Friday, October 11, 2019
First-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 07:48AMFriday, September 20, 2019
Incisive, 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 08:12AMFriday, September 6, 2019
The 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 07:03AMWednesday, August 28, 2019
A 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 08:54AMTuesday, July 16, 2019
Energetic two-hander offers a sparky portrait of a transforming city
This witty street-smart play about a white-skinned boy born to a mixed-race mother deploys its narrative with the dexteri…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 06:48AMWednesday, July 3, 2019
Navigating the script is a bit like going in a car with a driver who's just passed their test
This lovingly lo-tech visit to galaxies far far away is a curious proposition, which, while neit…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 03:48AMWednesday, June 12, 2019
Nicholas Hytner's vivacious 21st-century take shines like a disco glitterball
Nicholas Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre is a feat of exuberant brilliance, a gende…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 05:36AMSunday, May 26, 2019
A moving antidote to fast-paced narratives and rampant individualism
Our Town was written shortly before World War Two about a small town in America in the years leading up to World War One,…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 09:36PMThursday, May 23, 2019
A simultaneously sweeping and intimately human production
Mammon and Yahweh are the presiding deities over an epic enterprise that tells the story not just of three brothers who founded a ba…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:24AMWednesday, May 15, 2019
Roy Williams revival looks beyond the headlines to see the codes, complexity and camaraderie of crime
We are living in a time when gang culture rips and roars its way down London streets, an…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 07:54AMThursday, May 2, 2019
The production's levity eviscerates the underpinning emotional realities
Often the greatest works of dramatic absurdism spring from the worst extremes of human experience, whether it’s Ion…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 06:06AMSunday, April 7, 2019
A soaringly irreverent postmodern caper through shifting attitudes to homosexuality
A loo with fuschia-pink carpet to catch splashback; an Archbishop of Canterbury who’s in it for the skir…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 08:00PMThursday, March 28, 2019
A spikily poignant reminder of humanity in politically dark times
In an age where political, social, and gender norms seem to be in perpetual meltdown, it should be pretty much impossible fo…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 03:19AMMonday, March 18, 2019
Adjoa Andoh is a magnetic Richard with her hawk-like glare and vigorous swagger
Richard II has become the drama of our times, as it walks us through the impotent convulsions of a weak and va…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 06:30AMWednesday, March 13, 2019
Anna Washburn's play for the Almeida achieves lift-off in the West End
As China and the US arm-wrestle for world-domination in everything from trade to military power, we find ourselves in t…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 05:15AMFriday, February 15, 2019
This dark comedy raises disturbing questions about sound and intimacyTwo men called "Massimo" face the audience, one very tall, one very, well, minimo. The tall Massimo (Tom Espiner, picture…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 08:12AMWednesday, February 6, 2019
Sex and technology run like faultlines through this workThere is no doubt that this Cherry Orchard, whirled into town by Roman Abramovich from Moscow, is going to be divisive. If you, like …
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 08:48AMThursday, January 31, 2019
Revolution is about youth, music, anger, and - frankly - sexIs there a connection between revolution and theatre? The answer has to be yes – a visceral one. The supremacy of symbols, the c…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:32AMWednesday, January 16, 2019
Revelations that should feel toxic seem tepidTheatrical alchemy is eternally slippery.
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:24AMWednesday, December 19, 2018
Shakespeare's study of flawed leadership becomes a paralable for our ageJoe Hill-Gibbins’ uncompromising production of The Tragedy of Richard II for the Almeida hurtles through Shakes…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:48AMTuesday, December 18, 2018
Justin Audibert's production excels at portraying the book's alchemical qualitiesIf you’re looking for a Christmas with more pagan edge than saccharine cheer, where the wolves ar…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:36AMFriday, December 7, 2018
A deceptive lightness of tone brings new resonance to the textWhat do you gain by casting Dr Faustus and Mephistopheles as women? In the programme for this often illuminating production, dir…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 05:18AMMonday, December 3, 2018
Our heroine is torn between the charms of a washing-machine inventor and a CountThe convention-challenging sexually adventurous life of Glaswegian writer Aimée Stuart is worth a play all on…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 03:54AMWednesday, November 21, 2018
West End transfer from the Almeida retains pressure-cooker intensityThis production of Tennessee Williams’ neglected classic, Summer and Smoke, arrives from the Almeida into the West End w…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 03:24AMThursday, November 15, 2018
A daring counterintuitive reading proves richly rewardingMacbeth has rarely seemed quite as metrosexual as in this gorgeous shadow-painted production that marks artistic director at the Glob…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:32AMFriday, November 2, 2018
This scalpel-sharp drama anatomises marital breakdown with cold-eyed clarityAdultery seldom looks less adult than in the form of the mild-life crisis – that much-satirised condition in whi…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:24AMFriday, October 19, 2018
Ken Urban's play is a psychological thriller crossed with a love storyThis blisteringly intense evening at Trafalgar Studios begins with two strangers in an Amsterdam hotel bedroom and …
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 03:36AMThursday, October 11, 2018
A disappointing portrait of middle-class hypocrisyThe playwright Bathsheba Doran has blazed a stellar trail ever since graduating from Cambridge at the same time as David Mitchell and Robert…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:18AMWednesday, October 3, 2018
James Graham's Dickens project is structurally ambitious but doesn't add upIt sounds like a marriage made in heaven. Charles Dickens and James Graham – both great chroniclers of…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 05:42AMFriday, September 28, 2018
Authentic performances hit the mark"I’m not a number, I’m not a grade, and I’m not a failure." The 17-year-old girl stands in front of the small class, who gaze at her goggle-eyed. "A …
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 05:36AMThursday, September 20, 2018
The spirit of Magritte pervades this brand of existentialismAs the Syrian conflict enters its final convulsions, renewing memories of how the Sykes-Picot agreement – between an Englishman …
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 05:12AM 
