Thursday, August 27, 2015
Well, here’s an oddity. You Won’t Succeed... is too fragmented for musical theatre, too bombastic for cabaret, and about as profound as a first-draft Wikipedia page. Channelling the self…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:52PMMonday, August 3, 2015
A sterling case is made for the lost art of letter writing in Michael Simkins’ dramatisation of Roger Mortimer’s missives to his wayward son. Mortimer’s inimitable turn of phrase, pres…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:45PMTuesday, July 14, 2015
Life, the universe and everything… in 70 minutes. You certainly can’t fault Nick Payne’s ambition, nor help but admire the dazzling inventiveness of his theoretical physics romcom with…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:03PMMonday, July 6, 2015
The latest transatlantic transfer is curiously esoteric, concerning as it does an obscure period in the lives of two great men: Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles. The centenary of the latter…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:40PMWednesday, June 24, 2015
Hamlet instructs his players to hold “the mirror up to nature”, advice taken literally in this arresting 120-year anniversary staging of Chekhov’s homage to the Bard. Jon Bausor’s se…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:15PMThe play I have just seen is not the play you will see. Of course, one of the draws of live performance is that no two nights are the same, but that idea is taken to a mesmerising extreme in…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:07AMMonday, June 22, 2015
Can we really distinguish between experience-based judgement and personal bias? Caroline, the social worker at the centre of American writer Rebecca Gilman’s latest ‘issue’ play, trust…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:13PMMonday, June 15, 2015
“We’re completely pro sex.” Rashdash, who collaborated with Alice Birch on this anarchic challenge to pornography, are not objecting on prudish grounds – their concern is the co…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:30PMThursday, June 11, 2015
Seldom has there been such impassioned debate about whether a play has a right to exist. Writer Jonathan Maitland faced a tirade of criticism, with many accusing him of exploitation; others …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:49PMSunday, June 7, 2015
In a peculiarly Beckettian development, the creative team of this Sydney Theatre Company production spent several weeks of rehearsal waiting not for Godot, but for their director. Tamás Asc…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:10AMWednesday, June 3, 2015
The play’s the thing, once again, in the latest backstage comedy, an affable if limited dig at luvvie pretensions. Noises Off still reigns supreme in this genre, with successors unable to …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:52PMThursday, May 21, 2015
“All children, except one, grow up.” So begins J. M. Barrie’s iconic tale of arrested development, given new power and poignancy in this high-flying production. A century after one of …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:23PMWednesday, May 20, 2015
The Forest of Arden takes many forms, but in Blanche McIntyre’s meticulously purist production, it’s strictly a state of mind – no leafy bowers in sight. Here, the unspoken can be voic…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:04PMMonday, May 18, 2015
At just 26, Pippa Bennett-Warner has already achieved many actors’ goals, from treading the boards at the National and having a part written specially for her to sharing scenes with lumina…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:00AMWednesday, May 13, 2015
Genre mixing is a perilous business. Successful hybrids use duelling forms to re-contextualise or revolutionise; others wind up fatally diluting their disparate elements. Ayckbourn’s 1994 …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:15PMTuesday, May 12, 2015
André is losing time. It’s not just his perennially mislaid watch, but whole hours, weeks, years. Is he still living in his Paris flat, or did he move in with his daughter Anne? Is she ma…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:48PMMonday, May 11, 2015
It seems almost redundant to critique a show that so ably – if unconsciously – critiques itself. “The power of Bollywood is it’s unique!” cries one character, before squandering th…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:15PMTuesday, May 5, 2015
As The Queen gains an audience with the latest royal addition, her theatrical alter ego returns to the West End, with Kristin Scott Thomas inheriting Tony-nominated Helen Mirren’s role in …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:24PMWednesday, April 29, 2015
As we stagger towards electoral chaos, isn’t it comforting to think there might be a master plan at work? That Russell Brand’s meddling is preordained, or Cameron’s ‘brain fade’ an…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:20PMThursday, April 23, 2015
“Fury Over Sharia Law For Toddlers!” No, not a prime example of spoof headline generator Daily Mail-o-matic, but the latest piece of fantastical scaremongering from the Clarion, a 125-ye…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:00AMTuesday, April 21, 2015
Coming-of-age comedy, moonlit romance and a gentle folk soul: can this really be Eugene O’Neill? The master of darkness makes a surprising departure with semi-autobiographical 1933 work Ah…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:20PMFriday, April 17, 2015
The 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s seminal novel has inspired a raft of commemorative work, from Damon Albarn and Moira Buffini’s musical Wonder.land to Holland Park opera and Glas…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:52PMWednesday, April 15, 2015
Hollywood has never met a cliché it didn’t love; unfortunately, neither has Dylan Costello. His peek behind the curtain of Tinseltown’s Golden Age employs every stock type imaginable, f…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:46PMMonday, April 13, 2015
The Young Vic’s victory parade came as no surprise after a bumper year, but, in an impressive night for studio and publicly funded theatre, the egalitarian 2015 Oliviers also showered affe…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:32AMSaturday, April 11, 2015
From Singin’ in the Rain and Anything Goes to Hello, Dolly! and Mary Poppins, Olivier Award winner Stephen Mear has done more than any other British choreographer to usher classic musicals…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:00AMThursday, April 2, 2015
While seven-way debate rages, broadcaster and debuting playwright Jonathan Maitland takes us back 25 years to a radically different political landscape: a time of regents, and of regicide. I…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:04PMWednesday, March 25, 2015
Joshua Harmon’s provocative 2012 piece is the Rocky of comedies. His evenly matched sparring partners, a pair of viscerally antagonistic cousins confined in close quarters after a familial…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:17PMMonday, March 23, 2015
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, repeatedly unfunny Harvey isn’t just a study of madness, but a punishing example of it. Mary Chase’s du…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:52PMThursday, March 19, 2015
This is, stresses our guide, a work of pure (read: non-libellous) fiction, except that its “preposterous” premise is rooted in even more preposterous truth. In 2010, diva extraordinaire …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:16PMMonday, March 16, 2015
Writing about writers: exploring what you know, or the very definition of stifling egoism? Either way, it can be a terrible trap for the playwright, with craft becoming not just the subject …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:34PMFriday, March 6, 2015
The Langham has marked its 150th anniversary in theatrical fashion by commissioning an original drama spanning several decades – and floors – from emerging company Defibrillator, whose T…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:56PM 
