Friday, February 3, 2023
Danny Robins' clever play gains a creditable star turn in its fifth run
The set of 2:22 A Ghost Story is open to the auditorium when we arrive and locates us at once in gentrification-land. …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:16AMMonday, January 30, 2023
Shakespeare's tragedy as a tight thriller, with its racist elements fully exposed
Frantic Assembly’s Othello, originally co-developed with the Lyric in 2008, is back in its third iteration…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:16AMFriday, January 27, 2023
Told by an Idiot return with a celebration of silent-movie antics and daft gags
Imagine what would have happened if the young Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel were cabin-mates on a transatlan…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:00AMSaturday, January 14, 2023
A cast with an infectious gift for fun give this French confection a touch of stage magic
First came Yasmin Reza’s 1994 long-runner Art; now another French hit, The Art of Illusion, has ar…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:22AMSaturday, December 10, 2022
Clint Dyer's new take makes Othello a victim of mob mentality
Clint Dyer is the first black director of Othello at the National Theatre, a venue that once staged the piece with its actor fo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:06AMThursday, December 8, 2022
Jonathan Slinger commands the stage in this dark, funny monologue
The American author of The Sarah Book, on which the monologue Sarah is based, is called Scott McClanahan, as is his main cha…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:48AMFriday, December 2, 2022
Tania Nwachukwu creates a warm hour of music and memories with hidden bite
The Bush studio space is proving a fruitful launch pad, not just for new writing but for new performers. It previo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:36AMTuesday, November 29, 2022
Absurdly romantic notions about love and war have never been funnier
For his final bow as artistic director of the Orange Tree, Paul Miller has decided to go out with a bang, amid much gigg…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:48AMFriday, November 25, 2022
Frank McGuinness's new play about T S Eliot and Groucho Marx is a poetic puzzle
The set at the Arcola for Frank McGuinness’s Dinner with Groucho naturally features a table with two place s…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:18AMWednesday, November 2, 2022
★★★★ ELEPHANT, BUSH STUDIO Stirring solo show from rising star Anoushka Lucas
A beguiling debut play with both charm and an angry message
It lasts only an interval-free 60 minutes, w…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:12AMSaturday, October 22, 2022
Pearl Cleage's play about thwarted dreams in Prohibition era Harlem gets a stellar production
The cynical might think Pearl Cleage’s play had been expressly written to address the over-rid…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:07AMFriday, October 21, 2022
Jack Thorne's wickedly funny play offers plum roles to two riveting disabled actors
This is not a play for the squeamish: here be blood and cum and unsavoury descriptions of genitalia, male …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:03AMMonday, September 19, 2022
Tanya Barfield reconstructs a simple plot as an absorbing puzzle
A tender love story has arrived at the Kings Head theatre from the US, where its author, Tanya Barfield, is an award-winning…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:33AMSaturday, September 17, 2022
Mrs Thatcher and Elizabeth II slug it out again in this 2013 classic
It’s only nine years since Moira Buffini’s Handbagged had its premiere at Kilburn’s Tricycle theatre (renamed the …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:19AMWednesday, September 14, 2022
Dipo Baruwa-Etti pits a fiery outsider activist against the British-Nigerian middle-class
As Dipa Baruwa-Etti’s latest play, The Clinic, reminds us, the Tory party has a strong showing of…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:25AMSaturday, August 6, 2022
After a hard-hitting 'Oklahoma!', the latest Rodgers & Hammerstein revival stays on the sunnier side
How old is Emile de Becque? Perhaps because my first Emile was the 1958 film version�…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:42AMThursday, July 21, 2022
Simon Godwin delivers an unexpectedly conventional production, larky and fluffy
After gender-flipping the National’s Malvolio, the director Simon Godwin might have been expected to be equa…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:12AMMonday, July 4, 2022
A brilliant balance of raucous comedy and immense pathos
Where should Leila live — Ilford or Kent? It doesn’t sound like an earth-shattering decision for a 15-year-old to make, but the s…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:03AMWednesday, June 15, 2022
An entertaining but not quite convincing makeover for a tricky play
There probably isn’t a more able translator of vintage drama than Martin Crimp, the playwright whose 2004 version of Pie…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:12AMMonday, May 9, 2022
Playwright Beru Tessema makes a striking stage debut
We are in a room in a simply decorated house in northwest London, where an Ethiopian-British family is gathering for a funeral “tea”…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:33AMSaturday, May 7, 2022
Rodgers and Hammerstein revival goes to the dark heart of the story
No surreys, fringes or corny chap-slapping: the Rodgers and Hammerstein revival that has arrived at the Young Vic from New…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:18PMThursday, April 14, 2022
Ché Walker directs his savage play, with a stellar turn from Clare Latham
Ché Walker claims he wrote Wolf Cub, now in the Hampstead Downstairs studio space, in a two-day blitz prompted by…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:06AMSaturday, March 26, 2022
The 2010 satire about race and the realities of real estate remains blistering
Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park arrived at London’s Royal Court like a blazing comet in 2010, a bold kind of …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:36AMFriday, March 11, 2022
An epic undertaking about British teenage life, beautifully performed
Do you happily binge four hours of mind-candy TV in one sitting? Alecky Blythe’s latest verbatim play, Our Generation …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:33PMTuesday, February 22, 2022
Carey Crim's play leaves the issues it raises sadly undramatic
Carey Crim’s 2017 play arrives from the US at north London's Park Theatre trailing a feminist playwriting award for its disse…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:33AMWednesday, February 16, 2022
The author of 'The Father' plays unsatisfying games with the audience
If Florian Zeller isn’t a Wordle fan, I’d be very surprised. As with the hit online game, the French playwright lik…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:18AMThursday, January 6, 2022
Nell Leyshon's play-with-music asks questions of a legacy
Cecil Sharp, heritage hero or imperialist appropriator? If you attended school in the first half of the 19th century, you would have…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:18AMMonday, December 20, 2021
A triumphant musical about teenage angst
When Berliners sat down to watch Franz Wedekind’s debut play Fruhlings Erwachen – Spring Awakening – in 1906, they had little inkling of the k…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:06PMSaturday, December 18, 2021
Has director Patrick Marber boobed this time?
In his 1973 play Habeas Corpus, now revived at the Menier Chocolate Factory under the direction of Patrick Marber, Alan Bennett had his way with…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:03AMThursday, November 18, 2021
Hilarious and probing satire from Young Jean Lee
The Korean-American writer Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men, currently enjoying its UK debut at Southwark Playhouse, is presented with…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:54AMMonday, November 15, 2021
Katie Mitchell hits a new career high
Katie Mitchell’s desire to bust the boundaries of theatre has taken a brilliant turn. Over her long and distinguished career as a director she has be…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:03PM 
