3,478 stories from The Arts Desk
A troubling take on the climate emergency and a pile of suitcases containing tall tales in two intimate shows at Summerhall
Bellringers, Roundabout @ Summerhall ★★★★�…
The Globe stretches the theatrical experience with this bilingual BSL production
More surely than any other London stage, the Globe has opened up our theatrical perspective on different lang…
★★★★ THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, USTINOV STUDIO, THEATRE ROYAL BATH Landmark play revived to shock and surprise all over again
Jane Horrocks garners the laughs in a very d…
Debut two-hander explores a gentle love story of two practicing Muslims
At one point, in John Fowles's 1977 novel The Magus, the guru character in the story compares sexuality before and af…
Roy Williams and Clint Dyer's protagonists rage against the limits of their lives
Two boys in east London, one Black, one white, grow up together, play pranks at school, then decades later h…
One-man play about a sporting great, and a hot topic served cold
Adam Riches: Jimmy Summerhall ★★★
Unexpected twists in relationships mark out two dramas at the Traverse Theatre
The Sound Inside, Traverse Theatre ★★★★★
Mental health and food form the themes behind two strong dramas at the Traverse Theatre
In Two Minds, Traverse Theatre ★★★★Â
The National's finely acted staging of Steinbeck's grim classic is a tough watch
It's a brave company that embarks on a staging of John Steinbeck's award-winning 1939 novel The Grapes of Wra…
French "hybrid memoir" comes blazingly alive onstage in London
The title sounds as if we ought to be in for an evening of Virginia Woolf, and, indeed, one of the astonishing women on view (…
★★★★★ FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, REGENT'S PARK OPEN AIR THEATRE As entertaining and poignant as ever, 60 years on
Unique venue adds a new dimension to canonical mu…
Michael Bennett's 1975 hit has plenty of pizzazz but not enough emotional oomph
A Chorus Line reigned supreme on Broadway from 1975 to 1990, a bold, bare-bones piece that for once put musica…
Two strong Fringe shows merge truth with fiction - to very different ends
The Mosinee Project, Underbelly Cowgate ★★★★
In May 1950, a small US town awoke to hamme…
★★ FRANKIE GOES TO BOLLYWOOD, SOUTHBANK CENTRE Small town girl makes good in Bollywood, then takes on the patriarchy
Bhangra-inspired musical let down by storyline and singing…
From post-breakup blues to sweet-shop conflagrations in three early Fringe shows
Heartbreak Hotel, Summerhall ★★★★Â
Timely arrival for Lucas Hnath's play about the cost of winning
Before Lucas Hnath wrote Red Speedo, he had heard a 2004 speech at a hearing investigating baseball doping that declared the p…
Nassim Soleimanpour's latest 'cold read' work is a unique experience
The Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour is many things, some seemingly contradictory: a) a clever, poetic playwright w…
Katori Hall is back in her native Memphis with an exuberant ensemble piece
There's an exuberant comedy from the start in Katori Hall's The Hot Wing King, which comes to London after an initi…
An imperfect show arrives boasting a quasi-immersive charm
The Baker's Wife closed on the way to Broadway in 1976, since which time Stephen Schwartz's stubbornly resistent if sweetly scored…
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Operettaish bitter-sweetness raised to the sublime in a miracle of perfect timing
Jerry Herman is the king of pep. Way too much of it in the first 20 minutes of the recent re…
Cardboard Citizens shine an unforgiving light on poverty in the UK
A stark end-title at the end of this collection of short films sums up the dire situation the UK is in: one in five people,…
Christopher Hampton's love of Stefan Zweig's text becomes a drawback
Who was Stefan Zweig? It's likely that it's mostly older folk who studied German literature at A-level who have encounter…
Two awkward science nerds and a violent alcoholic father are oddly likeable company
Sarah Power, the writer of Grud, now in the Hampstead's smaller space, is a self-confessed geek who…
A fine cast spell out the cost of survival in today's ailing industries
For a long stretch of its first half, Dominique Morrisseau's 2016 award-winner, Skeleton Crew, seems a conventional…
★★★ NEXT TO NORMAL, WYNDHAM'S THEATRE Technically superb show gets ovation and tearsÂ
Award-winning comes to West End - bring your handkerchiefs
We open on one of tho…
