Friday, April 12, 2013
The family can be a knot of hatred as well as a cradle of love. Rather late in this new play by Tanya Ronder comes a scene in which a separated husband and wife try to untangle this knot, an…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMThursday, April 11, 2013
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: As it was in the beginning, so shall it be at the end: Anthony Neilson's masterpiece, The Wonderful World of Dissocia, was part of artisti…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:29AMWednesday, April 10, 2013
Anthony Neilson is the wild man of new writing. However, this reputation, which has been provoked by shock-fests such as Penetrator (1993) and Stitching (2002), belies the fact that some of …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMWednesday, April 3, 2013
Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, is a cultural icon, the image of the peroxide blonde who spells big trouble. An influence on Diana Dors in the 1956 film Yield to the Nigh…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMThursday, March 28, 2013
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London: This is the last production that Dominic Cooke is directing at this venue before he steps down as artistic director next month. It is an apt …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:46AMWednesday, March 27, 2013
“My honest instinct,” says Jim, the hero of Bruce Norris’s The Low Road, “is one of resentment.” And while this contemporary fable of industrious bees, aka capitalist speculators, …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:01PMThursday, March 21, 2013
The best horror stories take place in mundane surroundings. The envelope of the ordinary gives a context of credibility to the practically incredible. In Janice Okoh’s new play, which won …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:01PMSunday, March 17, 2013
Legendary English playwright Edward Bond doesn’t often come to Malta, but when he does, he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. After the first performance of his Olly’s Prison — a stage ver…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:00AMThursday, February 21, 2013
Royal Court, Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, London: The most common complaint about plays that criticise the austerity measures that have followed the global financial meltdown is that they don…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:49AMWednesday, February 20, 2013
Is this the most poetic title in London theatre today? Anders Lustgarten’s new play joins a ragged march of work, from David Hare’s The Power of Yes (2009) to Clare Duffy’s Money: The …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMMonday, February 4, 2013
Plays about plays are often touched by theatrical magic. This is certainly the case with Timberlake Wertenbaker’s masterpiece, first staged in 1988, and now revived by the same director, M…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMSunday, February 3, 2013
Eclipse Theatre Company’s artistic director Dawn Walton talks to Aleks Sierz about her latest project, a revival of Don Evans’ 1970s comedy analysis of racial and gender stereotypes, One…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 02:00AMTuesday, January 29, 2013
Lyttelton, National Theatre: Today, when long-term playwright-director partnerships are rare, it is a cause for celebration when a writer and a director work together over several years. Pla…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:50AMMonday, January 28, 2013
Over the past decade or so, Simon Stephens has emerged as one of Britain’s premier playwrights. As well as being a prolific penman, with three volumes of collected plays already in print, …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:03PMFriday, January 25, 2013
Gate Theatre, London: This is the first time the work of US playwright Rajiv Joseph, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, has been seen in the UK. Directed by Justin Audibert, who is this year's r…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:11AMWednesday, January 23, 2013
When feminism was really cool, female playwrights would write flatshare dramas about a group of women, each of whom was representative of a certain way of life. The play title would just be …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMThursday, January 17, 2013
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: Polly Stenham's third play for the Royal Court - after her award-winning debut That Face (2007) and follow-up Tusk Tusk (2009) - is billed…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:22AMWednesday, January 16, 2013
Most of us would love to live in a happy family, but it’s the unhappy ones that make the most compelling drama. And few playwrights do familial tensions as instinctively as Polly Stenham, …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMThursday, December 13, 2012
Jerwood Downstairs, Royal Court Theatre, London: Martin Crimp's latest work is his most innovative since his 1997 masterpiece Attempts on Her Life, and the first at this venue since The…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:39AMWednesday, December 12, 2012
Christmas plays are a seasonal curse of British theatre. But there are alternatives to pantos and Dickens monologues. At the Royal Court Theatre, there is a tradition of more edgy Christmas …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:11PMMonday, December 10, 2012
Playwright Martin Crimp defies labels. He has been called obscure and oblique, too difficult and, worst of all, too Continental. But although he is feted on the European mainland — George …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:30AMFriday, November 30, 2012
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: One of the great achievements of outgoing artistic director Dominic Cooke's regime at the Royal Court has been his loyalty to some of the …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:41AMThursday, November 29, 2012
Is discretion really the better part of valour? This question arises in a particularly acute form in this new play, which looks at Danny, a gay primary school teacher who decides to come out…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMThursday, November 22, 2012
Soho Theatre, London: Following its success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year, and again this year, as well as at the Latitude Festival, this all-male version of Anthony Burgess…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:05AMWednesday, November 14, 2012
Cottesloe, National Theatre, London: Billie Piper plays a star-crossed lover as she makes her debut at the <a href="http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/the-effect">Nation…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:35AMTuesday, November 13, 2012
Science thrives on stage. In play after play, various scientific ideas seem to flourish in the warm, well-lit environment of the theatre, fed by a crew of artists and despite the threats of …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMThursday, November 1, 2012
London theatre loves plays about the media. Is this because we spend so much time flicking through magazines, visiting websites or watching television? Or is it because this venue’s trendy…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:01PMMonday, October 29, 2012
Finding the mythic echoes of the ancient Greeks in stories about the modern world is not just confined to past greats such as TS Eliot, but is also used by contemporary adapters of old trage…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:01PMJerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: How do you follow a massive success? Playwright Jez Butterworth has had to face that question twice in his career so far. In 1995, his Mojo was…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 08:15AMWednesday, October 24, 2012
In the past few years, without any fanfare, the veteran playwright Howard Brenton has not only made a comeback, but also become the chief chronicler of the nation’s past. One year he is te…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMTuesday, October 16, 2012
Wow, what a lot of debuts. Adrian Lester (Hustle, Bonekickers, Merlin) makes his Tricycle Theatre debut in this new play about a black actor in Regency London, and it’s written by his wife…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PM 
