Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Lucy Moss puts the 'camp' into campus with her riotous, inclusive revival
The 2001 Reese Witherspoon-starring film Legally Blonde, upon which Heather Hatch, Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjami…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:06AM[SHARE]Thursday, January 20, 2022
Baz Luhrmann's jukebox fantasy is the perfect antidote to Covid gloom
One of the many theatrical casualties of Omicron in December was the official UK opening of Moulin Rouge!, the stage ver…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:18PM[SHARE]Wednesday, September 8, 2021
The stage version of the beloved animation looks set to become a West End staple
Let it snow! The Broadway musical adaptation of the Disney film behemoth Frozen premiered back in 2018 and no…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:18PM[SHARE]Saturday, September 5, 2020
This new livestreamed monologue explores family and the burden of inheritance
The world premiere of Stephen Beresford's new hourlong play, livestreamed to home audiences in five performance…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:18PM[SHARE]Wednesday, September 2, 2020
A standard screen-to-stage transfer, but hugely welcome post-lockdown
Originally due to premiere back in March, Sleepless " a musical version of the winning 1993 movie Sleepless in Seattle "…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:42AM[SHARE]Saturday, July 25, 2020
Jason Robert Brown's abstract musical offers resonant tales of the unexpected
We've already had The Last Five Years in lockdown; now, we get a digital production of American composer Jason R…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:36AM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Lin-Manuel Miranda's groundbreaking musical gets another shot on screen
The movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights was meant to hit cinemas this summer, but, in response to …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:48PM[SHARE]Thursday, June 25, 2020
Jason Robert Brown's chamber musical has new lockdown resonance
A musical featuring two people who are physically separated? Jason Robert Brown's work is a shutdown natural " as this new dig…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:32PM[SHARE]Saturday, May 16, 2020
This filmed version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical captures its eccentric charms
Cats is, declares composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, a show that doesn't really have a story, but was beloved on…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:54AM[SHARE]Thursday, April 16, 2020
The remarkable Patsy Ferran anchors a creatively updated classic
Swaggering pirates, X marks the spot, a chattering parrot, "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum"? All present and correct. But Br…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:48PM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Howard Brenton's play offers a lucid account of the Partition of India
This week's gem from the Hampstead's vaults is Howard Brenton's political drama from 2013, telling the extraordinary, s…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:06AM[SHARE]Thursday, April 9, 2020
Sally Cookson's take on Brontë is innately theatrical and ferociously resonant
The National Theatre's online broadcasts got off to a storming start with One Man, Two Guvnors " watched by …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:48PM[SHARE]Monday, March 23, 2020
Head to Instagram for a 2018 production with plenty of 2020 shutdown wisdom
The way that theatres and other arts institutions have leapt into action over the past week, providing a wealth of…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:03PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 22, 2020
We're celebrating the great man's birthday with favourite numbers - mine's from 'Follies'
Surely there's never been a more apt time for Sondheim's great cry of defiance? "I'm Still Here" is …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:03PM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Jason Robert Brown's conceptual relationship musical gets an enriching new layer
There's concept on top of concept in this revival of Jason Robert Brown's beloved 2001Â musical, which cha…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:03PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 25, 2020
This mammoth stage adaptation is more splashy than spiritual
The theatre gods rained down not fire and pestilence, but a 45-minute techincal delay on opening night of this substantially revi…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:48PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 6, 2020
This flawed but trenchant new spy drama asks who's watching the watchers
With counter-terrorism an urgent concern " and specifically how best to find, track and use the data of suspected thr…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:54PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Alan Cumming and Daniel Radcliffe lead a lively double bill
"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness." Director Richard Jones has certainly taken Beckett's words to heart in this vividly comic, …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 12:18AM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Chris Bush's retelling has feminist urgency, but lacks dramatic coherence
Changing the gender of the title character "highlights the way in which women still operate in a world designed by a…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:06PM[SHARE]Sunday, January 19, 2020
Current events lend urgency to this historical work
"Take our country back!" is the rallying cry of the self-identified "real" Americans gathered to protest the arrival of immigrants.
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:06PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 5, 2019
The Cold War 'Match of the Century' fails to translate into compelling drama
We've had Chess the musical; now, here's Chess the play. Tom Morton-Smith, who has form wrestling recent history …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:12PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 19, 2019
A stirring new musical tackles missed connections in the internet age
Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen is an institu…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:48PM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Everyone's favourite nanny returns, again
It's been 15 years since Cameron Mackintosh's stage musical version of P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins made its West End debut.
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:12PM[SHARE]Thursday, October 31, 2019
Both mystical and alcoholic spirits infuse this wonderfully distinctive chamber musical
London's latest new theatre opens with an appropriately otherworldly Halloween offering: American comp…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:42PM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 8, 2019
An Ealing comedy film becomes an intermittently entertaining play
A hit comedy about a textile scientist? It might sound unlikely, but Ealing Studios' 1951 sci-fi satire, starring Alec Guinn…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 10:36PM[SHARE]Thursday, October 3, 2019
The West End once again hosts one of the best comedies ever written
"Doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That's farce. That's t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:18PM[SHARE]Thursday, September 12, 2019
Cora Bissett recalls the highs and lows of being a teenage Britpop star
It's now Edinburgh Fringe transfer season in London, but here's one they made earlier: Cora Bissett's Fringe First-win…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:48PM[SHARE]Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Dave Malloy's innovative musical immerses us in a creative crisis
Where does music come from? That's the vital question posed to Sergei Rachmaninoff in Dave Malloy's extraordinary 2015 chamb…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 09:06PM[SHARE]Thursday, September 5, 2019
This ambitious musical tackles the changing forms of family, romance and faith
William Finn and James Lapine's musical " which combines two linked one-acts, March of the Falsettos and Falset…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 11:12PM[SHARE]Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Class, calypso and warring gods feature in this enthusiastic revival
As British summer really kicks in (umbrellas at the ready), our thoughts might turn fondly to the sunny Caribbean. Good t…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:48PM[SHARE]Friday, August 9, 2019
Both literal and figurative fireworks in Jamie Lloyd's innovative musical revival
Following a triumphant resurrection of Jesus Christ Superstar, now playing at the Barbican, the Park works i…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 12:24AM[SHARE] 
