Sunday, February 11, 2018
The playwright-director reflects on his 1999 play, revived at the Donmar and Sheffield CrucibleFingers on buzzers… Question: What’s the connection between Days of Wine and Roses, Small C…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:00PM'WHY WE UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER': Peter Gill on 'The York Realist'The playwright-director reflects on his 2001 play, revived at the Donmar and Sheffield CrucibleFingers on buzzers… Question:…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:00PMTuesday, January 23, 2018
Jennifer Saunders gets laughs, but Kathy Burke's lamentable production misses the pointImagine, if you will, discovering a ninth-rate old melodrama about upper-class nonsense, hiring a …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:00AMFriday, December 15, 2017
Look no strings: long-nosed cartoon character is humanised by a magical stagingFrom Nicholas Hytner and Alan Bennett’s wonderfully nostalgic version of The Wind in the Willows through Cora…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:54AMMonday, July 3, 2017
The TV and theatre star charts her route from 'EastEnders' and 'Toast of London' to 'Fiddler on the Roof'What do you call a woman who murdered Dirty Den, is the…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:18AMThursday, June 29, 2017
Kenneth Grahame-inspired musical starring Rufus Hound is at once overly perky and dramatically weightlessAn enormous amount rides on a musical's opening number. Without explicitly expressing…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:24PMWednesday, May 31, 2017
Glorious reimagining of Broadway rarity at Regent's Park Open Air TheatreOn 8 April 1952, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green were chatting to Charlie Chaplin at a party when he…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:24PMWednesday, April 12, 2017
Star power isn't the reason to catch ENO's Rodgers and Hammerstein pricey co-production “Then I’ll kiss her so she’ll know.” At the sound of his ringing voice, the girls pa…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:12AMFriday, December 9, 2016
She made a huge hit of Stephen Sondheim's most-famous flop – not bad for a girl who dropped out of school when she was 15 and was rejected as a theme-pub singer. Maria Friedman talks …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:36PMMonday, May 25, 2015
In this treasure chest of lyrics and essays, Stephen Sondheim appraises his own work with eye‑widening honesty
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:58PMFriday, July 18, 2014
My (very) small haul of autographs collected as a schoolboy ran the gamut from Peter Pears to Linda McCartney but even back then I knew the classiest signature I bagged was that of Elaine St…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 01:27AMThursday, January 16, 2014
“God,” wrote Stephen Sondheim, “is in the details.” Of course, he didn’t actually coin the phrase but throughout his published collections of lyrics he cites it as one of his three…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:46AMMonday, December 2, 2013
How do you solve a problem like...no, not Maria, Candide? Musicals are loved for their scores – and Leonard Bernstein’s one for this really is a cracker – but they’re held together b…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:45PMThursday, October 3, 2013
In a moment of scalding intensity at the climax of of Ghosts, terrified Oswald sees the sun. Throughout the rest of Ibsen’s celebrated drama about the sins of the past, light is fairly abs…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:10PMTuesday, April 16, 2013
They’re back, and this time it’s Gorky.read more
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:33PMWednesday, April 10, 2013
People sneer at musicals for endless reasons: they hate Broadway brashness, non-naturalistic lurches in and out of song, the sentimentality. One of the least acknowledged reasons, however, i…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:54PMFriday, March 29, 2013
Faced with an unfamiliar play, it’s usually hard to spot exactly where the writer stopped and the director started. Not here. This is one of those occasions where a director’s voice is c…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:10AMWednesday, March 13, 2013
Without wishing to get all Kirstie and Phil about this, theatre, more often than you’d imagine, is about location, location, location. One of the reasons why the National Theatre’s knock…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:50AMFriday, November 16, 2012
Legit News:
London theater takes on Sondheim flop
SOURCE: Variety at 11:00PMWednesday, November 7, 2012
Confession time: I’m a sucker for a romantic reunion. When lost-presumed-dead twins Sebastian and Viola finally rediscover one another alive and well at the end of Twelfth Night, you’ll …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00PMSaturday, September 29, 2012
“Has it ever occurred to you that flippancy might cover a very real embarrassment?" Elyot's response to fulminating Victor is a line of defence – and since he has run off with Victor's w…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:16AMSaturday, June 23, 2012
Legit News:
Field opens up for Hytner's eventual successor
SOURCE: Variety at 12:00AMWednesday, May 16, 2012
The competition for best dramatic use of a coffee table is won hands down by the wagon-wheel one that prompts a major argument in When Harry Met Sally. Runner-up is the one that appears in D…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:07AMWednesday, April 25, 2012
It's amazing what working on a masterpiece can do. Commissioned to write a companion piece to Terence Rattigan's magnificent one-act drama The Browning Version, David Hare has abandoned his …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:06AMThursday, March 8, 2012
Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party: comedy classic or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with added sneering? Ever since its first appearance on stage in 1977 and its subsequent record-breaking…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:05PMTuesday, February 7, 2012
A fired-up Maria Callas (Tyne Daly) is hectoring a student. “I don’t want it done like me, I want it done like Verdi!” “With music?” enquires the nervy pianist. “Yes,” she snap…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:00PMFriday, October 14, 2011
Given that Edward Bond, that most austere of playwrights, has refused to allow a London production of his most notorious play Saved for over a quarter of a century, it’s neither surprising…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:03AMThursday, October 6, 2011
You can accuse Alfred Uhry's 1987 play Driving Miss Daisy of many things – being overtly sentimental is top of the charge sheet – but you certainly cannot claim that it’s a case of fal…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:06AM 
