Wednesday, 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 07:01PMTuesday, October 9, 2012
Over the past few years, the 1970s have made a cultural comeback. On television, there’s been Life on Mars and White Heat, in the bookshops tomes by Dominic Sandbrook, in the theatre reviv…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00PMThursday, October 4, 2012
Walkouts are always intriguing. When audience members leave before the final curtain, it’s usually a sign that the play is too powerful, or too scandalous or maybe just not very good. Afte…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMFriday, September 28, 2012
The West End seems to be recession-proof, with rising profits, rising ticket prices and few empty theatres. But is this because commercial theatre is becoming increasingly formulaic? How abo…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:03PMMonday, September 24, 2012
Bush Theatre, London: Every year, the HighTide Festival in Suffolk helps to develop young playwrights and their latest discovery is Essex-born Vickie Donoghue, whose powerful debut play was …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:14AMFriday, September 21, 2012
The popular image of the state-of-the-nation play is that of a large-scale, big-cast drama that has an epic time span and lots of highly articulate speeches that analyse the way we are. But …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMFriday, September 14, 2012
In the non-Olympic sport called “Name Britain’s greatest living playwright”, most of the entries have always been men. Nowadays, that is all changed and the odds-on favourite must be C…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMTuesday, September 11, 2012
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: Some American playwrights are embraced by British theatres, which often produce their work more readily than venues across the Atlantic. Among …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:47AMMonday, September 10, 2012
With the American presidential election campaign now in full swing, the search is surely on for cultural expressions of the two nations that the candidates represent: white rich people versu…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMWednesday, September 5, 2012
After years spent in the dark alleyways of abuse, where the only optimistic light is the sickly glow of neon, some new playwrights are emerging into the sunnier meadows of romantic comedy. T…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00PMWednesday, August 22, 2012
Since 2004, the Ambassador Group’s Trafalgar Studios has done sterling work in staging West End transfers for some of London’s most promising fringe talents. Kieran Lynn’s An Incident …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00PMMonday, June 25, 2012
The Arab Spring has arguably been the most important international event after the credit crunch, yet it seems to be of little interest to British playwrights. Parochial, obsessed with writi…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMTuesday, June 19, 2012
When does an urgent new trend become a theatre cliché? Over the past couple of years, the idea of generational conflict between the have-it-all baby boomers and the have-nothing-but-debts y…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMFriday, June 15, 2012
Mary Shelley and all her works have dogged the footsteps of contemporary theatre — in a way that’s a bit reminiscent of her most famous creation. Last year, there was Frankenstein at the…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMTuesday, June 12, 2012
A powerful trend in contemporary theatre is the family play. But the families usually depicted tend to be of the standard two-point-five variety, while other more complex forms — families …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:01AMThursday, May 31, 2012
They say that men, at whatever age, never leave the playground. We are told that boys will be boys. But what is this kind of infantile masculinity really like, and is there anything new to s…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMWednesday, May 30, 2012
Although some contemporary plays — notably Posh and 13 — have accurately taken the temperature of the times, what about the timeless classics? Does Sophocles’s Antigone (dated about 44…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMFriday, May 25, 2012
Plays about media folk and creatives, such as Joe Penhall’s Dumb Show and Stella Feehily’s O Go My Man, are not uncommon in British theatre. They usually have recognisable middle-class s…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMThursday, May 24, 2012
Duke of York's Theatre: When Posh originally opened at the Royal Court during the General Election of 2010, it felt like a metaphorical prediction of how a Tory government might run riot and…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 07:18AMTuesday, May 22, 2012
As the Olympic Park rises out of the desolation of East London, British theatre is also being regenerated by the sports fest that looms increasingly large on the horizon. Although it has rec…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMWednesday, May 9, 2012
Lyric Hammersmith, London: Olivier award-winning playwright Simon Stephens's latest play is a co-production between the Lyric Hammersmith, where he is an artistic associate, and two Eur…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:45AMTuesday, May 8, 2012
Simon Stephens is not only one of our most talented playwrights, he’s also the one most open to influences from German theatre. In 2007, he collaborated with director Sebastian Nübling on…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMThursday, May 3, 2012
The best playwrights have an antenna-like ability to pick up, and respond to, the new conflicts and fault lines that appear in society. Over the past five or so years, the antagonism between…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMMonday, April 23, 2012
Unlike the National, the RSC has not had a good record of producing exciting new plays in the past 20 years or so. But one exception to this rule is the theatre’s support for the work of D…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMWednesday, April 18, 2012
Religious mania is bad for your love life. In Enda Walsh’s revamped 1999 play — which has already been seen in Galway and New York, and opened in London last night — a 33-year-old man …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMSaturday, April 14, 2012
It’s the star factor. Tickets for Big and Small, by the controversial German writer Botho Strauss, are selling fast because Cate Blanchett is in it. Her protean presence in this production…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:10PMFriday, April 13, 2012
Bush Theatre, London: Madani Younis's inaugural production at this venue is Lee Mattinson's Chalet Lines, a co-production with Newcastle's Live Theatre. As its title suggests,…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 07:16AMThursday, April 12, 2012
When Madani Younis became the new artistic director of the Bush, some questioned his commitment to new writing, while others asked what he would bring to this small but high-profile venue. W…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMTuesday, March 27, 2012
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: This year's Royal Court Young Writers Festival continues with the second full production of a new play which, like its successful predeces…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:54AMMonday, March 26, 2012
There is nothing quite so exciting as witnessing the debut of a fresh new voice. But young writers can be rather frail creatures, and their exposure in the high-profile Royal Court Young Wri…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:31PM 
