Monday, July 5, 2021
Band and singers energise the brilliant entertainment of Bernstein, Comden and Green
It’s a wonderful thing to hear a nine-piece Broadway-style band at full pelt, and to see real show danc…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:32AMFriday, June 18, 2021
Lisa Dwan’s infinite variety guides us through Beckett’s timeless masterpiece
Just when you thought you couldn’t take any more one- or two-handers, online or in the theatre, along come…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:54AMSaturday, September 12, 2020
Monica Dolan and Lesley Manville are peerless in this Alan Bennett double bill
Monologues and duets rule the stage right now. We can only dream of the day when theatre steps up to the classi…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:18AMMonday, May 4, 2020
Ivo van Hove engages British and Dutch actors to debate the urgent question of 2019
Are we really past all this? From Ivo van Hove's 2019 polyphony of opinions and reflections down the centu…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:54AMTuesday, April 28, 2020
A host of Broadway stars varies the strain in classily done from-home gala
Maybe you can't compare incomparables, but it was instructive to watch this Broadway lockdown gala feting nonagenar…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:42AMMonday, March 23, 2020
Is there a better climax to a musical first act than the terror-plus-wit in 'Sweeney Todd'?
Two numbers, one hair-raising slice of music-theatre. When Sondheim's paying homage to the older, …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:54PMThursday, March 5, 2020
Middleton's decimation of an Italian court needs more satirical thrust
Vendetta, morte: what a lark to find those tools of 19th century Italian opera taken back to their mother tongue in a M…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:54AMThursday, February 20, 2020
Embarrassing period piece needs a lift from better comic timing than this
Not the musical then, worst luck. How timely it would have been to mark Jerry Herman's passing with a celebration of…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:42AMFriday, January 31, 2020
One woman barely speaks, the other can't be heard and two men interfere
A work of genius isn't sacred, copyrighted territory. A great film may become a play, a novel a film; the adaptation s…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:24AMFriday, January 3, 2020
An immortal lyricist and composer leaves us plenty to be joyful about
How is it that, in the nearly 900 pages of Sondheim's collected lyrics with extensive comments Finishing the Hat and Loo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:54AMWednesday, November 27, 2019
Four complex novels squeezed into a big, bold show with strong performances
It took no time for Elena Ferrante's two Neapolitan friends to join the ranks of great literary creations: Lenù a…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:03AMFriday, November 22, 2019
Close-knit company keeps the York and Lancaster clashes as clear and lively as it can
No Joan of Arc means no Henry VI Part One. France, where we left the victorious Henry V - the superb Sar…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:06AMThursday, November 7, 2019
Multimedia haunting from Norwegian company De Utvalgte in Jon Fosse's theatre-poem
In a flowering branch of London theatre, Norway comes to Notting Hill with what's becoming revelatory regul…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:06AMSaturday, November 2, 2019
A young carer and her mother movingly portrayed in Sean Mathias's 1985 drama
When Sean Mathias wrote A Prayer for Wings 35 years ago, the subject of young carers devoting their lives to pare…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:42AMFriday, July 12, 2019
A dramatic tour from the tomb of Italy's greatest poet and music among the mosaics
Two years ago Ermanno Montanari and Marco Martinelli, the visionary partners who have powered Ravenna's rev…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:24AMThursday, 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 04:14AM 
