All stories by David Nice on BroadwayStars

Saturday, August 15, 2015

The Iliad, British Museum /Almeida Theatre by David Nice

You don’t know Homer’s Iliad until you’ve heard it read aloud, all 24 books – well, very nearly all - and 16 hours of it, as the oral tradition would have kept it alive at least unti…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:25PM
Friday, July 31, 2015

Bakkhai, Almeida Theatre by David Nice

This is the real Greek, bloody-fantastical thing. After the fascinating but flawed attempt to bring Aeschylus’s Oresteia into the 21st century, the Almeida has turned to a more tradition-c…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:27AM
Sunday, July 26, 2015

Prom 10: Fiddler on the Roof, Grange Park Opera by David Nice

Stop miking Bryn Terfel. Stop over-miking musicals; the show voices in a hybrid cast don’t need much. Too much ruined English National Opera’s recent Sweeney Todd, and in this Proms adap…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:49AM
Saturday, June 27, 2015

The Trial, Young Vic by David Nice

Kafka and Jones, the names above this little shop of horrors, would be a marriage made in off-kilter theatreland if the Czech genius had written any plays. He didn’t, so Nick Gill has made…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:57AM
Saturday, June 6, 2015

Oresteia, Almeida Theatre by David Nice

There are two fundamental ways to fillet the untranslatable poetry and ritual of Aeschylus, most remote of the three ancient Greek tragedians, for a contemporary audience. One is to find a p…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:38AM
Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Trial by Jury / The Zoo, King's Head Theatre by David Nice

Judge Judy meets The Only Way is Essex: this endlessly resourceful production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s first (mini) masterpiece Trial by Jury is one that cries out to appear on the telly.…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:30AM
Saturday, April 18, 2015

The Pirates of Penzance, Touring by David Nice

When does a Gilbert and Sullivan chorus make you laugh, cry and cheer as much as any of the famous set pieces? In this case when Major-General Stanley’s daughters “climbing over rocky mo…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:00AM
Friday, April 17, 2015

Measure for Measure, Cheek by Jowl/Pushkin Theatre, Barbican by David Nice

Russia isn’t the only country where violations of personal freedoms and censorship seem to be mounting by the day, but it’s surely the most confused: ask any of the persecutors what they…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:56AM
Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Gypsy, Savoy Theatre by David Nice

Vaudeville is alive and well in the Lilliputian gilded cave which might have been made for it (not that Victorian Savoyards could have had any inkling). If you find yourself, like last night…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:49PM
Tuesday, April 14, 2015

King Size, Theater Basel, Linbury Studio Theatre by David Nice

A journey into dreams through songs from Dowland to The Kinks; a Swiss director who, Covent Garden’s Director of Opera Kasper Holten assures us, is “one of the most important European th…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:01PM
Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Sweeney Todd, London Coliseum by David Nice

Still they keep coming, 35 years on from the London premiere: Sweeneys above pubs, in pie shops, concert halls and theatres of all sizes, on the big screen, Sweeneys with symphony orchestras…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:06PM
Friday, March 27, 2015

Princess Ida, Finborough Theatre by David Nice

All Savoyards, whether conservative or liberal towards productions, have been grievously practised upon. They told us to expect the first professional London grappling with Gilbert and Sulli…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:53AM
Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Ruddigore, Charles Court Opera, King's Head Theatre by David Nice

How can a feisty village dame duetting “lackaday”s with the mounted head of a long-lost, nay, long-dead love be so deuced affecting? Ascribe it partly to the carefully-applied sentiment …

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:31AM
Thursday, February 5, 2015

Six Characters in Search of an Author, Théâtre de la Ville-Paris, Barbican by David Nice

"The fantastical should come so close to the real that you must almost believe it", declared Dostoyevsky on Pushkin’s masterly ghost story The Queen of Spades. Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and hi…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:55AM
Wednesday, January 21, 2015

The Changeling, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse by David Nice

Ever been stuck in a claustrophobic space with a group of really unpleasant people? Add mayhem, murder and a razor-sharp wit to be found in only a very few of the nastiest individuals, and y…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:39AM
Tuesday, December 16, 2014

The Merchant of Venice, Almeida Theatre by David Nice

All that glisters is not gold in the casino and television game-show world of Rupert Goold’s American Shakespeare. Nor are all the accents, though working on them only seems to have made a…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:52AM
Sunday, December 14, 2014

Henry IV Parts One and Two, RSC, Barbican by David Nice

Heritage Shakespeare for the home counties and the tourists is just about alive but not very well at the Royal Shakespeare Company. If that sounds condescending, both audiences deserve bette…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:10AM
Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Cinderella, New Wimbledon Theatre by David Nice

Strange world, isn’t it. Yesterday morning, buoyed up by the Royal Opera’s impressive Tristan und Isolde, I was listening on CD to Linda Esther Gray, a Wagnerian soprano for the ages, si…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:10AM
Sunday, December 7, 2014

theartsdesk in Oslo: Two Peer Gynts and a Hamlet by David Nice

Not so much a national hero, more a national disgrace. That seems to be the current consensus as Norway moves forward from canonizing the loose-cannon wanderer of Ibsen's early epic Peer Gyn…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:42AM
Thursday, November 13, 2014

A Midsummer Night's Dream (As You Like It), Dmitry Krymov Lab, Barbican by David Nice

Earlier this year two giant puppets, plus a bottom (lower case, human) on wheels, dominated Shakespeare’s dream play at the Barbican. Replace the bottom with an ever-present little dog and…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:32AM
Saturday, October 25, 2014

The Wild Duck, Belvoir Sydney, Barbican Theatre by David Nice

Ibsen cast a cruel eye on the characters of his most relentlessly symbolic play, wild ducks wounded or domesticated by fate or character. They speak or act unsympathetically, for the most pa…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:14AM
Saturday, October 11, 2014

Peer Gynt, Théâtre National de Nice, Barbican Theatre by David Nice

Like Ibsen’s titanic character in search of a self, the Barbican’s theatre programme globetrots to find the richest and rarest. Yet it certainly doesn’t reach the conclusion of Peer Gy…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:27AM
Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Forbidden Broadway, Vaudeville Theatre by David Nice

“It takes a star to parody one,” wrote theartsdesk’s Edward Seckerson, nailing the essence of this immortal spoof-fest’s last incarnation at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Star qualit…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:48AM
Sunday, September 7, 2014

A Season at the Juilliard School, Sky Arts 2 by David Nice

“You feel like you’re walking into Fame the movie,“ says one of three third-year drama students towards the beginning of this six part documentary. That’s what we might have hoped of…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 01:02AM
Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Porgy and Bess, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre by David Nice

It should work as pure musical theatre. Yet what precisely is Gershwin’s - or rather “The Gershwins’”, as this title frames it, though Ira wasn’t quite Gilbert or Brecht - Porgy an…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:51AM
Thursday, July 17, 2014

The Importance of Being Earnest, Harold Pinter Theatre by David Nice

“Some might say we’re getting too old for this sort of thing,” declares Martin Jarvis’s Jack – or should I say “Jack” – going off Wildean piste. Well, we had wondered whether…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:13PM
Wednesday, July 16, 2014

theartsdesk Q&A: Tenor Michael Fabiano by David Nice

You can usually trust the buzz around rehearsals. From Glyndebourne, five weeks into preparation for La traviata, which opens tomorrow, one of the team working on Tom Cairns’ new productio…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:51AM
Thursday, May 8, 2014

The Testament of Mary, Barbican by David Nice

If you’re tempted to see Fiona Shaw’s impressive solo performance as Mary the mother of a son she can’t bring herself to name – and see it you probably should – then bear two thing…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:57AM
Friday, April 25, 2014

Uncle Vanya/Three Sisters, Wyndham's Theatre by David Nice

London has had its fair share recently of Chekhov productions from Russia, though none anywhere near as quietly truthful as these from Moscow's Mossovet State Academic Theatre. Veteran film …

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:57AM
Friday, March 28, 2014

Inner Voices, Barbican by David Nice

We’ve now learned from the films of Paolo Sorrentino and honorary Roman Ferzan Ozpetek what great and nuanced ensemble acting the Italians can produce. Even so, the towering star of the cu…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:00AM
Monday, February 17, 2014

HMS Pinafore, Hackney Empire by David Nice

Showboys will be boys – gym-bunny sailors, in this instance – as well as sisters, cousins, aunts, captain’s daughters and bumboat women. We know the ropes by now for Sasha Regan’s al…

SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:39AM

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