Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Cathy Belton’s devastating economy steers Mark O’Rowe’s quietly stunning Ibsen
Church and law are enemies of promise in Ibsen’s tragedy-without-catharis. You can see why this devasta…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:06AMSaturday, April 15, 2023
A suitably phantasmagoical vision in strong teamwork by Calderón's compatriots
Dream versus reality, fate and free will, love and death, nature versus nurture: they’re all here in Calder�…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:12AMMonday, March 20, 2023
White-heat Strindberg from Norwegian actors undeterred by technical hitches
You don’t have to be Scandinavian to act out Strindberg’s fantastical extremes at the highest level, but I’v…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:01AMThursday, March 9, 2023
Enda Walsh's second drama on now about ritualised isolation is mesmerising
Commuting between London and Dublin has its fascinations.10 days ago, I saw for the first time at the Southwark Pla…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:40AMMonday, February 27, 2023
Four spot-on performances confirm that Enda Walsh's queasy thriller is here to stay
The farce in question is fast and furious, but not often hilariously funny; that’s because it’s the in…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:44AMTuesday, October 4, 2022
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…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:55AMThursday, August 18, 2022
Masha Gessen, Shostakovich and Shakespeare’s Prospero wrestle order from chaos
Essay-writing can be a great art, at least when executed by Hubert Butler of Kilkenny, on a par - whether you…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:25AMWednesday, July 13, 2022
Completion of the city’s big Dante project with 'Paradiso' is only one of three wonders
For once, a festival theme has meaning. “Tra la carne e il cielo”, “Between flesh and heaven�…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:54AMFriday, June 17, 2022
Barry McGovern is odyssey master, while fine performers sag under awful script
A pot plant on a stand, two tables with glasses of water, two chairs – one plush, one high – are all the pr…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:24AMMonday, May 9, 2022
Happiest in home-territory epics, Ivo van Hove pulls off a Greek-tragedy stunner
Hunger for the gruesome horrors and euphoric highs of Greek tragedy seems to be stronger than ever. Yet when …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:42AMSaturday, March 5, 2022
Good in parts, but Kit Harington’s king isn’t the best thing about this hard-working show
Sharp suits swapped for combat fatigues, a people’s commander: you’d think that Max Webster�…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:18PMWednesday, March 2, 2022
Ibsen anticipates Beckett in his strange final play, austerely staged with dashes of wit
In Ibsen's last and shortest play, further cut here, four people nominally climb a mountain, but actu…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:33AMTuesday, January 11, 2022
Skiing-resort trauma is played too much for easy laughs
It sounds like the title of a play by Rattigan. No such luck: “Force Majeure” – a legal term with which all too few will be fami…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:24AMSunday, December 12, 2021
Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne constantly surprise in multilayered production
Turning a theatre into the Kit Kat Club, Berlin, early 1930s, is nothing new: the Edinburgh University Theatr…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:54PMTuesday, October 26, 2021
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 t…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:03AMMonday, July 5, 2021
Band and singers energise the brilliant entertainment of Bernstein, Comden and Green
It’s a wonderful thing to hear a nine-piece Broadway-style band at full pelt, and to see real show danc…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:32AMFriday, June 18, 2021
Lisa Dwan’s infinite variety guides us through Beckett’s timeless masterpiece
Just when you thought you couldn’t take any more one- or two-handers, online or in the theatre, along come…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:54AMSaturday, September 12, 2020
Monica Dolan and Lesley Manville are peerless in this Alan Bennett double bill
Monologues and duets rule the stage right now. We can only dream of the day when theatre steps up to the classi…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:18AMMonday, May 4, 2020
Ivo van Hove engages British and Dutch actors to debate the urgent question of 2019
Are we really past all this? From Ivo van Hove's 2019 polyphony of opinions and reflections down the centu…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:54AMTuesday, April 28, 2020
A host of Broadway stars varies the strain in classily done from-home gala
Maybe you can't compare incomparables, but it was instructive to watch this Broadway lockdown gala feting nonagenar…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:42AMMonday, March 23, 2020
Is there a better climax to a musical first act than the terror-plus-wit in 'Sweeney Todd'?
Two numbers, one hair-raising slice of music-theatre. When Sondheim's paying homage to the older, …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:54PMThursday, March 5, 2020
Middleton's decimation of an Italian court needs more satirical thrust
Vendetta, morte: what a lark to find those tools of 19th century Italian opera taken back to their mother tongue in a M…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:54AMThursday, February 20, 2020
Embarrassing period piece needs a lift from better comic timing than this
Not the musical then, worst luck. How timely it would have been to mark Jerry Herman's passing with a celebration of…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:42AMFriday, January 31, 2020
One woman barely speaks, the other can't be heard and two men interfere
A work of genius isn't sacred, copyrighted territory. A great film may become a play, a novel a film; the adaptation s…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:24AMFriday, January 3, 2020
An immortal lyricist and composer leaves us plenty to be joyful about
How is it that, in the nearly 900 pages of Sondheim's collected lyrics with extensive comments Finishing the Hat and Loo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:54AMWednesday, November 27, 2019
Four complex novels squeezed into a big, bold show with strong performances
It took no time for Elena Ferrante's two Neapolitan friends to join the ranks of great literary creations: Lenù a…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:03AMFriday, November 22, 2019
Close-knit company keeps the York and Lancaster clashes as clear and lively as it can
No Joan of Arc means no Henry VI Part One. France, where we left the victorious Henry V - the superb Sar…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:06AMThursday, November 7, 2019
Multimedia haunting from Norwegian company De Utvalgte in Jon Fosse's theatre-poem
In a flowering branch of London theatre, Norway comes to Notting Hill with what's becoming revelatory regul…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:06AMSaturday, November 2, 2019
A young carer and her mother movingly portrayed in Sean Mathias's 1985 drama
When Sean Mathias wrote A Prayer for Wings 35 years ago, the subject of young carers devoting their lives to pare…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:42AMFriday, July 12, 2019
A dramatic tour from the tomb of Italy's greatest poet and music among the mosaics
Two years ago Ermanno Montanari and Marco Martinelli, the visionary partners who have powered Ravenna's rev…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:24AMThursday, July 11, 2019
James McArdle's lead, strong ensemble and David Hare's Ibsen adaptation compel
Like Hamlet and both parts of Goethe's Faust, with which it shares the highest peak of poetic drama, Ibsen's Pe…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:42AM 
