3,491 stories from The Arts Desk
The school friend who commissioned, directed and acted in Pinter's first play
Henry Woolf's place in the theatre history is small but significant, a bit like Woolf was himself. Until his dea…
Katie Mitchell hits a new career high
Katie Mitchell's desire to bust the boundaries of theatre has taken a brilliant turn. Over her long and distinguished career as a director she has been…
★★★★★ FOOTFALLS AND ROCKABY, Beckett's ferocious contemplations on the ebbing of life
Double bill finds the Irish master at his most raw
Like all great art, …
Powerful play about masculinity in crisis fails to reach a satisfying resolution
After lockdown, the stage monologue saved British theatre. At venue after venue, cash-strapped companies put…
***THE SEVEN POMEGRANATE SEEDS, KINGSTONÂ Pierce Brosnan's James Bond finds daft but apt place in Euripidean rewrite
Pierce Brosnan's James Bond finds a daft but apt place in Euripidean re…
★★★★ MILK AND GALL, Baby turns New Yorkers' lives upside down, while Trump has a tantrum or twoÂ
No holds barred comedy lays bare the unsentimental side of pare…
★★★ THE CHOIR OF MAN, Decent blokes sing old school hits in an old school pub
Lots of songs and lots of sugary sentimentality
Like a previous occupant of this venue, Six…
Alana Valentine's play about crime and poverty in Australia receives a spirited production
The complex history of capital punishment in Australia may not be familiar to many Londoners, but t…
Spellbinding adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel reminds us of the terror and beauty of childhood
This show has been a long time coming. Neil Gaiman had the first inklings of The Ocean at the…
Bombastic karaoke adaption of Jane Austen classic gives the spotlight to the servants
"We haven't started yet!" Hannah-Jarrett Scott, dressed in Doc Martens under a 19th-century shift, reas…
Stockard Channing explores the essentials in Marsha Norman revival
'Night Mother remains a play of piercing pessimism, something that's not necessarily the same as tragedy, though the two of…
The Menier opens its new second stage with this podcast-turned-play
What counts as offensive in these days of cancel culture? Ham-fisted pronoun usage? Culturally appropriated hairstyles? To…
New play about love during the Bosnian war is beautifully written and compelling
Is the Bosnian conflict of 1992"95 the war that Europe forgot? Maybe, although most fans of new writing for t…
★★★ THE MAGICIAN'S ELEPHANT, ROYAL SHAKESPEARE THEATRE A musical about trust and hope, and an unexpected elephant
An elephant awakens an emotionally shattered town
Trig…
An adroit cast does justice to Isley Lynn's complexly woven narrative
"You need to get better at communicating", says one character to another in Isley Lynn's albatross. Indeed, the same…
New play about gentrification could be regenerated with a make-over
I've lived in Brixton, south London, for about 40 years now so any play that looks at the gentrification of the area is, …
★★ VANARA, HACKNEY EMPIRE Falls well short of its West Side Story inspired ambition
Two tribes feud over fire in a post-apocalyptic world's last surviving forest
Two tribes, …
Near the end of her long journey, our refugee gets a welcome her real-life kin are denied
"I want to tell her that people will be good," Tewodros Aregawe of Phosphoros Theatre confided to us…
This shark-tooth-sharp comedy provides a behind-the-scenes glance at "Jaws"
Jaws was the Moby Dick of late 20th century capitalism, a fantasy about fear and the unknown for a society that ha…
Edited Inquiry transcripts expose the hypocrisy and incompetence behind the tragedy
Grenfell: Value Engineering isn't actually a play. It's an edited version of the testimony heard by the G…
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 …
Race and belonging are interrogated unevenly in this Australian drama
"Careful, there's a hole in the floor." The warning's an unusual one, passed along conscientiously by the stewards at t…
Martin McDonagh's breakthrough play dazzles anew
"You can't kick a cow in Leenane without some bastard holding a grudge for 20 years," sighs Pato Dooley (Adam Best) prophetically; he has alr…
****THE CHERRY ORCHARD, WINDSOR McKellen's scene-stealing comic act is worth the ticket
Ian McKellen's scene-stealing is not the only reason to see Chekhov's comedy
The cherry orchard in Ant…
Suzan-Lori Parks has tweaked her Off Broadway play to mixed results
"I can't sleep": So goes the fateful opening line of White Noise, the Suzan-Lori Parks play disturbing enough to spark ma…
