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 07:31PMEthnic tensions in France have been in the news this week, with the siege of the gunman Mohammed Merah, so award-winning South-African penman Craig Higginson’s new play seems really timely…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:01PMOrange Tree Theatre: Playwright Martin Crimp returns to the Orange Tree Theatre with his new short play, Play House, in a double bill with a revival of his 1987 piece, Definitely the Bahamas…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:03AMLike many a regular theatregoer, I have a little list of classic plays that I’ve never seen, or even read. One of these is, or rather was, Errol John’s evocatively titled Moon on a Rainb…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:01PMSouthwark Playhouse: The Southwark Playhouse has been a firm supporter of polymath Philip Ridley's work in recent years, and he returns to this venue with his latest, amazing, new play,…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:59AMPolymath Philip Ridley is British theatre’s prince of imaginative writing. At the moment, he’s clearly on a roll, and this year his diary has been filing up fast. First, there was a maje…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:03PMPlaywright Martin Crimp is one of British theatre’s best-kept secrets. Although his neon-lit name appears in the theatre capitals of Europe, with his work a big hit at festivals all over t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:00AMHarley Granville Barker is hardly a household name, but he was a huge influence on British theatre today. During the Edwardian era, he promoted new writing at the Royal Court; he wrote plays…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMWhat’s it like to be young, British and Muslim in the age of austerity? In an era of global financial crisis, high unemployment and shrinking pay packets, what can this country offer Briti…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMJerwood Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court: This year sees the biggest Royal Court Young Writers Festival in the theatre's history. Celebrating 39 years of good work in discovering and…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:44AMThe Royal Court has been finding and developing young writers for four decades. Its Young Writers Festival has helped launch the careers of a variety of talents such as Simon Stephens (winne…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMRoyal Court, Jerwood Downstairs, London: David Eldridge returns to the Royal Court for the first time since 2000, when his Under the Blue Sky was at this venue, with a new drama set in Essex…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:51AMIs there a more evocative location than Essex? In his 2000 play Under the Blue Sky, one of David Eldridge’s characters shouts the unforgettable words: “I’m from Essex and I’m dancing…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMScience rocks. In the theatre, this is a subject that offers to provide powerful experiments in metaphor. Most recently, in Nick Payne’s Constellations - and most classically in Tom Stoppa…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMTwentysomething emotional confusion is fertile ground for drama. In this new play, Stefan Golaszewski - writer of the BBC Three sitcom Him & Her and star of BBC Four’s Cowards - explor…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMRose Theatre, Kingston: Before his huge West End success with the musical Matilda, Dennis Kelly's most popular play was DNA, first performed at the National Theatre's Connections y…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:58AMCritics can also be historians. In my opinion, the great new wave of 1990s British theatre starts not with Sarah Kane’s Blasted in 1995, nor with Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking a …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMWrite what you know, the cliché goes, and in his new drama the playwright Chris Lee draws on his day job as a social worker to create a tense two-hander about a middle-class social worker a…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00PMSome theatre openings will be legendary for all time. One such was the Parisian evening of 10 December 1896 when Alfred Jarry’s character Père Ubu stepped onto the stage at the Théâtre …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMSuddenly, it seems as if the brawling youngster that was once new writing for the British theatre has grown up. Now, all it wants to talk about is the family, about having babies, and about …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMTill death do us part: love and death are, like the fingers of a couple holding hands, perfectly intertwined in this play by Abi Morgan, which has been touring the country since autumn and o…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMAbsent or abusive fathers are a staple of British drama. As such, they are both an explanation for ferocious male violence and a metaphor of a paternal state which, in an age of austerity, s…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:56AMAt its best, theatre is enthralling, and this year's offerings were led by one brilliant musical and one amazing comedy. With the West End immune to the chills of the recession, its profits …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:21PMLoneliness is hard to put on stage. There is something about the feeling of unwanted urban solitude which is so repetitive and, let’s face it, boring, that writing a play about it risks se…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:19AMCan you replace a wife with a doctrine? Under normal circumstances, the question would be absurd, but given that Joe Penhall’s new play, which opened last night, is the latest of a crop th…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMThis play has a deliberately evocative title: not only does it suggest overabundance (“everything but the kitchen sink”), but also a whole genre of playwriting (Kitchen Sink Drama). At t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMEver since 9/11, political theatre has mobilised the techniques of verbatim drama, and the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, north London, has an impressive reputation for its tribunal plays, oft…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMIt’s the God factor. Although, until very recently, most British playwrights - being a secular bunch - have shied away from tackling questions of religious belief in their work, their Amer…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:01PMSome plays are so weird they defy description. Well, almost. One of these must surely be the late James Saunders’s deeply absurdist play, whose first outing in 1963 launched the career of …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PMFamily occasions can be fraught affairs, as playwrights from Harold Pinter to Alan Ayckbourn have convincingly proved, but the mother of all family meltdown dramas must be Thomas Vinterberg�…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 12:53PMJournalism is often used to create compelling true-life plays. This drama, written by award-winning actor Nichola McAuliffe, has both a journalistic writing style and a journalist — actual…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:52AM
