Monday, February 22, 2021
Celie 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 m…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:33AM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 17, 2021
The 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: The Arts Desk at 07:03AM[SHARE]Thursday, December 10, 2020
Skilfully 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: The Arts Desk at 06:48AM[SHARE]Saturday, December 5, 2020
An 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 characteristic…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:03PM[SHARE]Friday, October 23, 2020
It'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 dec…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:03AM[SHARE]Friday, September 11, 2020
Alan 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 dramat…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:02AM[SHARE]Sunday, August 30, 2020
Theatre 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 to …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:12PM[SHARE]Friday, July 17, 2020
As 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 incontinen…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:24AM[SHARE]Friday, July 10, 2020
Helen 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: The Arts Desk at 06:48AM[SHARE]Friday, July 3, 2020
Food 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: The Arts Desk at 04:03AM[SHARE]Friday, June 12, 2020
A 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 hist…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 12:24PM[SHARE]Friday, June 5, 2020
The 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: The Arts Desk at 08:06AM[SHARE]Friday, May 29, 2020
James 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 Cummings, …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 01:42PM[SHARE]Saturday, May 16, 2020
Barbershop 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 cosmetic ro…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:54AM[SHARE]Sunday, March 15, 2020
Robert 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 T…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:48PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 8, 2020
Paul 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: The Arts Desk at 09:32PM[SHARE]Friday, February 28, 2020
In 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 tur…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:18AM[SHARE]Monday, February 10, 2020
Joe 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: The Arts Desk at 05:32AM[SHARE]Monday, December 23, 2019
Raw 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: The Arts Desk at 10:12AM[SHARE]Monday, December 16, 2019
An 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 Hickson…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:42AM[SHARE]Thursday, December 12, 2019
A 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 realit…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:36PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 26, 2019
An 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 of th…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:33AM[SHARE]Monday, November 18, 2019
The 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…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:54AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Wendell 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…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:48AM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 30, 2019
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RSC 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…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:18AM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 22, 2019
A 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 welc…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:18PM[SHARE]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 tim…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:48AM[SHARE]Friday, 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 tr…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:12AM[SHARE]Friday, 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", then…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:03AM[SHARE]Wednesday, 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 River s…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:54AM[SHARE]Tuesday, 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…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:48AM[SHARE] 
