Thursday, September 21, 2023
★★★★THE WHITE FACTORY, MARYLEBONE THEATRE Dazzling treatment of a notorious moral betrayal
Dazzling Russian production finds fresh relevance in the Lodz ghetto massacre
This powerfu…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:13AMThursday, June 8, 2023
★★★★PATRIOTS Zingy comedy-melodrama about Putin hits even more painful spots
Peter Morgan's zingy comedy-melodrama about Putin hits even more painful spots now
With apocalyptic flood…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:04AMSaturday, May 13, 2023
4000 MILES, CHICHESTER Brilliant Eileen Atkins at 88 in a tender, classy play
A classy evening with authentic characters and Dame Eileen in a transparent blouse
Of all the theatrical dames, …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:18AMFriday, May 5, 2023
★★THE VORTEX, CHICHESTER Coward's drama about damaged mother and son needs Dyno-rodding
Noel Coward's play about damaged mother and son needs Dyno-rodding
Sometimes I go outside and loo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:18AMMonday, March 14, 2022
★★★ DOGS OF EUROPE, BELARUS FREE THEATRE An apocalyptic vision has dreadful timeliness
An apocalyptic vision of an insatiable, all-obliterating Russia has dreadful timeliness
Hindsi…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:24AMThursday, January 27, 2022
★★★AVA: THE SECRET CONVERSATIONS, RIVERSIDE STUDIOS Elizabeth McGovern is glamorous but unrevealing as Ava Gardner
Elizabeth McGovern is glamorous but unrevealing as the gloriously fou…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:03AMFriday, November 12, 2021
***THE SEVEN POMEGRANATE SEEDS, KINGSTON Pierce Brosnan's James Bond finds daft but apt place in Euripidean rewrite
Pierce Brosnan's James Bond finds a daft but apt place in Euripidean rewr…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:24PMFriday, October 15, 2021
****THE CHERRY ORCHARD, WINDSOR McKellen's scene-stealing comic act is worth the ticket
Ian McKellen's scene-stealing is not the only reason to see Chekhov's comedy
The cherry orchard in Ant…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:18PMThursday, October 7, 2021
**THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT Mantel self-adapts, and eviscerates, her novel on stage
Third time round, Hilary Mantel self-adapts, and eviscerates, her novel on stage
The first two stage adapta…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:12AMWednesday, September 8, 2021
** LEOPARDS, KINGSTON When the trousers come off and the handcuffs go on, the climax is the sexual politics lecture
When the trousers come off and the handcuffs go on, the climax is the s…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:18PMFriday, August 13, 2021
*****CONSTELLATIONS, VAUDEVILLE THEATRE Chris O'Dowd and Russell Tovey join the bittersweet comedy about sex, bees and cosmic luck
The gay couple and the O'Dowd option bring new laughs and t…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:12AMWednesday, July 21, 2021
HAMLET, WINDSOR THEATRE ROYAL Leaping out of time from Gandalf to Hamlet - athletic thespianism from Sir Ian McKellen
Leaping out of time from Gandalf to Hamlet - athletic thespianism from…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:32PMSunday, June 26, 2016
How often are you charmed by one of Shakespeare’s sylvan romances while literally under a greenwood tree? Even if this summer is proving rather generous with the rough weather, it is an un…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 01:04PMFriday, May 20, 2016
According to Sellar and Yeatman in 1066 and All That, the true bible of English history, King John was a Bad (to be exact, an Awful) King. Shakespeare had quite an interest in Bad Kings - Ri…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:28PMThursday, February 11, 2016
If one says, accurately, that Richard Bean’s Toast is a comedy about Hull’s lost bread industry, trade unions and the poor working man, you will possibly yawn and turn the page. But it i…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:21PMThursday, November 12, 2015
Pro patria mori. Now there’s the test for Henry V - perform it on Remembrance Day. The “band of brothers” shtick relies on an idea of patriotism from an age when there was no need to d…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:37PMThursday, July 23, 2015
The earthy contact with groundlings that Shakespeare’s Globe offers in its stagings makes a comical but telling context for Richard II, a play largely about political point-scoring between…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:50PMSunday, May 24, 2015
Jonathan Miller’s new King Lear is rustic to its core, spoken in broad Northern accents, and the whole production could be packed onto a travelling theatre’s wagon and taken around Brita…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:27PMSunday, March 1, 2015
It’s a hostage to fortune really to create a play on one of the funniest books ever written, and a Victorian one at that. Still, Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat is regularly mined …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:37AMWednesday, October 1, 2014
Alan Bennett’s 80th birthday last May deserves celebrating not just as a point of respect for a formidable playwright but with awe at his continuing liveliness. More than 40 years after he…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:46PMThursday, September 11, 2014
Prince Charles’s “black spider letters” - his attempts to influence or change government policy - are real, as is the government’s long collusion with Clarence House to keep them fro…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:13PMSunday, June 15, 2014
In the midst of ferment as the arts world faces fast-shrinking public subsidy, Sir John Tusa, former managing director of the BBC World Service and the Barbican Arts Centre, publishes this w…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00PMTuesday, May 27, 2014
When a big star meets a small play, they go one of two ways - they step up to it like a believer, or they clue in the audience that this is all a bit low, throwing everything they have in th…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:02PMSaturday, May 17, 2014
Hilary Mantel’s two Thomas Cromwell novels have captured an enormous new readership for history with their crackling sense of place and immediacy of tension - the plays created on them, no…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:22PMWednesday, December 18, 2013
In his later life Shakespeare, who never ducked ways to define a hero, offered the public a challenge: Coriolanus is a professional warrior, deaf to reason, patrician hater of people power. …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:00PMThursday, October 3, 2013
A young man eaten up by fears of inherited disease, a mother who hid the facts of her awful marriage from her son to spare him, but is rewarded with even worse pain: the emotional plotlines …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00PMTuesday, January 8, 2013
Here’s an elegant thing to do before 8 o'clock dinner - stroll out for an hour’s recital of a rollicking story-poem done in a hip underground venue with judiciously hip application of mo…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:44PMSaturday, December 29, 2012
In among the deluge of New Year Honours poured over Olympians (headed by Sir Bradley Wiggins, Sir Ben Ainslie, Dame Sarah Storey and Companion of Honour Lord Coe), there is a modest sprinkli…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 01:14AMWednesday, November 7, 2012
The word “people” of the title of Alan Bennett’s new play is to be spat out, like a lemon pip. People, who invade your space, boss your values, make you be what they want. So does the …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:21PMSunday, October 28, 2012
Henry Goodman, Imelda Staunton and Aidan McArdle won the big acting prizes while Akram Khan and Opera North carried off the dance and opera gongs at the annual Theatrical Management Associat…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:38PMThursday, October 11, 2012
Pity the A-level English student: for them the “rarely seen masterpieces” that creep onto the curriculum and into the theatres. Judging from the frequently giggling reaction of the audie…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:15PM 
