Friday, March 2, 2018
Three strong performances weakened by miscasting elsewhere and restless soundtrackCould an epic cinematic masterpiece be turned successfully into a three-act play? Confession first: Ingmar B…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:05AMThursday, January 25, 2018
Wilton's Music Hall first stop for Emma Rice's fresh reincarnation of endung love storyTime flies so much more beguilingly in Daniel Jamieson and Emma Rice's 90-minute musical fant…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:06AMWednesday, December 13, 2017
Perfectly modulated ensemble and production vary the strains of a classic TV seriesDirector Richard Jones watched all 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone as research for this Almeida productio…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:36AMThursday, October 19, 2017
Ibsen's great human comedy weathers a sea-change from fjord to Caribbean islandWhat a profoundly beautiful play is Ibsen's The Lady from Sea. It stands in relation to the earlier, relat…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:36AMSaturday, September 30, 2017
Two dramas about acting and being, illusion and reality, form an inseparable wholeThree tall orders must be met in any successful transfer of an Ingmar Bergman text from screen to stage. Fir…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:18AMSaturday, September 23, 2017
Arthur Kopit's poetic drama about post-stroke aphasia and facing up to death astoundsNow look here, Giles Coren: immersion in a great play well acted can send you out of the theatre fee…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:42AMThursday, September 7, 2017
Glitter and be sad as Sondheim''s former showgirls gather for a momentous reunionOf Sondheim’s half-dozen masterpieces, Follies is the one which sets the bar impossibly high, bot…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:48AMSaturday, August 12, 2017
Lopsided results in faithful reconstruction of Rodgers and Hammerstein's groundbreakerOnly one thing could equal the wow factor of seeing and hearing a youngish Hugh Jackman launch into…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:33AMTuesday, August 1, 2017
Kevin Elyot's 1982 debut has value, but his swansong should have stayed in the darkLike his smash-hit My Night With Reg, Kevin Elyot's first and last plays have a role to play in the hi…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:06AMThursday, June 1, 2017
Lively song and movement, but the special pathos of the film is smotheredHitting the essence of a Fellini masterpiece in a different medium is no easy task. Try and reproduce his elusive bra…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:54AMThursday, May 25, 2017
Familiar company faces can't quite compensate for an odd choice of settingMen playing boys playing girls, women and men, all female parts convincingly falsettoed and high musical standa…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:12AMThursday, May 4, 2017
Classic Moscow adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's no-hope novel creates a worldTime runs on different lines in Russian theatre to our own. 83-year-old Galina Volchek co-founded Moscow…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:31PMSaturday, March 18, 2017
Acting becomes being in Ivo van Hove's six-hour Shakespeare epicIt felt good to be encountering Shakespeare at his most political with a world event to smile about, for once (hailing, o…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:24AMFriday, March 3, 2017
Kurt Egyiawan's Moor takes arms against a sea of production troubles, but in vainThere's no reason why ruffs and candles shouldn't mesh with bursts of contemporary speech, song and ligh…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:54AMWednesday, March 1, 2017
Andrew Scott, predictably unpredictable, is subject to Robert Icke's slow-burn clarityHow often do you leave a production of Shakespeare's most layered drama in tears, thinking "what an…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:12AMFriday, February 17, 2017
More or less a one-man show, but the denouement justifies everythingHated the Schaubühne Hamlet (same lead actor, same director as this latest Shakespeare auf Deutsch); loved Ivo van Hove's…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:54AMFriday, February 10, 2017
Zweig's tale of moral equivocation becomes a tense radio-play with optional visual extrasProlific, fitfully great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig's two biggest popular biographies, Marie A…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:18AMSaturday, December 24, 2016
Ethan Mordden's latest opinionated guide has plenty of entertainment valueTinseltown's relationship to its more sophisticated, older New York brother is analogous to Ethan Mordden's eng…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:24AMSunday, December 18, 2016
Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams electrify as four Schiller queensTwo rich, full December Saturdays of unsurpassable theatre, four great plays that grow more meaningful with passing time, a…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:33PMWednesday, December 7, 2016
Moving pictures and crisp talk as Richard Jones tackles a Broadway comedyAn amplified crunch in the dark, sound without vision, kicks off this take on Moss Hart and George S Kaufman's light …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:18AMFriday, November 4, 2016
THE NEST, YOUNG VIC Moralising made real in Conor McPherson's version of a German hitMoralising made real in Conor McPherson's version of a German hitDo we see enough in the UK of conti…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:36AMTHE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL'S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM WITH A KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES, HAMPSTEAD THEATRE Tony Kushner's revision of a 2010 New York drama contains multitudesTony Kushne…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:36AM 
