Co-production with Manchester International Festival, Marshmallow Laser Feast and Philharmonia Orchestra brings Shakespeare's metaphor to life Which of Shakespeare’s plays is most plagued …
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 06:03AMCelie learns how to live from the strong, rebellious women she encounters This production of The Color Purple is an extraordinary testimony to the fact that many of the twentieth century’s…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 07:33AMThe tilt between our actual selves and our idealised selves will never cease to be an existential tension This stunningly delivered online monologue from a bereaved widow to her husband feel…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 07:03AMSkilfully interwoven accounts of a life in which togetherness is forbidden How do you create a secular version of the Nine Lessons and Carols? The original can feel like a formulaic trot thr…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 06:48AMAn ingenious depiction of the artist's gravity-defying love One of Marc Chagall’s last commissions was for a stained-glass window in Chichester Cathedral, which channelled his characterist…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:03PMIt's a true achievement to feel the chemistry of a cast whirring into action again The Prohibition-era setting of The Great Gatsby brings an appropriately illicit feel to this bold decisio…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 05:03AMAlan Bennett's monologues make us reflect on our own little worlds For some of us, it doesn’t take a lockdown to imprison us in our own hellish little world. Since his first series of dram…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 06:02AMTheatre itself become an act of rebellion against the microbe For a riveting, cathartic – and often surprisingly humorous – 50 minutes Ralph Fiennes paces the stage at the Bridge Theatre…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 08:12PMAs Mozart, Adam Gillen erupts onto the stage as a Tourette’s tornado It is 41 years since Peter Shaffer ripped off Mozart’s respectable façade to reveal a foul-mouthed verbally incontin…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 08:24AMHelen McCrory is the broken, irreparable heart of this production Helen McCrory is an actor who can inject a world of feeling into one syllable that many actors would struggle to muster in a…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 06:48AMFood crimes of the Sixties and Seventies are revealed here as Michelin-starred memories I knew what a Howard Hodgkin painting would look like before I ever saw one because of Nigel Slater. T…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:03AMA story told with the wit and elegance of a tune played on a harpsichord It has been the fate of George III – who on many levels was a visionary and accomplished monarch – to go down in …
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 12:24PMThe power of the mob still resonates in a production that speaks powerfully to our times An arrogant leader contemptuous of his people. Could there be a more perfect timing for Josie Rourke…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 08:06AMJames Graham acutely perceives the obsessions and motivations of our times There is a line of argument that – unfairly – blames playwright James Graham for Dominic Cummings. Would Cummin…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 01:42PMBarbershop banter and the place it occupies in black male identity Barber shops – as we are all starting to appreciate in this time of lockdown – fulfil an emotional as much as a cosmeti…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 07:54AMRobert Lepage seizes on the fragments of human lives to build an epic If you want to pinpoint the genius of Robert Lepage’s multi-faceted seven-hour epic, that has returned to the National…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 11:48PMPaul Kember's play doesn't sing convincingly any more It may seem strange to watch a play about four English people on a kibbutz in the Seventies, and find yourself thinking about Brexit, bu…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 09:32PMIn the #Metoo era, the exploitation of the female characters is particularly resonant This raunchy, gleefully cynical production takes one of Thomas Middleton’s most famous tragedies and t…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 06:18AMJoe Crilly believed in skewering the romance surrounding sectarian violence The news that the Continuity IRA created a bomb destined for England on Brexit Day has added to the timeliness of …
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 05:32AMRaw depiction of a community where dreams go to die Despair hangs like mildew over the small iron-ore mining town of Duluth, Minnesota, where dreams go to die, and the living haunt the clapp…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 10:12AMAn interrogation of power, womanhood and the mythologies with which we surround ourselves History has corseted Elizabeth I with the title of “Virgin Queen” for centuries, but in Ella Hic…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 08:42AMA stunning tribute to the wild and wonderful life of the mind This scary, electrically beautiful adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book about living on the faultline between imagination and real…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 03:36PMAn electric interpretation in which the White Witch – like the devil – has all the best tunes We all remember that moment when we walked through the back of the wardrobe: the heaviness o…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 06:33AMThe script misses all that was distinctive about Berlin and Akhmatova's meeting How do you begin to dramatise one of the most extraordinary conversations of the 20th century between two of i…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:54AMWendell Pierce confirms a performance as exciting as any this theatrical year It is 70 years since Willy Loman first paced a Broadway stage; 70 years since audiences were sucked into the vor…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 07:48AMRSC transfers works best when it engages with the complex emotions of the play Even the most ardent Bardophile has to admit that most of the time the Fool doesn’t shine in a Shakespeare…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 07:18AMA potent anatomy of how words and power intertwine At a point in history where – yet again – a few misplaced words from English politicians could wreak havoc with Irish lives, this is a …
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 06:18PMFirst-time playwright Ruby Thomas is a daring and exciting new voice This ingenious short work deftly investigates themes of love and identity with a breezy assurance that marks first time …
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 07:48AMIncisive, intelligent and deeply moving The Permanent Way first roared its way into the national consciousness in 2003 when, after a triumphant opening in York, it toured the UK before tran…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 08:12AMThe evening is as devastatingly moving as it is bitingly funny If Russia is, as Winston Churchill once so memorably said, “a riddle, wrapped inside a mystery, wrapped inside an enigma”, …
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 07:03AMA resonant tragedy of mutual incomprehension, fresh from the Edinburgh Festival Neil Armfield’s resonant, turbulent production of Kate Grenville’s classic Australian novel The Secret Riv…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 08:54AM