Timberlake Wertenbaker's updated version takes particular aim at colonialism The latest Greatest Hit to land at the Lyric is Timberlake Wertenbaker’s 1988 award-winning play about a perfor…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:12AMA wealth of musical talent keeps this gig musical afloat The signs in the Peacock’s foyer warn that this show features "very loud music”. Exactly what Janis Joplin fans want to hear. Thi…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:36AMPatrick Barlow’s brand of silly still delivers a sly Hitchcock spoof Before the Plays That Went Wrong and the multi-role six-hander Operation Mincemeat, there was Patrick Barlow’s adapt…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:54AMRoy Williams and Clint Dyer's protagonists rage against the limits of their lives Two boys in east London, one Black, one white, grow up together, play pranks at school, then decades later h…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:44AMThe National's finely acted staging of Steinbeck's grim classic is a tough watch It’s a brave company that embarks on a staging of John Steinbeck’s award-winning 1939 novel The Grapes of…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:08AMMichael Bennett's 1975 hit has plenty of pizzazz but not enough emotional oomph A Chorus Line reigned supreme on Broadway from 1975 to 1990, a bold, bare-bones piece that for once put musica…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:54AMTimely arrival for Lucas Hnath's play about the cost of winning Before Lucas Hnath wrote Red Speedo, he had heard a 2004 speech at a hearing investigating baseball doping that declared the p…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:36AMNassim Soleimanpour's latest 'cold read' work is a unique experience The Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour is many things, some seemingly contradictory: a) a clever, poetic playwright w…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:02PMCardboard Citizens shine an unforgiving light on poverty in the UK A stark end-title at the end of this collection of short films sums up the dire situation the UK is in: one in five people,…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:06AMChristopher Hampton's love of Stefan Zweig's text becomes a drawback Who was Stefan Zweig? It's likely that it's mostly older folk who studied German literature at A-level who have encounter…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:48PMTwo awkward science nerds and a violent alcoholic father are oddly likeable company Sarah Power, the writer of Grud, now in the Hampstead’s smaller space, is a self-confessed geek who e…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:36PMA fine cast spell out the cost of survival in today's ailing industries For a long stretch of its first half, Dominique Morrisseau’s 2016 award-winner, Skeleton Crew, seems a conventional…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:32PMFans of the film will love it, but it's like being in a pink fever dream Nothing anybody over the age of 30 says about the new Mean Girls musical, spawn of Tina Fey’s witty script for the …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:48PMA production with a green message for younger audiences It's a bold move by Regent's Park Open Air Theatre to tackle Frances Hodgson Burnett's children's classic, a story that's been notably…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:54AM'Brush Up Your Shakespeare' brings the house down in a strongly cast lineup Lincoln Center’s Bartlett Sher is back in town to direct the Barbican’s latest summer blockbuster, Cole Porter…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:54AMAlice Childress's 1962 play about interracial love has lost none of its richness and fire Alice Childress’s Wedding Band has arrived at the Lyric Hammersmith like an incendiary bomb, a wea…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:42AMGiles Terera excels leading a livewire cast in an irreverent look at Black identity From New York’s Public Theater, the venue that nurtured Hamilton, comes another estimable pocket musical…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:32AMSuperb cast deliver Van Badham's anti-incel barbs and feminist wit with gusto What would happen if a notorious misogynist actually fell in love? With a glacial Danish librarian? And decided …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:12AMIan McKellen's Falstaff thrives in Robert Icke's entertaining remix of the Henry IV plays Shakespeare’s plays have ever been meat for masher-uppers, from the bowdlerising Victorians to the…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:12AMA five-women team spell out a feminist message with humour and strong singing Many an Edinburgh Fringe transfer has struggled when it moves to the big city, but the Dirty Hare company’s Gu…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:24AMIt's a great song and dance evening, but the story is an empty one In a secret chamber somewhere, the producers of MJ the Musical may be keeping a portrait of the King of Pop that has acqu…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:12AMDirector Rachel O'Riordan finds lighter moments in a tale of grief Brian Friel’s Faith Healer isn’t noted for its laughs, but Rachel O’Riordan has found more than most directors do in…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:48AMLucy Kirkwood’s latest mixes the birth of the NHS with a Brief Encounter-ish romance Keeley Hawes onstage is something to look forward to, so rare are her appearances there. In Lucy Kirk…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:02AMThe rise of fascism in the 1930s East End is given a human face Hot on the heels of Brigid Larmour’s updating of The Merchant of Venice to the East End in 1936, a spirited new musical acr…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:48AMTracy-Ann Oberman turns Shylock into a heroic Jewish anti-fascist It’s an unhappy time to be staging Shakespeare’s problematic play, given its antisemitic content, so hats off to adaptor…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:48PMFelicity Huffman, heading a superb cast, is a force of nature In 2017, two years after Hir premiered, Taylor Mac was awarded a “Genius Grant” and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for drama…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:24AMSarah Snook gives a virtuoso performance amid a dazzling display of tech wizardry Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novella The Picture of Dorian Gray has given the world a trope built for flattery, alon…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:42PMAge has not withered one jot the FAs' fury at the absurdities of modern life You don’t expect a couple of septuagenarian contraltos, aided by a spring chicken of a soprano in her fifties,…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:32PMIngenious twists can't give Sam Holcroft's play a vital sense of danger Take dollops of Orwell and Kafka, with a sprinkling of Pirandello for a lighter texture, then bake. That could be the …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:06AMBartlett Sher's intelligent reading is gorgeously staged and winningly performed The giant crinolines are back, and the winsome little royal children with miniature temples on their heads, a…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:02PMZoe Cooper's queer reading is a tonic: clever, funny and seriously silly What Zoe Cooper has concocted in her loving rewiring of Jane Austen’s first completed novel looks at first sight li…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:06AM