The Holland Festival is one of the greats. It has a British director, the articulate Ruth Mackenzie, formerly of the Chichester Festival and the cultural Olympiad, now into her second year. …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:02AMSam Mendes thinks King Lear is a bigger play than it is. In a new staging he directs at the National Theatre, he wants it to be about a convulsion of nations, a reordering of borders, bombin…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:43AMPeter Brook is probably at his happiest in Africa. Through his Paris theatre, the Bouffes du Nord, he has long had access to gifted Francophone black African actors. They’ve always been a …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:07PMIn opening words cited in the programme for Primavera’s new production of Howard Brenton’s Bloody Poetry (1984) the playwright states he wanted to remind people of “England’s radical…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:40PMThe Barbican as always led the way in London in international theatre programming. The year there ended on a high, with Thomas Ostermeier’s Hamlet from the Schaubühne laying down new mark…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:10PMThe famous Siegessäule - the Victory Column, an erect stick of sandstone liquorice with a golden angel on its top - is even trickier. Conceived before Germany was born, it was inaugurated i…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 12:55PM