How do traumas from former generations affect how we behave in the present? This is simultaneously a love story and an archaeology of hate, a sparky, spiky encounter between two individuals …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:42AMAny figure in Roman mythology today would be at the pointy end of cancel culture Ovid was exiled – or to put it in twenty-first century terms, ‘no-platformed’ – by an indignant Emper…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:03AMAn intriguing if flawed evening, boosted by ebullient ensemble work Indecent is a play wrapped inside a news story about stigma. Playwright Paula Vogel was at Cornell University when she s…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:54AMPlaywright Josh Azouz's absurdism owes as much to Sacha Baron Cohen as to Beckett An ageing Nazi, stuffed into a slightly too tight white linen suit, sits at the opposite end of the dining …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:24AMEdward Baker-Duly seems to have sprung fully formed from the pages of 'Punch' If you’re looking for a distraction from the apocalyptic headlines that seem to be the norm right now, then it…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:36PMToo many of the messages seem reductive and irrelevant "It is dangerous for women to go outside alone," blares the electronic sign above the stage of the new Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare'…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:36AMRaine beautifully evokes how music captures the mess of life In John Eliot Gardner’s magnificent wide-ranging biography of Bach, Music In The Castle of Heaven, he tells the story of the co…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:36AMUncomfortable truths beneath the poisoned patter This blistering, fearless play about an 18-year-old black entrepreneur on the King’s Road raises a myriad of uncomfortable questions that r…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:36PMA production that revels in the joyously absurd while hinting at the play's darker edges A little less than two years after Sean Holmes’s kick-ass Latin American carnival-style A Midsummer…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:54AMA vivid and credible production that is also limited by its form To accept or not accept a donation: that’s certainly the burning political question of the moment.
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:03AMCo-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 …
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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 …
SOURCE: 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�…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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 …
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: 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…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:42AM
