Saturday, June 14, 2025
Much-appreciated words of commendation from readers and the cultural community
We are bowled over!
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:12PMSunday, August 18, 2024
The Globe stretches the theatrical experience with this bilingual BSL production
More surely than any other London stage, the Globe has opened up our theatrical perspective on different lang…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:54PMFriday, July 19, 2024
Katori Hall is back in her native Memphis with an exuberant ensemble piece
There’s an exuberant comedy from the start in Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King, which comes to London after an i…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:42PMWednesday, May 22, 2024
A female cast rips into toxic masculinity in a rebalanced treatment of villainy
There’s a fierce, dark energy to the Globe’s new Richard III that I don’t recall at that venue for a fai…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 04:06PMMonday, April 1, 2024
Awkward mix of knockabout laughs, heartfelt tribute and feminist messaging never quite settles
There are genres of theatre that demand buy-in from the audience – musicals, opera and the…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:12PMMonday, October 24, 2022
Peter Gill's new memory play is a wistful recreation of gay loves lost and found
As its title suggests, Peter Gill’s Something in the Air is an elusive piece – it’s about catching at i…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:19PMMonday, June 27, 2022
While bravado support from Bill Pullman practically steals the show
For sheer extremes of family dysfunction Theresa Rebeck’s Mad House must be aiming to set new records in American drama.…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 05:54AMSaturday, June 18, 2022
The first in his 'Century Cycle' catches the fabric of life that August Wilson made his own
It’s great to see August Wilson’s early play – the first of his “Century Cycle”, that re…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:42AMFriday, April 22, 2022
James Fritz’s play explores the spoken and unspoken ripples of grief with fine naturalism
The title of James Fritz’s play is allusive, oblique even. I assume it refers to how, in the af…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:42AMMonday, April 11, 2022
Jeremy O Harris's scintillating drama poses questions about possession, in life and art
Danya Taymor’s production of “Daddy” A Melodrama has a huge exuberance: a tour de force in itsel…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:12AMWednesday, April 6, 2022
Alexis Zegerman’s new play feels less than the sum of its parts
The Fever Syndrome has an ambition that places itself firmly in the tradition of the great American family drama (comparison…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:33PMTuesday, December 21, 2021
Agent supreme Peggy Ramsay returns to the stage in accomplished Alan Plater revival
Was Peggy Ramsay a “woman out of time”? The legendary London literary agent, who nurtured the talents…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:33AMMonday, December 6, 2021
Blanche McIntyre regenders the Duke and relishes the London low-life
Measure for Measure may be the quintessential Shakespearean “problem” play, but just what has earned it that epithet…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:24PMThursday, November 18, 2021
The intensity of studio theatre only fitful in Bill Alexander's updated adaptation
What’s in an article? Director Bill Alexander has titled his new production A Merchant of Venice, leaving…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:12PMWednesday, November 3, 2021
Stockard Channing explores the essentials in Marsha Norman revival
‘Night Mother remains a play of piercing pessimism, something that’s not necessarily the same as tragedy, though the tw…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:36AMSunday, April 25, 2021
Overcoming lockdown challenges, a broadcast first for RSC
It has been a hard coming for this RSC Winter’s Tale but, mirroring the action of the play itself, considerable travail has brough…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 06:42PMMonday, April 19, 2021
Affectionate aplomb from Oliver Ford Davies and Stephen Boxer in Ben Brown's new play
There’s such a genial feel to the pairing of Oliver Ford Davies and Stephen Boxer in Ben Brown’s ne…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 10:36AMThursday, April 1, 2021
Jenny Caron Hall's production, with sister Rebecca starring, offers 'mechanical' treats
Just what the Zoom era has brought to theatre – to performers and audiences alike – is something w…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:42AMTuesday, February 23, 2021
Jemma Redgrave and Adrian Scarborough excel in Peter Barnes radio solos brought to screen
The four monologues that make up Barnes’ People were filmed in the grand surroundings of the Theat…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:33AMFriday, February 19, 2021
Adrian Lester and Danny Sapani in their skins in Lolita Chakrabarti’s new play
Contact without touch: among the many readjustments that the pandemic has brought to theatre, its demands th…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:36AMWednesday, April 22, 2020
Nina Raine’s urgent story of hospital stress rings truer than ever today
If ever there was a “play for today”, it’s surely this.
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:12AMWednesday, February 12, 2020
Breffni Holahan’s bravura performance controls a monologue of mental malaise
There’s such remarkable symbiosis between material and performance in Irish dramatist Margaret Perry’s Coll…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:54AMThursday, January 30, 2020
A strange meeting across the boundary of race: John Kani co-stars in his two-hander with Antony Sher
John Kani’s Kunene and the King is history in microcosm. Its premiere at the RSC last y…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 08:24AMThursday, January 23, 2020
Ian Rickson’s exemplary production relishes the nuances of Conor McPherson's adaptation
Uncle Vanya must surely be the closest, the most essential of Chekhov’s plays, its cast – just f…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 07:48PMWednesday, December 11, 2019
Relocation from the Russian provinces to Sixties Biafra brings insight and immediacy
Inua Ellams’ Three Sisters plays Chekhov in the shadow of war, specifically the Nigerian-Biafran seces…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:36AMMonday, December 9, 2019
New American drama directs a rapier wit at black stereotypes
Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview comes to the Young Vic with the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama under its belt, and a reputatio…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 03:18PMTuesday, October 15, 2019
David Greig’s dream-drama of cosmic loneliness is sci-fi at its most philosophical
David Greig’s reimagining of Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel has brought a masterpiece of intellectual sc…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 09:36AMThursday, October 10, 2019
More manner than message in adaptation of Klaus Mann's 1930s novel
You wonder about the title of French dramatist Sam Gallet’s Mephisto [A Rhapsody], an adaptation for our days of Klaus Ma…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 11:24AMFriday, October 4, 2019
Questions of faith in Katori Hall’s luminous meditation on belief, doubt and miracles
The American dramatist Katori Hall has created a work of rare accomplishment in Our Lady of Kibeho, a …
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 02:03PMMonday, September 30, 2019
John Simm is a strikingly intelligent Thane in a broadly theatrical production
There’s a fine balance between the cosmic and the closely crafted in director Paul Miller’s Macbeth, his fi…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 01:48PMTuesday, September 24, 2019
Christopher Hampton adapts von Horváth's novel about the mindset of totalitarianism
The only novel by the Hungarian dramatist Ödön von Horváth, Youth Without God was written in exile aft…
SOURCE: theartsdesk.com at 12:48PM 
