Theatre Features
First Person: writer Lauren Mooney on bringing bodies together in the new Royal Court play, 'More Life'Thursday, 06 February 2025
It started with a Guardian long-read. I’m ashamed to admit it since so many shows could say the same, but that was the beginning. Read more... |
First Person: Lindsey Ferrentino on the play that has led Adrien Brody to the London stageFriday, 11 October 2024
I turn 36 this year, while living in London and rehearsing my new play The Fear of 13 at the Donmar Warehouse. The cast places a cake on my desk, covered in script pages and 10 pairs of handcuffs. I video the cake, the handcuffs, the singing actors – led by Adrien Brody – who have now broken into a sort of birthday rap. I text the video 5,500 miles to LA to my friend Nick Yarris, the man about whom I wrote the play, whom Adrien Brody is playing. Read more... |
First Person: Tim Etchells on 40 years of making a noise with Forced EntertainmentThursday, 10 October 2024
Forced Entertainment is a theatre company based in Sheffield, touring original performances around the world. The core group of 6 artists has been working together for 40 years, often inviting others to collaborate on particular projects. From the outset we wanted to make a different kind of theatre, incoporating influence from music, cinema, visual art, stand-up and performance art as well as from experimental theatre. Read more... |
First Person: LIFT artistic director Kris Nelson on delivering the best of international theatre to the nation's capitalThursday, 30 May 2024
LIFT 2024 is nearly here. It’s a festival that will take you on deep and personal journeys. We’ve got shows that will catch your breath, spark your mind and rev up your imagination. There’s adrenaline too. It’s international theatre for your gut. Read more... |
First Person: actor Paul Jesson on survival, strength, and the healing potential of artMonday, 08 April 2024
In September 2022 I had an email from my American friend Richard Nelson: "Would you like me to write you a play?" Such an offer probably comes the way of very few actors and I was bowled over by it. My astonished and grateful response was tempered with a little uncertainty. Read more... |
First Person: author-turned-actor Lydia Higman on a play that foregrounds a slice of forgotten historyThursday, 28 March 2024
I first read Anne Gunter’s story about five years ago, when I was in my first year of university at Oxford, little knowing it would over time lead to our play Gunter [seen first in Edinburgh and transferring 3-25 April to the Royal Court]. Read more... |
First person: playwright Paul Grellong on keeping pace with American politicsWednesday, 27 March 2024
I’m writing this in the lobby of the Menier Chocolate Factory a couple of hours before the first preview. I was last here in February for the start of rehearsals. In the time since, I’ve made a handful of, one hopes, helpful adjustments to the script. I’ll let audiences be the judge of that. Read more... |
Best of 2023: TheatreWednesday, 27 December 2023
Wait, and your wishes are answered. That seemed to be the case during the theatre year just gone, following on from 2022 when new British writing of quality seemed thin on the ground. Read more... |
First Person: playwright Tom Fowler on allowing room for 'Hope'Friday, 16 June 2023
Recently, having just shared the rehearsal draft of my current Royal Court play Hope has a Happy Meal with two close friends, I found myself slightly offended when one of them said, "you can tell you were playing the Nintendo Switch obsessively when writing this." They then proceeded to talk about the play and its structure in video game terms. Read more... |
Leslie Phillips: 'I can be recognised by my voice alone'Thursday, 10 November 2022
Leslie Phillips would have known for half a century that at his death, which was announced yesterday, the obituaries would lead with one thing only. However much serious work he did in the theatre and on screen, he is forever handcuffed to the skirt-chaser he gave us in sundry Carry Ons and Doctor films and London bus movies. Read more... |
Pages
Advertising feature
★★★★★
‘A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.’
The Observer, Kate Kellaway
Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.
★★★★★
‘This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.’
The Times, Ann Treneman
Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.
Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
with no booking fee.
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Magic Farm review - numpties from the Nineties
There’s nothing more healthy than dissing your own dad, and filmmaker Amalia Ulman says that her old man was “a Gen X deadbeat edgelord skater”...
The Great Escape Festival 2025, Brighton review - a dip into...
As every social space in Brighton once again transforms into a mire of self-important music biz sorts loudly bellowing about “waterfalling on...
theartsdesk Q&A: Zoë Telford on playing a stressed-out p...
If you compiled a list of favourite TV series from the last couple of decades, you’d find that Zoë Telford has appeared in most of them. The...
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Wigmore Hall review - too big a splash...
It was a daring idea to mark Ravel’s 150th birthday year with a single concert packing in all his works for solo piano. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet knows...
Good One review - a life lesson in the wild with her dad and...
Good One is a generation-and-gender gap drama that mostly unfolds during a weekend hiking and camping trip in the Catskills Forest...
E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea review - dull...
It’s hard to say who is going to enjoy E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea. Admirers of the modernist designer-architect will...
Album: Rico Nasty - LETHAL
Rico Nasty’s new album LETHAL signals a shift in direction, but whether it is a bold evolution or a step towards something less distinct...
The Marching Band review - what's the French for '...
In Emmanuel Courcol’s drama The Marching Band (En Fanfare in French, and also released as My Brother's Band), a...