Friday, 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 06:56PMMonday, March 2, 2015
The quest for liberation is popular dramatic terrain, but the Gate Theatre’s ‘Freedom Burning’ season shifts focus to the aftermath. What do you do when the fight is over, and how can …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:10PMFriday, February 27, 2015
How do we respond to a tragedy of infinite mystery? We investigate, we speculate, and we seek to impose meaning, to produce a story that safely contains unfathomable horror. However, those h…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00PMThursday, February 19, 2015
Has there ever been a successful dinner party on stage? It seems no sooner has the table been set than domestic disharmony erupts: opposing personalities obligingly clash, the veil of marita…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:15PMMonday, February 9, 2015
Casting existing partners is no guarantee of artistic success – for every Burton/Taylor, there is a Bennifer. Hannah Price has taken a risk, too, by pairing the revered Dame Harriet Walter…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:40PMSunday, February 8, 2015
The Orange Tree’s renaissance continues with this searing piece from playwright of the moment Alice Birch, who follows up last year’s subversive Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again with an in…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:20AMThursday, February 5, 2015
Even the most begrudging acquaintanceship with thematic foghorn Downton Abbey will have affirmed that the Edwardian era heralded momentous social change. Provocatively embedding this revolut…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:16PMThursday, January 29, 2015
Is there any bond more powerful than shared history? If life is the sum total of our experiences, then those who experienced with us will always hold a piece of us – and none more intimate…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:41PMTuesday, January 27, 2015
If the London property boom continues post-election, the fight for living space may well develop into all-out war. But what begins as skirmish in Peter Souter’s 2013 play, promoted from th…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:48PMMonday, January 26, 2015
Dating in the internet age is rife with complications, and yet Dave Simpson’s amiable romcom manages to eschew nearly all of them. Bar its online matchmaking set-up, this is a chaste, big-…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:34PMFriday, January 16, 2015
Disillusioned with our modern world? Why not journey back into an idyllic past, when trains were benign, anthropomorphic creatures rather than sources of commuter angst, red petticoats held …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:55PMMonday, November 24, 2014
Saxon Court joins the growing list of new plays tackling the economic collapse, and while lacking the creative innovation of work like Clare Duffy’s Money: The Game Show at the Bush o…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:31PMMonday, November 17, 2014
Reclaiming lost plays can be unnecessary indulgence, but Blanche McIntyre’s note-perfect production of Emlyn Williams’ 64-year-old work ushers in the renaissance of a thoroughly modern m…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:37PMTuesday, November 11, 2014
This time of remembrance has inspired a fascinating theatrical skirmish. In one corner, Nicholas Wright’s 2014 Regeneration, an adaptation of Pat Barker’s trilogy; in the other, Stephen …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:43PMTuesday, November 4, 2014
It is no exaggeration to say that Lloyd Newson has created a new theatrical language. Verbatim drama and intricate choreography would seem, on paper, to be fatally competing elements, yet Ne…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:05PMSaturday, November 1, 2014
Rediscovered work offers aficionados a tantalising piece of the puzzle. Terence Rattigan’s callow debut, reborn after 80 years in obscurity, bears the hallmarks of his later plays, notably…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:16AMThursday, October 23, 2014
When gifting the unheard a voice, the temptation is often to make it a solemn one. Thankfully, Paddy Campbell has, for the most part, sidestepped puritanical preaching in his debut play base…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:11PMTuesday, October 21, 2014
Hell is other people. It’s not the wilderness that poses the greatest threat to the stranded corporate bonding quartet in this docile Lord of the Flies-meets-The Office pastiche, but …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:03PMMonday, October 20, 2014
Bigger is better in the Tricycle’s latest piece of reclaimed black history. African-American writer Marcus Gardley’s stimulating play, which transports Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Al…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:14PMThursday, October 16, 2014
Ghosts are walking at the Young Vic. Katie Mitchell’s stark, startling production of Chekhov’s final lament is not just an evocation of a lost era, but a summoning of the spirits hauntin…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:43PMWednesday, October 15, 2014
Fresh from global domination with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, currently garnering rapturous reviews on Broadway, inexhaustible playwright and adaptor Simon Stephe…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:02PMMonday, October 13, 2014
Purists may take issue with Anya Reiss’s incursion into the classics – having already tackled The Seagull and Three Sisters, she’s now turned her dogged 21st-century gaze on Uncle…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:24PMMonday, October 6, 2014
The advantage of basing drama on real events, particularly emotive ones like the 2005 London bombings, is that they have inbuilt resonance; the disadvantage, all too apparent in 2013 play Wa…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMThursday, October 2, 2014
To do Mamet’s work justice, you must be able to deliver dialogue with the speed, skill and breathtaking bravura confidence of Usain Bolt. In Lindsay Posner’s much-hyped but frustratingly…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:21PMTuesday, September 30, 2014
Britain has entered a “post-Christian” era, declared former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams earlier this year: we acknowledge its cultural presence, but Christianity is no longer…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:13PMMonday, September 29, 2014
In his otherwise unremarkable 1932 debut play Dangerous Corner, J B Priestley employs a promising framing device that hints at the kind of metafictional experimentation found in works like S…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:03PMThursday, September 25, 2014
The news cycle waits for no man. When Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky’s thinly veiled Boris Johnson satire premiered in Edinburgh at the beginning of August, it seemed remarkably timely, coin…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:42PMMonday, September 22, 2014
Like their divisive protagonist, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice could reasonably be accused of valuing style over substance: indelible extravaganza Evita subscribes to the cult of celebrit…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:31PMWednesday, September 10, 2014
If Chiltern Firehouse is any indication, power in our society lies not in bank balance, postcode or job title, but in being seen nibbling crab doughnuts at the hottest restaurant in town. Be…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:00AMMonday, September 8, 2014
There is a moment in Breeders when Ben Ockrent seems, momentarily, to channel Dennis Kelly’s chilling Utopia. Never mind the topical issue of homosexual parenting – should we even have c…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:59AMThursday, September 4, 2014
It begins sombrely, with the grave recounting of a shipwreck, but such emotive moments are fleeting: as the drama ratchets up, it only serves to fuel the splendid zaniness of Shakespeare's 1…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:30AM 
