Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Nowadays, playwrights do their apprenticeships at university, studying drama. But, once upon a time, they had proper jobs before they started making theatre. Such is the case of the late Mic…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:07PMMonday, March 16, 2015
When I ask polymath playwright Philip Ridley whether, after a career of 25 years in the theatre, he feels he is at
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 08:24AMWednesday, March 11, 2015
As their career progresses, playwrights face a real problem: should they please their fans by writing the same play, over and over again, or should they risk trying out new things? Polymath …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMWednesday, March 4, 2015
This venue is one of the coolest in London — and its regular audience is both trendy and well-heeled. In the foyer, you get jostled by a better class of person. For this immersive show, wr…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMTuesday, February 24, 2015
Plays about Muslims in British theatre tend to open a door on a segregated community, a place cut off from the mainstream. But stories that show cultural conflict — between whites, Asians,…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:01PMMonday, February 23, 2015
Political sleaze, arguments over Europe and fears for the NHS — sometimes it feels as if it’s the 1990s all over again. And, right on cue, theatre has been staging a whole shelfload of r…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:01PMFriday, February 20, 2015
Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, London: The Royal Court has an excellent record of producing plays from different countries. Richard Twyman, the director of The Djinns of Eidgah at thi…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:38AMWednesday, February 11, 2015
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London: National treasure Maxine Peake comes to the Royal Court in this new play which reunites playwright Zinnie Harris with director Vicky Feathers…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:04AMTuesday, February 10, 2015
Is there such a thing as New Writing Pure? By this I mean plays that not only have a really contemporary sense of character, plot and dialogue, but are also written in a distinctly individua…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:01PMThursday, February 5, 2015
Kay Adshead’s new play about the Arab Spring has a beguiling premise: to tell the human stories behind the headlines. We all remember the news footage of the Arab Spring in 2011, from Tuni…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:31PMTuesday, January 27, 2015
The history play has roots that go deep into our culture. We love to see stories that are kitted out in fancy dress, and long to savour a past that resonates with our present. In the case of…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:01PMTuesday, January 20, 2015
The future is a bad place. Most of our predictions about climate change and the world’s resources seem to come from a mindset of mute despair. In New Atlantis — part of the Enlightenment…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:01PMMonday, January 19, 2015
Sometimes the deadliest violence is silent. The publicity for Caroline Horton’s new absurdist satire, Islands, points out that Oxfam estimates that some $18.5 trillion is siphoned out of t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:00PMFriday, January 16, 2015
Maria Studio, Young Vic, London: Mike Bartlett's short, sharp splinter of a play was first staged at the Sheffield Crucible Studio in 2013, and then visited New York. Now remounted, wit…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:27AMThursday, January 15, 2015
Mike Bartlett is the most prolific and talented British playwright to emerge in the past decade. Not only has he created large-scale epics in a variety of styles — from the science-fiction…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:01PMWednesday, January 14, 2015
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: Diana Nneka Atuona's award-winning debut play was first given a staged reading at last year's Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:43AMTuesday, January 13, 2015
Finborough Theatre, London: Although this powerful and award-winning play opened in a controversial production at Theatre Network in Edmonton, Canada, in November 2013, it was originally per…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:06AMThursday, January 8, 2015
Can a country like Russia escape its history? In Moses Raine’s new play — transferring from the tiny Old Red Lion pub theatre where it was first seen in May 2014 — the answer seems to …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:01PMThursday, December 4, 2014
Lyttelton, National Theatre, London: Croatian-born, London-resident playwright Tena Stivicic makes her National Theatre debut with a complex and moving epic that spans four generations and 7…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:54AMWednesday, December 3, 2014
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London: Last year, at this time, playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany teamed up to create Let the Right One In, a vampire romance which w…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 07:55AMMonday, December 1, 2014
The Bush is on a roll. Under artistic director Madani Younis, audiences are up, new plays are flowing in and there are plans to build a permanent studio space. Having just staged Radar, its …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:01PMMonday, November 24, 2014
Like good wine, some plays improve with age. The first taste is sharp, and tickles the palette; further sips stimulate and impress, but the rich full flavour is only apparent after a few yea…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:01PMFriday, November 21, 2014
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: The latest episode in this venue's current programme of work on the theme of revolution and resistance is a story about a rebellion of pri…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:14AMThursday, November 20, 2014
Much of the recent programming of the Royal Court has flaunted a preference for gimmicky gestures rather than the hard work involved in developing new playwrights. So after its staging of bo…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:01PMFriday, November 14, 2014
Young Vic Clare Studio, London: Up-and-coming director Kate Hewitt is the winner of this year's James Menzies-Kitchin Award and she has chosen to revive Caryl Churchill's 2000 dyst…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:21AMThursday, November 13, 2014
How can you convey the sheer incomprehensibility of ghastly acts? While most playwrights, when confronted by the horrors of genocide, settle for a journalistic approach that is realistic and…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:31PMHampstead Theatre, London: Roy Williams is one of British theatre's most gifted and prolific playwrights. Although some of his plays have examined black issues, his output is wide-reach…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:29AMWednesday, November 12, 2014
This venue’s current programming is devoted to examining the state of Britain’s public services, with a revival of Nina Raine’s Tiger Country, about the NHS, coming next month and, pla…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:01PMFriday, November 7, 2014
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London: In about a year's time, the governments of the world will meet in Paris to act against climate change. This new collaboration between Ch…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:57AMThursday, November 6, 2014
When science and the arts combine they form a new genre, which has the unlovely name of “artsci”. But although there have now been several plays about climate change in recent years, can…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:01PMThursday, October 30, 2014
Park Theatre, London: This revival, of a play first seen at Manchester's Royal Exchange in 2008, reunites playwright Robert Holman with director Tim Stark, who directed Rafts and Dreams…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:52AM 
