Tuesday, December 18, 2018
West End transfer for Tony Kushner's musical about race and povertyWith the politics of hate alive and well both sides of the Atlantic, this seems a good time to revive Tony Kushner and…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 08:04PMSunday, December 16, 2018
Enjoyable but underpoweredPaul Merton has a lot of strings to his bow – stand-up, improv artist, historian of silent-movie-era comedy, quiz-show panellist, to name a few – and now he add…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 08:54PMSunday, December 9, 2018
Susie McKenna creates fast-paced fun in a busy mixSusie McKenna and Steven Edis have been creating pantos for Hackney Empire for 20 years, and over that time its seasonal offering has become…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 10:32PMWednesday, November 28, 2018
Dick jokes in abundance told in urban street style pantomimeIn 2009 Sean Holmes, then Lyric Hammersmith's artistic director, made a bold move by reintroducing panto at the lovely Frank Match…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 04:54AMMonday, October 29, 2018
Two-hander with a Walt Whitman poem and a clever twistHere's a good pub quiz question: after Shakespeare, who was the most performed playwright in America last year? Arthur Miller? Tennessee…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 09:06PMMonday, August 27, 2018
Rose Matafeo’s take on twentysomething life is toast of the FringeNew Zealander Rose Matafeo has won the coveted best comedy show award at the Edinburgh festival fringe. Steve Coogan, one …
Linked From The Guardian at 06:18AMMonday, July 16, 2018
Les Dennis is superb as a washed-up comicLes Dennis was once a marquee name on Saturday night television as host of Family Fortunes, but since giving up the light entertainment lark he now p…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 10:06PMWednesday, April 11, 2018
James Graham tells of the "coughing major" who wanted to be a millionaireYou could be forgiven for not remembering the “coughing major” brouhaha in 2001, coming as it did the d…
Linked From theartsdesk.com at 02:00AMSaturday, November 4, 2017
Jamie Campbell came out at 14, wore a dress to his school dance and dreamed of being a drag star. Throught it all, he was supported by his mother. Now, their lives are the subject of a music…
Linked From The Guardian at 02:54AMSunday, August 13, 2017
Reginald D Hunter spurns good taste, Sara Pascoe goes solo, and Jan Ravens is everyone elseTop calls in this year’s fringe comedy bingo – where punters make a mental tick each time jokes…
Linked From The Guardian at 03:24AMMonday, October 17, 2016
Kemp Powers’ play is set in a dingy motel room in Miami on the night of 25 February 1964, after Cassius Clay (as Muhammad Ali then was) had earlier beaten Sonny Liston to gain the world he…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 08:06PMWednesday, September 21, 2016
Michael Head's new play is based on the book They Took the Lead by Stephen Jenkins, which tells the true story of events at Clapton Orient (now Leyton Orient) Football Club during the First …
Linked From The Arts Desk at 07:15PMMonday, August 22, 2016
Angel by Henry Naylor, Gilded Balloon ****Rehana tells us what her hometown Kobane in Syria, is like - “A small border town where nothing happens … like Berwick-on-Tweed,” she says –…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 10:02PMSunday, April 3, 2016
Alan Ayckbourn's How the Other Half Loves - first performed in 1969, in the round at the Library Theatre in Scarborough - was only his second play. Already, though, it has a few Ay…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 07:56PMThursday, March 24, 2016
This is set in “a world midway between Elizabethan pageant and haute-couture catwalk”, a programme note for Scena Mundi's production says - and the initial signs certainly point to that.…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 10:55PMSunday, January 31, 2016
You might think that the combination of a play about one of the funniest comics of the second half of the 20th century, written by his biographer and directed by a member of Monty Python wou…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 08:46PMSunday, December 27, 2015
Who could disagree that, ten years on, the Abba musical extravaganza Mamma Mia! is still unbelievably good?It's not often I arrive at the theatre in a grump, but a long and unexplained bus d…
Linked From The Guardian at 01:33AMWednesday, November 18, 2015
Derren Brown calls himself a mentalist, but he's also a great showman, as his latest show, Miracle, attests. With its simple set, this is seemingly an evening of straightforward illusions. B…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 09:46PMWednesday, November 4, 2015
How wonderful it would be if Greg Kotis's play was a rapid response to David Cameron's alleged interest in porcine affairs. Not only wonderful to those still laughing about the imaginary hig…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 09:34PMTuesday, October 6, 2015
Paul, Jan and Louis, three young men living in a gritty part of south London, are bored and broke and, for them, there are two kinds of Britain - one with money and power, and the one they l…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 07:46PMTuesday, August 11, 2015
Walking the Tightrope, Underbelly Potterow ★★★★ Subtitled The Tension Between Art and Politics, this collection of eight short plays on the subject of censorship was prompted by…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 05:58AMMonday, July 13, 2015
A Richard Bean play is always to be welcomed - he wrote England People Very Nice and One Man, Two Guvnors, two of the most enjoyably rambunctious comedies of recent years - but also with a n…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 09:33PMSaturday, June 27, 2015
Comedian and writer Mark Steel recently found out the story behind his adoption in 1960. And the truth was so extraordinary that you almost couldn’t make it up …Families are funny things…
Linked From The Guardian at 04:03AMWednesday, June 24, 2015
Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham was a huge hit, a small-budget British film that in 2002 unexpectedly found an international audience way beyond its setting in suburban west London, a…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 09:26PMWednesday, June 10, 2015
Football is a subject close to Patrick Marber's heart. He's a lifelong Arsenal fan and during his sojourn away from London (and writing, as he was suffering from writer's block for much of i…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 10:19PMMonday, May 11, 2015
The 87-year old singer, comedian and all-round entertainer knows how to work a crowd, says Veronica Lee
Linked From The Telegraph at 07:34AMMonday, May 4, 2015
A couple stand on the stage, squaring up to each other. They are in the middle of an argument. The Man has just, out of the blue, suggested they have a baby. The Woman, understandably, needs…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 07:01PMSunday, April 19, 2015
Owen McCafferty’s new play could have had as its starting point John Updike’s line "Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face”, for it deals with stand-up comedian Steve Johnston, wh…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 07:05PMSunday, January 11, 2015
There is a tree on stage. Not a real tree but a full-size fake one (made by Take 1 Scenic Services) that reaches the ceiling, with lots of branches and leaves. As the audience enters the Old…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 07:24PMTuesday, December 30, 2014
Birmingham Hippodrome claims to stage the UK's biggest pantomime - a proud boast that highlights its productions' West End-level of investment. And this year's venture, Jack and the Beanstal…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 07:01PMThursday, December 18, 2014
The audience for this show could probably be divided into to two camps; those who fondly remember watching Morecambe & Wise on ITV or the BBC, and those who weren't even born when Eric M…
Linked From The Arts Desk at 07:01PM 
