3,490 stories from The Arts Desk
Saying goodbye to the actor famous for saying hello
Leslie Phillips would have known for half a century that at his death, which was announced yesterday, the obituaries would lead with one t…
Super songs can't quite rescue an ill-focused story and sparse staging
Whorehouses, gay prostitution and suicide " you can see why James Jones' bestselling 1951 novel was bowdlerised by the …
★★★★ ELEPHANT, BUSH STUDIO Stirring solo show from rising star Anoushka Lucas
A beguiling debut play with both charm and an angry message
It lasts only an interval-fr…
New play about the Queen of Scots is a bit wordy, but well worth it
Scottish playwright Rona Munro is both prolific and ambitious. After her trilogy of historical dramas, The James Plays, w…
The playwright talks about his latest play, Not One of These People, which he is performing himself, and about digital creativity and constraints on authorship
The fictional world is our wo…
★★★★ TAMMY FAYE, ALMEIDA THEATRE The rise and fall of a iconic figure whose reach stretched across late 20th century American culture
Plenty of heart and bite in a…
Peter Gill's new memory play is a wistful recreation of gay loves lost and found
As its title suggests, Peter Gill's Something in the Air is an elusive piece " it's about catching at instinc…
New West End theatre opens with a bio-drama that is joyful silly - but a bit relentless
Opening a theatre should be a celebration, says Nica Burns, the West End power behind this new theatre…
Pearl Cleage's play about thwarted dreams in Prohibition era Harlem gets a stellar production
The cynical might think Pearl Cleage's play had been expressly written to address the over-ridin…
Jack Thorne's wickedly funny play offers plum roles to two riveting disabled actors
This is not a play for the squeamish: here be blood and cum and unsavoury descriptions of genitalia, male …
Ingenious puppetry and music brings a classic 2-D animation to life on stage
As 10-year-old Satsuki observes as she arrives in the countryside with her little sister Mei, "We're not in Tokyo…
David Tennant is a bone-chillingly affable Nazi in C P Taylor's uneven look at morality
"The bands came in 1933." So begins C J Taylor's Good, a play that tries its hardest to resist being G…
Feted Broadway musical finds an apt London fit
Not much happens but, in its way, everything does in The Band's Visit, the gentle, sweet-natured musical that rather unexpectedly storme…
Robert Icke's whip-smart adaptation puts identity politics on the dissection table
Robert Icke is an expert in corporate tragedy. I don't mean that in a bad way - just that he has a penchant…
New play about therapy is powerfully emotional, but sadly predictable
Therapy is inherently dramatic. After all, it's all about character " and it has the aim of producing a recognizable cha…
★★ THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE, ROSE THEATRE Uncompromising adaptation of Brecht outstays its welcome
Carrie Hope Fletcher one of few bright sparks on a tough evening for the audi…
Engaging adaptation and sympathetic playing still leave viewers longing for more detail
It's particularly poignant to watch this story in the knowledge that a little over a year after US-led…
Kingship, tolerance and the trappings of power are among the many themes of Rona Munro's passionate, timely new play
"The poem is real," intones entertainer-turned-courtier Ellen solemnly as…
Justin Vivian Bond and Anthony Roth Costanzo in an absolutely fabulous double act
You know you're in good company the minute these two appear on stage: they are so splendidly what they are, …
★★★ IPHIGENIA IN SPLOTT, LYRIC HAMMERSMITH THEATRE Howl of protest at the cost of austerity leads to a different conclusion seven years on
Timely revival of Gary Owen's sol…
Lyndsey Turner paints this seminal drama with disturbing colours
How can this beauty arise from such ugliness? The Crucible, Arthur Miller's 1953 drama about the Salem witch trials of 1692, …
Simon Russell Beale is the unapologetically corrupt banker, in Ibsen's chilly tragicomedy
It always feels special when a play speaks so directly to an audience that you feel and hear the rip…
After its antisemitic blunder a year ago, this venue makes amends
What is the Royal Court theatre for? Is it a space that stages innovative new writing, or does it prefer to do documentary t…
Dissent in the ranks in uber-timely American comedy
Can a play peak too soon? That's the quandary that attends the Old Vic airing of Eureka Day, Jonathan Spector's on-point if overextend…
★★★★ THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISSOCIA, THEATRE ROYAL STRATFORD EAST The landscape of mental health explored in surreal comedy
A woman confronts her neuroses in a ph…
