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 07:06AMA 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 06:12AMWhite-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 03:01AMEnda 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 05:40AMFour 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 03:44AMJustin 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 06:55AMMasha 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 10:25AMCompletion 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 06:54AMBarry 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 10:24AMHappiest 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 06:42AMGood 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 12:18PMIbsen 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 07:33AMSkiing-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 05:24AMJessie 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 10:54PMNear 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 07:03AMBand 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 05:32AMLisa 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 06:54AMMonica 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 08:18AMIvo 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 04:54AMA 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 06:42AMIs 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 09:54PMMiddleton'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 08:54AMEmbarrassing 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 04:42AMOne 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 05:24AMAn 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 11:54AMFour 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 06:03AMClose-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 08:06AMMultimedia 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 06:06AMA 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 11:42AMA 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 08:24AMJames 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