Sunday, October 13, 2024
Lorraine Hansberry classic is both a historical gem and a play for today
Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is not only the first play by a black woman to premiere on Broadway, back…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:02PMThursday, October 10, 2024
New play about the consequences of a plane hijack is energetic but unconvincing
Air travel is bad for us. Yes, yes, I know we need planes to take us long distances, but look at the downside…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:32PMSunday, October 6, 2024
Two all-time 1950s classics, 'Look Back in Anger' and 'Roots', get super revivals by young directors
Why should we not look back in anger? With the Oasis reunion tour in the news recently, …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:06PMThursday, October 3, 2024
Tanika Gupta’s new play is a beautifully heartfelt mix of comedy and tragedy
Queenie is in trouble. Bad trouble. For about a year now, this 68-year-old Indian woman has been forgetful. Lo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:06PMTuesday, September 24, 2024
Brilliant revival of this key absurdist play stars Lucian Msamati and Ben Whishaw
Modernism is us. Today. For the past two decades plays by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter – which once u…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:32AMWednesday, September 18, 2024
Slender new play about political and gender prejudice in 1950s American science
British theatre has a proud heritage of science plays. From 1990s classics such as Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (1…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:48PMFriday, September 13, 2024
Waleed Akhtar’s new play is about platonic love in a contemporary context
Platonic love should be simple — basically you’re best mates. And without the complications of sex, what coul…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:32PMSunday, September 1, 2024
Award-winning new writing is full of mystery and metaphor, but a bit too literary
I live in Brixton, south London; in my street, for many years, a pair of trainers were up in the sky, hangin…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:54PMFriday, August 16, 2024
Debut two-hander explores a gentle love story of two practicing Muslims
At one point, in John Fowles’s 1977 novel The Magus, the guru character in the story compares sexuality before and …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:18AMSunday, June 30, 2024
New play about the death of the most famous American woman of the Camelot era
The death of Marilyn Monroe is a wet dream for conspiracy theorists. Like the assassination of JFK in the follo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:54PMMonday, June 24, 2024
New play about secrets from the past is both funny and profound
Following the huge success of Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, which transfers soon to the West End, the Bush Theatre is riding h…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:18PMWednesday, June 19, 2024
New history play about football has a flawed second half
Every day this week I’m watching a football match, and now — after April’s production of Lydia Higman, Julia Grogan and Rachel …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:36PMThursday, May 30, 2024
Dublin Fringe Festival hit from 2022 comes to London’s main new writing theatre
Faye is okay. Or, at least she says she’s okay. But is she really? And, if she really is, like really oka…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:12PMTuesday, May 28, 2024
Taboo-tickling comedy about both conceiving a baby and life as empty nesters
“Welcome to motherhood, bitch!” By the time a character delivers this reality check, there have been plenty o…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:54PMMonday, May 27, 2024
Katie Mitchell’s staging of Maggie Nelson’s bestseller is neither original nor beautiful
When does creativity become mannered? When it’s based on repetition, and repetition without dev…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:42PMWednesday, May 22, 2024
Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Pulitzer-Prize winner finally makes it to London
It’s often said that contemporary American playwrights are too polite, too afraid of giving offence. But this acc…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:02PMFriday, April 19, 2024
New play-with-songs version of Dickens’s 'Our Mutual Friend' is a panoramic Victori-noir
“He do the police in different voices.” If ever one phrase summed up a work of fiction, and th…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:02PMMonday, April 15, 2024
Latest from American penman Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is less than the sum of its parts
I’ve never been one for school reunions, but even if I had kept in touch with former classmates I thin…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:42AMTuesday, February 27, 2024
New comedy about masculinity and music is predictable and clumsy
One island off the coast of Spain has more cultural oomph than all the rest put together. I’m talking about Ibiza, the sun…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:36PMMonday, February 26, 2024
New play about love and memory is exquisitely written and beautifully acted
For the past ten years, Black-British playwrights have been in the vanguard of innovation in the form and content …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:36PMWednesday, February 7, 2024
Lemn Sissay’s adaptation of the Franz Kafka classic is just too wordy
Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” is a novella whose cultural resonance has echoed loudly down the years. As a mode…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:36PMFriday, February 2, 2024
New play about three sisters is full of energy, but also a bit too populist for me
The National Theatre is meant to represent the whole nation — and not just the metropolitan middle classe…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:42PMFriday, January 19, 2024
London transfer for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s riotous comedy Western
At its best theatre is a seducer. It weaves a magic spell that can persuade you, perhaps against your better jud…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:54PMTuesday, January 16, 2024
Forgotten play by the author of Tom & Viv is realistic, but lacks dramatic focus
British Theatre abounds in forgotten writers. And in ones whose early work is too rarely revived. One su…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:48PMSunday, December 17, 2023
Nina Raine’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s 2006 epic rocks, but also stumbles
There is a song by Syd Barrett, founder member of Pink Floyd, called “Golden Hair”. It’s on his album The …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:18PMSunday, December 10, 2023
Chris Thorpe’s one-man show about nuclear weapons is intelligent and humane
Let’s start with what we know: the climate emergency is the single most burning question facing the planet. Ou…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:18PMFriday, December 1, 2023
Seasonal Eng Lit mash-up returns with its festive message of forgiveness
It’s an elementary fact that Dickens sells at this time of year — look at all the perennial Christmas Carols spro…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:18PMThursday, November 16, 2023
Samuel Barnett performs a sizzling monologue about sex and fatal attraction
The Comedian runs, bounces even, onto the stage. The audience immediately applauds. He seizes the mic and makes se…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:24PMFriday, November 10, 2023
New comedy about toffs and tycoons is disappointingly juvenile and weak
As Christmas looms, ’tis the season for comedy. And even the traditionally austere Royal Court feels obliged to join…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:12PMTuesday, November 7, 2023
Richard Bean’s new comedy about old age occasionally glows, but stays lukewarm
There’s only a couple of things you need to know about playwright Richard Bean: he started out as a stand-…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:32PMFriday, November 3, 2023
Princess Diana’s BBC soul-searching makes for a slender docu-drama
Journalism is a despised profession. And when you consider the story behind the interview that Diana, Princess of Wales,…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:42PM 
