Wednesday, November 13, 2013
This near-legendary short play, devised by Athol Fugard with the actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona (who gave their names to its characters), was first shown - daringly - in Cape Town in 1…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:00AMThursday, November 7, 2013
Charing Cross Theatre, London: Philip Larkin was exaggerating: sexual intercourse did not begin in 1963. Nevertheless, the culmination of the Profumo scandal that year put sexual intercourse…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:20AMMonday, November 4, 2013
David Pinner's 1973 play showcases a string quartet working out their own problematic relationships while world leaders decide the shape of post-war politics. Between bouts of playing Haydn,…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:00AMWednesday, October 2, 2013
Tricycle, London: Four identical handbags feature in every scene of Moira Buffini's very funny satirical comedy. This full-length version of her contribution to the nine short plays whi…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:52AMMonday, September 9, 2013
Royal Opera House, Linbury Studio Theatre, London: Wagner delved so deeply into human consciousness that he was "bound to come up with as much shit as gold". So says Simon Callow t…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:28AMThursday, August 15, 2013
Duke of York's, London: There are no real surprises: in its second revival (after two outings at the Young Vic) this is still a superlative production. True, the Duke of York's lacks th…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 07:09AMThursday, July 18, 2013
Bush, London: Josephine Baker was some woman - born in poverty in St Louis in 1906, she became a star of the Folies Bergere in the 1920s, painted by Picasso, eulogised by Hemingway. In World…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:10AMTuesday, July 9, 2013
The celebrated 1955 Ealing comedy starring Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom, was apparently intended as a cartoonish satire of post-war British decline. In 2013, with the Empire …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:17PMThursday, June 27, 2013
Hampstead Theatre, London: Peter has been widowed for 18 months, he is mortgaged up to the hilt and his teenage daughter Daisy is sick - but he is coping, just. She needs weekly treatment in…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:51AMTuesday, June 25, 2013
It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is essential to quote the famous opening line in any reference to Jane Austen's best-loved work. Pride and Prejudice is 200 years old and being…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:57PMWednesday, June 19, 2013
Finborough Theatre, London: Stephanie Williams' beautifully detailed, messy traverse set takes us right into the kitchen-cum-living room of the graduate house share from hell. Friends t…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:53AMSunday, June 16, 2013
In Bracken Moor Alexi Kaye Campbell inhabits similar territory to J B Priestley, whose work he admires. Like his predecessor, Campbell combines social comment with the mystical and spiritual…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:30PMWednesday, June 5, 2013
There was a sense of nervous anticipation in the Maria, the Young Vic's studio space. Ninety minutes of torture was on the menu, and I'll admit to feeling some trepidation. But this show - a…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:15PMMonday, May 20, 2013
The Tower of London and Gippeswyk Hall, Ipswich: Anne Boleyn is endlessly fascinating - was she a sexy minx, political manipulator, religious reformer or all of these? The facts of her life …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 07:11AMThursday, May 16, 2013
Park, London : The new Park Theatre's first season in its main space, Park 200, opens with an American docudrama, an antidote to Gatsby mania, set in 1920s Chicago.
Read the full review
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:04AMWednesday, April 17, 2013
During rehearsals of his new play, Howard Brenton and the company had a sudden realisation: they were willing partners in "the vast Ai Weiwei project". The Chinese dissident artist, a consta…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:14PMFriday, April 5, 2013
Trafalgar Studios, London : Dermot Canavan describes himself as "a blunt Northern man with a good ear and a decent pencil". A sometime actor, he wrote this two-hander when his frie…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:55AMTuesday, April 2, 2013
Molly Sweeney has been blind since early childhood. Supported by her understanding father, she has grown into a confident, independent woman. Then her new husband Frank and an ambitious opht…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:13PMThursday, March 21, 2013
Menier Chocolate Factory, London: David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, written in 2000, was first seen in London in 2002 at the Donmar, starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Catherine. It …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:31AMWednesday, March 20, 2013
Mathematicians are a breed apart, bandying numbers about in a way that few outside their magic circle can fully understand. David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play uses this exclusiveness…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:38PMMonday, March 11, 2013
Jermyn Street Theatre, London: The living room is a room in which no one has died. Helen and Teresa Browne, with the concurrence of their priest-brother James (symbolically cut off at the kn…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 08:11AMFriday, March 8, 2013
If only there were more Chekhov! Theatregoers in England, for whom Anton Pavlovich is little short of a god, must have wished this often enough. The handful of great plays come round almost …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:15AMWednesday, March 6, 2013
Clybourne Park won Bruce Norris a slew of awards on both sides of the Atlantic a couple of years ago. His fearless, shocking, very funny response to Lorraine Hansbury's classic A Raisin in t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:24AMWednesday, February 6, 2013
A little man takes on Authority and fails. A little man dons a colourful uniform, complete with boots and spiked helmet, and he becomes Authority. Carl Zuckmayer wrote Der Hauptmann von Köp…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:01AMTuesday, January 22, 2013
While Kafka specifically declined to indicate exactly what kind of creature Gregor Samsa becomes in his horrific overnight transformation, translators of the novella have gone for a variety …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:21AMWednesday, December 19, 2012
St James, London: Warning - this is Cinderella without a Fairy Godmother or a magical coach but with some quite impressive amputations instead.
Read the full review
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:40AMFriday, December 14, 2012
’Tis the season to be jolly. ’Tis also the season to dust off the stories of the Grimms and Perrault and present them as drama, sometimes transmogrified into panto. There are sometimes a…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:46AMThursday, December 6, 2012
Woking and Mars both provide subject matter for cartographers. John, who reckons he’s an achiever, is updating the local A to Z, while Behrooz, once a colleague of John’s, is exhibiting …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:34PMHampstead Theatre, London: It is a delicious premise - a woman, no longer young, finds the courage to be herself after years spent fulfilling the requirements of others. Jenny Joseph's …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:14AMFriday, November 16, 2012
Almeida Theatre, London: Lyric poetry - unlike the performance kind - is private, internal. It is the opposite of drama. A poet's life, can, of course, be dramatic, but telling a writer…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:04AMSaturday, November 10, 2012
This is a short play, but not a sweet one. Nevertheless, the ban on under-16s and the warning that it “contains themes that some audience members may find distressing” seems unnecessary …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:05PM 
