Tuesday, May 30, 2023
Nikhil Parmar delivers his play with passion and wit
The Bond film theme plays and the lights go up at the Bush’s Studio space to reveal, not a tuxedoed superspy, but a slim figure in cas…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:12AMThursday, May 11, 2023
Five actors plus loads of silly hats and accents add up to a hilarious evening
It’s back yet again, Operation Mincemeat, a gift of a story that goes on giving. It surfaced as the 1956 film…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:12AMMonday, May 8, 2023
The Windrush scandal embodied with wrenching power
Reggae hits are already playing over the speaker system at the Bush when the audience enters, some jigging to the sounds as they find their…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:36AMSaturday, April 29, 2023
Bizarre directorial choices derail the play's serious content
There was a jolting eco-themed work onstage in London recently, but sadly A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, a Headl…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:36AMTuesday, April 25, 2023
Lynn Nottage and a faultless cast offer a story that's a hymn to hope
The cast of The Secret Life of Bees first parade onto the Almeida stage hefting big glass storage jars full of a golden …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:54AMSaturday, April 22, 2023
Giles Terera delivers a dramatic lecture on the legacy of slavery
There’s a moment in the opening stretch of Giles Terera’s The Meaning of Zong where you think the former Hamilton star …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:12AMSaturday, April 8, 2023
Eugene O'Hare treads familiar ground with his confessional about alcoholism
Eugene O’Hare’s The Dry House is the kind of spare but oddly lyrical three-hander that would have made a good …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:06AMMonday, April 3, 2023
A terrific ensemble make an exhilarating plea for Black boys with blighted lives
For a show that comes with a trigger warning about the themes of racism, gang violence, toxic relationships, …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:24AMSaturday, March 18, 2023
Pulitzer finalist asks how good an ally is modern technology
Artificial intelligence has become an even hotter topic since Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime was first staged in Los Angeles …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:57AMWednesday, March 15, 2023
Nicholas Hytner and a crack cast deliver a fresh take on the classic musical
It now seems an inevitability that Marisha Wallace will be a frontrunner at next year's theatre awards, not just…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:55AMWednesday, March 8, 2023
It's more adult panto than mature musical, with the sauce liberally ladled on
If you are hoping for some harmless fun at The Great British Bake Off Musical, probably with a few dodgy jokes a…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:41AMMonday, March 6, 2023
A vivacious cast are great fun to hang out with
Can a play ever be a bit too much like real life? The thought came to me while watching Matilda Feyisayo Ibini’s entertaining new play Slee…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:49AMWednesday, February 22, 2023
Michael John O'Neill's debut stirs up questions but not emotions
Michael John O’Neill’s first full-length play, premiering at the Hampstead's studio space downstairs, is a puzzler. There…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:58AMMonday, February 20, 2023
Affecting revival of Tom Kempinski play about an ailing musician and her therapist
This 1981 two-hander was opened out for a film in 1986, starring Julie Andrews no less, with all its offst…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:33AMWednesday, February 15, 2023
The dark arts of diplomacy get a makeover as a comedy workshop
Who better to write a piece about the game-playing of a peace-talks negotiation than a former peace-talk negotiator, Daniel Tau…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:23AMFriday, February 3, 2023
Danny Robins' clever play gains a creditable star turn in its fifth run
The set of 2:22 A Ghost Story is open to the auditorium when we arrive and locates us at once in gentrification-land. …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:16AMMonday, January 30, 2023
Shakespeare's tragedy as a tight thriller, with its racist elements fully exposed
Frantic Assembly’s Othello, originally co-developed with the Lyric in 2008, is back in its third iteration…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:16AMFriday, January 27, 2023
Told by an Idiot return with a celebration of silent-movie antics and daft gags
Imagine what would have happened if the young Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel were cabin-mates on a transatlan…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:00AMSaturday, January 14, 2023
A cast with an infectious gift for fun give this French confection a touch of stage magic
First came Yasmin Reza’s 1994 long-runner Art; now another French hit, The Art of Illusion, has ar…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:22AMSaturday, December 10, 2022
Clint Dyer's new take makes Othello a victim of mob mentality
Clint Dyer is the first black director of Othello at the National Theatre, a venue that once staged the piece with its actor fo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:06AMThursday, December 8, 2022
Jonathan Slinger commands the stage in this dark, funny monologue
The American author of The Sarah Book, on which the monologue Sarah is based, is called Scott McClanahan, as is his main cha…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:48AMFriday, December 2, 2022
Tania Nwachukwu creates a warm hour of music and memories with hidden bite
The Bush studio space is proving a fruitful launch pad, not just for new writing but for new performers. It previo…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:36AMTuesday, November 29, 2022
Absurdly romantic notions about love and war have never been funnier
For his final bow as artistic director of the Orange Tree, Paul Miller has decided to go out with a bang, amid much gigg…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:48AMFriday, November 25, 2022
Frank McGuinness's new play about T S Eliot and Groucho Marx is a poetic puzzle
The set at the Arcola for Frank McGuinness’s Dinner with Groucho naturally features a table with two place s…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:18AMWednesday, November 2, 2022
★★★★ ELEPHANT, BUSH STUDIO Stirring solo show from rising star Anoushka Lucas
A beguiling debut play with both charm and an angry message
It lasts only an interval-free 60 minutes, w…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:12AMSaturday, October 22, 2022
Pearl Cleage's play about thwarted dreams in Prohibition era Harlem gets a stellar production
The cynical might think Pearl Cleage’s play had been expressly written to address the over-rid…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:07AMFriday, October 21, 2022
Jack Thorne's wickedly funny play offers plum roles to two riveting disabled actors
This is not a play for the squeamish: here be blood and cum and unsavoury descriptions of genitalia, male …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:03AMMonday, September 19, 2022
Tanya Barfield reconstructs a simple plot as an absorbing puzzle
A tender love story has arrived at the Kings Head theatre from the US, where its author, Tanya Barfield, is an award-winning…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:33AMSaturday, September 17, 2022
Mrs Thatcher and Elizabeth II slug it out again in this 2013 classic
It’s only nine years since Moira Buffini’s Handbagged had its premiere at Kilburn’s Tricycle theatre (renamed the …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:19AMWednesday, September 14, 2022
Dipo Baruwa-Etti pits a fiery outsider activist against the British-Nigerian middle-class
As Dipa Baruwa-Etti’s latest play, The Clinic, reminds us, the Tory party has a strong showing of…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:25AMSaturday, August 6, 2022
After a hard-hitting 'Oklahoma!', the latest Rodgers & Hammerstein revival stays on the sunnier side
How old is Emile de Becque? Perhaps because my first Emile was the 1958 film version�…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:42AM 
