Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Pitch-perfect Peter Gill revival surpasses its original Peter Gill has been a quiet if invaluable mainstay of the Donmar over time. But the Welsh playwright-director has rarely been better s…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:31AMThursday, January 18, 2018
Shakespeare problem play gets a spirited reading that chimes with our #metoo timesIt's the people who are problematic, not the play. That's one take-away sentiment afforded by Caroline Byrne…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:29AMSaturday, January 13, 2018
Andrea Dunbar's Thatcher-era classic is invigorated afresh The revival that almost didn't make it into town has got the Royal Court's 2018 mainstage offerings off to a rousing start. Fo…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:19AMThursday, January 11, 2018
Autobiographical debut play is sprightly but sketchy, tooThat ages-old dictum "write what you know" has given rise to the intriguingly titled My Mum's a Twat, in which the Royal Court's deli…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:50AMSaturday, December 30, 2017
Sondheim and Alexander Hamilton sang out, as did a bracing array of new plays Year-end wrap-ups function as both remembrances of things past and time capsules, attempts to preserve an experi…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:33AMTuesday, December 19, 2017
Visually alluring Victor Hugo rewrite needs to go back to the storyboardThese are challenging times for new British musicals. Following quickly on from a Pinocchio that ought to be way more …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:54AMFriday, December 15, 2017
Imogen Poots and James Norton in terrific form as American expats living on the edge The city of love provides a backdrop for marital discord and worse in Belleville, Amy Herzog's celebrated…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:12AMMonday, December 11, 2017
Simon Gray play is better served by its cast this time round The play that famously got away when one of its stars (quite literally) jumped ship is back. In 1995, Stephen Fry abandoned the W…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:24AMTuesday, November 14, 2017
Seminal 1976 film resonates anew as Breaking Bad star gets 'mad as hell'Outrage knows no time barrier, as the world at large reminds us on a daily basis. So what better moment for …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:36AMThursday, October 12, 2017
Broadway misfire finds chuckles aplenty, and a heart, at the Garrick TheatreWhat a difference an ocean and a change of scale can make. When I saw the Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein on…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:33AMTuesday, September 12, 2017
The colossus who founded the RSC and took the National to the Southbank is fondly rememberedTheatre artist, political agitator, cultural advocate: Sir Peter Hall was all these and more in a …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 12:36PMTuesday, August 8, 2017
If this is a great era for theatre, it is not only welcome but necessary Could we be inhabiting a new golden age of theatre? It sometimes seems that way, not least in the blurring of boundar…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:18AMMonday, July 31, 2017
John Tiffany leads Jim Cartwright's debut play towards the sublimeWho'd have guessed that the London theatre scene at present would be so devoted to the numinous? Hard on the heels of G…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:48AMThursday, July 27, 2017
Lucy Kirkwood play fusing science and familial disarray is as exhausting as it is enlightening There's enough plot for a dozen plays buzzing its way through Mosquitoes, Lucy Kirkwood's play …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:32AMTuesday, July 25, 2017
Starry cast lay bare body and soul in Tennessee Williams classic "Maggie the cat is alive: I am alive," or so remarks the feline, eternally frustrated heroine of Tennessee Williams's Cat on …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:54AMWednesday, July 19, 2017
Oliver Cotton's new play, directed by Trevor Nunn, begins well before succumbing to absurdity and hysteria "What is this, Saving Private Ryan?" a character randomly queries well into th…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:36AMTuesday, June 27, 2017
Audra McDonald's long-awaited West End debut deserves to take the town Broadway so frequently fetes its visiting Brits that it's nice when the honour is repaid.
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:06PMFriday, June 23, 2017
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's Off Broadway hit makes a vibrant crossing to London starring Colin MorganAs with life, so it is in art: in the same way that one can't predict the curve balls t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:48AMTuesday, June 6, 2017
A cautious Miranda Hart cedes centre-stage to an enchanting young newcomer Forty years after Annie swept on to Broadway, brimming with shining-faced optimism amidst wearying times, along com…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:42AMFriday, May 19, 2017
Felicity Kendal follows with difficulty where Maggie Smith once gloriously led You have to hand it to Felicity Kendal: this ever-game actress is fearless about treading in the footsteps of t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:24AMWednesday, May 10, 2017
Rory Stewart's Iraq nation-building memoir makes for fluent if sketchy theatre"This is the most fun province in Iraq" isn't the sort of sentence you hear every day on a London stage. On…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:33AMFriday, May 5, 2017
Tony Kushner's great work arrives anew in London "We live past hope," or so remarks the AIDS-afflicted drag queen-turned-prophet, Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield), late in Angels in Ameri…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:02AMTuesday, April 4, 2017
Lavish revival delivers dazzle aplenty if not much depth Can London support two dance musicals, each one dazzling in a different way? We're about to find out, now that the mother of all toe-…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:32PMWednesday, March 8, 2017
Stoppard's breakout play gets a giddy 50th-anniversary revival To the list of abiding theatrical partnerships one must surely add Tom Stoppard and the director David Leveaux.
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:42AMSunday, February 26, 2017
Tony winner's first play couples awkwardness and charm There's something to be said for encountering a playwright fresh out of the starting gate. Since his debut play Speech & Debat…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:12PMThursday, February 23, 2017
The, ahem, ladies do what they can with a show at once overfamiliar and overlong Why? That's the abiding question that hangs over The Girls, the sluggish and entirely pro forma Tim Firth-Gar…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:48AMMonday, January 23, 2017
Startling hour-long play mixes the poignant and the playful Unimaginable tragedy is given poignant, piquant form in Us/Them, the hour-long performance piece from Belgian theatre company BRON…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:54PMSaturday, January 21, 2017
America's new president gives rise to galvanic, sometimes scary theatreThere's an irony to be found in the fact that America's 45th president is already abolishing any and all things to…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:18AMTuesday, December 27, 2016
Several National Theatre knock-outs, a corker or three at the Court, and Billie Piper packed a wallop Life threw numerous, possibly irrevocable curveballs at us all during 2016, which in tur…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:04AMSaturday, December 10, 2016
Early Chekhov begins strongly, then falls away This Chekhov-intensive year comes to a muted climax with a rare sighting of Wild Honey, Michael Frayn's reappraisal of the Russian master's unt…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:04AMThursday, December 8, 2016
Bijou Broadway title proves supremely winningThere are no cartwheels, and no one does the splits, in the new London revival of that most cherishable of Broadway musicals, She Loves Me, which…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:31AM 
