Thursday, July 10, 2025
Revisiting Tim Price's dream-set account of the founder of the health service
The National Health Service was established seventy-seven years ago this month. Resident doctors are about to s…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:12PMTuesday, June 3, 2025
Unspoken emotion flows through this late work
Terence Rattigan's rehabilitation - some might almost say deification - as a leading Twentieth Century playwright is complete. As well as academ…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:48PMThursday, December 19, 2024
Magic is minimised in Jamie Lloyd's pared-back version
Shakespeare must have relished the opportunities brought by the indoor Blackfriars Theatre in 1611: sound magnified in a way impossible…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:24PMSaturday, November 30, 2024
Shakespeare's comedy of identity confusion benefits from a 1940s setting
It's all too easy to underplay the melancholy of Shakespeare's comedy of divided twins, misplaced – sometimes narci…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:06AMSunday, October 6, 2024
J Smith-Cameron and Mark Rylance bring the classic characters to life
"Captain" Jack Boyle is a fantasist, a mythmaker, a storyteller. He relishes an audience - usually his sidekick, Joxer. …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:54PMTuesday, June 11, 2024
Adrian Lukis revisits his disruptive character from the beloved BBC television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an actor tends to take a sympathe…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:36AMWednesday, May 29, 2024
The legendary small-screen drama still resonates in a new medium
Prolific playwright James Graham was born in 1982, the year Alan Bleasdale's unforgettable series was televised. From Notting…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:48PMThursday, May 9, 2024
Queer themes and music take centre stage in a café setting
In Shakespeare's day theatre was regarded as "wanton" by those of a Puritan disposition who feared boys dressed as girls could eng…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:06PMThursday, April 4, 2024
Gemma Whelan discovers a mean streak under Charlotte's respectable bonnet
The Brontë sisters and their ne'er-do-well brother will always make good copy. The brilliance of the women constrai…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:02PMThursday, March 21, 2024
Focused on young life in south London, this hit is as energetic and joyful as ever
The reviews of Tyrell Williams' debut play on its first and second outings at the Bush Theatre were univer…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:48PMThursday, January 11, 2024
Poltergeist activity in the suburbs remains earth-bound
Reports of supernatural events are always met with either willing belief or dismissive scepticism. The "camps" generally don't have mu…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:42PMTuesday, December 5, 2023
Unsettling investigation of patriarchal family and sexual relationships has uneven force
As the audience enters, thick mist envelopes the thrust stage and jazz music fills the theatre. The s…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:54PMWednesday, November 22, 2023
A familiar comedy provides Jeeves-and-Wooster period Christmas fun
Oliver Goldsmith was a literary all-rounder - novelist, poet and playwright - remembered chiefly for one example of each di…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:32PMWednesday, September 13, 2023
Mature actors bring style and poignancy to Coward's brittle comedy
There is a grainy piece of black and white film on YouTube featuring Noel Coward as the celebrity guest on a 1964 edition …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:25PMThursday, February 9, 2023
The story of an immigrant family's contribution to American capitalism is still captivating
The frantic world of finance moves fast, its giddy successes and thundering crashes causing ripple…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:10PMThursday, December 15, 2022
The first home-grown offering at this impressive new space is a playful paean to theatre
The scene is set onstage in the first minutes. And it remains a stage throughout this harmonious prod…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:02PMTuesday, September 13, 2022
Inua Ellams adds contemporary political thrust to a well-loved classic
Antigone, the forceful young woman who takes on the male establishment, has long resonated with idealists; Sophocles' p…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:37PMThursday, May 19, 2022
Anupama Chandrasekhar argues, with humour and invention, against political extremism
The young Indian man stepping towards us on the vast Olivier stage is unremarkable enough, slight and boy…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:48PMMonday, October 4, 2021
Youthful Elsinore reflects life in present-day London
It is a truism that every Hamlet is different, depending more than any other play on the casting of the lead. Each production moulds it…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:42PMThursday, September 30, 2021
This serpentine classic is perfectly placed in every sense
Lucy Bailey's production of Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, first staged at County Hall in 2017, has a few years to make up…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:03PMFriday, July 9, 2021
Thoughtful and funny revival of a familiar classic
Pinter wrote The Dumb Waiter in 1957 (although it wasn't seen in London until 1960) the year before The Birthday Party received its notorio…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:18PMSunday, May 16, 2021
Live performance, film and digital play combine in this misfired interactive experience
There is a promising production struggling to get out of this muddled concept. Creation Theatre (here …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:33PMSunday, April 4, 2021
Simon Godwin's debut film is part dressed-down rehearsal, part cinematic flourish
Shakespeare's enduring tale of star-crossed lovers is especially pertinent in a pandemic. The fatal plot twi…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:42PMThursday, February 11, 2021
Innovative technology places actors virtually in the Palace Theatre, Manchester
The story of Romeo and Juliet is well known, worth revisiting endlessly and always relevant. But there is anot…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:32PMSunday, January 31, 2021
Free reading for charity of Wycherley's first Restoration comedy
Swaggering rakes, posturing fops, sexual intrigue, illicit encounters, wit, artifice, wigs, fans and beauty spots - these ar…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:54PMTuesday, June 16, 2020
Michelle Terry, John Light and Pearce Quigley lead an inventive cast relishing the comic potential of the Elizabethan stage
What could be better for a lockdown summer night "out" than a virt…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:42AMTuesday, February 11, 2020
Stef Smith brings exhilarating spirit to a familiar classic
Ibsen's Nora slammed the door on her infantilising marriage in 1879 but the sound of it has continued to reverberate down the year…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:12PMWednesday, December 11, 2019
Rebecca Frecknall directs a production which ultimately finds its heart
This play can be a challenge for modern audiences: a woman who is ostensibly in a position of power, "a prince" in Ren…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:33AMWednesday, December 4, 2019
A vigorous Paterson Joseph meets the Christmas spirits
"Dickensian" commonly means both sentimental Victorian, apple-cheeked family perfection (especially at Christmas) and abject poverty. …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:48PMFriday, November 29, 2019
Welsh parable of the second coming makes unusual seasonal fare
This is the third Emlyn Williams piece to be presented here in a decade: The Druid's Rest in 2009 was followed by the enormous …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:18PMFriday, November 8, 2019
Gender changes provide a new perspective on the balance of power
This is one play by Shakespeare ripe for tinkering. It's well nigh impossible now to take it at face value and still find rom…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:48AM 
