpoto in the amazing Globe…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:06PMThursday, May 16, 2019
Doubling, humour and an outstanding female Henry V
Henry IV Part One (***)
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:48AMSaturday, April 20, 2019
Compelling fantasia about black South Africans drowned in a World War 1 disaster
While Bach's and Handel's Passions have been driving thousands to contemplate suffering, mortality and grace,…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:22AMThursday, March 7, 2019
Simon Stone's homage to Euripides is faultless, while Marieke Heebink tears at the soul
Hallucinatory theatre has struck quite a few times in the Barbican's international seasons. On an epic…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:15AMTuesday, February 19, 2019
Martin Sherman has the excellent Jonathan Hyde telling true talesRipeness is sometimes all. Martin Sherman's new play, receiving its UK premiere at canny Park Theatre, says more about gay hi…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:06AMSunday, February 10, 2019
Musically strong, if persistent, this production has a star protagonist"In our country the capable man needs luck," belts out Shen Te, the Good Person of Szechwan in the most powerful song o…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:32PMWednesday, November 21, 2018
Poignant take on Captain Marlene in the Second World WarGetting the look right is half the battle: in that, Peter Groom's one-time-Captain Marlene Dietrich is a winner from the start. The lo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:36AMSunday, October 14, 2018
A virtuoso ensemble justifies this youthful baggy monster's West End transferIts roots are in truth: 15-year-old Matthew Lopez saw the film, then read the book, of Howards End and 11 ye…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:42PMThursday, June 21, 2018
Just a tad short on Broadway charisma, but this sophisticated production glides alongFirst palpable hit of the evening: a full orchestra in the pit under hyper-alert Opera North stalwart Jam…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:18AMMonday, June 18, 2018
Harriet Walter and Jade Anouka are the superlative opposite poles in a perfect ensembleWho would have thought, when Phyllida Lloyd's Donmar Julius Caesar opened to justified fanfare, that tw…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:12AMWednesday, May 16, 2018
Stunning detail from Lev Dodin's company in desperate tragedy and human comedyTowards the end of the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg's Life and Fate, a long scene in director Lev Do…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:18AMSaturday, April 14, 2018
Roger Allam and Nancy Carroll serve David Hare's iron fist in velvet glove to perfection"What could be more serious than married life?" asked Richard Strauss, whose operas became a surp…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:51AMFriday, March 2, 2018
★★★ FANNY AND ALEXANDER, OLD VIC Agile but shallow Bergman adaptationThree strong performances weakened by miscasting elsewhere and restless soundtrackCould an epic cinematic masterpie…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:05AMTuesday, October 4, 2016
Nobody said that a 70-minute audience with the undead was going to be easy. You can read Samuel Beckett's Texts for Nothing in your own time, pausing for thought, leaving off, coming back. W…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:14AMSaturday, September 24, 2016
What's in a name? Imogen has a softer music to it than Cymbeline, the only one of Shakespeare's plays in which the title character is marginal - even if Hal and Falstaff just outshine Henry …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:57AMFriday, September 9, 2016
She gave us the most moving of King Lears years before the news broke that Glenda Jackson would be playing the role. Only Mark Rylance has recently matched the malicious wit of her Globe Ric…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:36AMTuesday, August 16, 2016
Southwark's golden triangle – the Menier, the Playhouse and the Union – has given us so many "lost" musicals which only a decade or so ago would have been lucky to get in-concert airings…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:15AMSaturday, June 11, 2016
Britten fathomed Phaedra's passion for her stepson in a shattering quarter of an hour's dramatic cantata. Euripides' Hippolytus takes about 90 minutes in the playing. Director Kryz…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:46AMTuesday, May 3, 2016
You rarely see a full production of Shakespeare's dream play so magical it brings tears to the eyes. But then you don't often get 42 players and 14 voices joining the cast to sing and play e…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:34AMMonday, April 25, 2016
Banished from the Barbican are the hollow kings of the mediocre RSC Henrys IV and V. In their place comes a whole new procession of living, breathing monarchs in a vision that's light years …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:09AMMonday, April 4, 2016
Could the fascination of Glenn Close's Norma Desmond transcend the frequent bathos of Lloyd Webber? Would they have sorted out the miking which wrecked last year's first choice of semi-ENO m…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:30PMThursday, February 4, 2016
Demons, trolls and dead souls have a habit of latching on to Ibsen's bourgeois Norwegians. Surely the best way for actors to handle them is to keep it natural, make them part of the furnitur…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:02AMFriday, December 18, 2015
The last time I saw Janet McTeer, she was doing her best with the slightly underwritten role of sister to Glenn Close’s lethal Patty Hewes in Damages, the ultimate TV series about the disc…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:55AMFriday, November 27, 2015
Greek family smashups at the Almeida now yield to northern agony sagas, less bloody but potentially just as harrowing. In Little Eyolf the 66-year-old Ibsen dissected a failed marriage as ru…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:15AMFriday, October 30, 2015
Never use one word when you can get away with two: that seems to have been the maxim of Eugene O’Neill even in one of his shorter plays. After all, when is an ape not hairy, and why does s…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:19AMFriday, October 2, 2015
With her strong, often fierce features and her convincing simulations of rage, Kate Fleetwood might have been born to play Medea. Unfortunately this isn’t Euripides’ Medea but Rachel Cus…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:22AMWednesday, September 30, 2015
No doubt this sophisticated bagatelle worked like a charm in the intimate space and woody resonance of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. The Duke of York's Theatre is one of the West End’s smal…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:31AMFriday, September 18, 2015
Whose Don Juan – progenitor Tirso de Molina’s, Molière’s or Pushkin’s? None of the above. Unless you have a decent knowledge of Ukrainian culture, you won’t have heard of Lesya Uk…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:04AMSaturday, August 15, 2015
You don’t know Homer’s Iliad until you’ve heard it read aloud, all 24 books – well, very nearly all - and 16 hours of it, as the oral tradition would have kept it alive at least unti…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:25PM 
