thu 16/01/2025

Theatre Reviews

ear for eye, Royal Court review - powerful and passionate anti-racism

aleks Sierz

Two countries; two histories. Being black in the US; being black in the UK. Compare and contrast. Which is exactly what debbie tucker green’s amazingly ambitious new epic, which straddles centuries and continents, succeeds in doing.

Read more...

Honour, Park Theatre review - an assault on complacency

Rachel Halliburton

Adultery seldom looks less adult than in the form of the mild-life crisis – that much-satirised condition in which desire is eclipsed by delusion, wisdom by foolishness, and sensible coats by leather jackets.

Read more...

I and You, Hampstead Theatre review - Young Adult drama packs emotional punch

Veronica Lee

Here's a good pub quiz question: after Shakespeare, who was the most performed playwright in America last year? Arthur Miller? Tennessee Williams? David Mamet? None of those.

Read more...

The Wild Duck, Almeida Theatre review - meta, merciless and altogether brilliant

Matt Wolf

Beware the smile that Edward Hogg wears like a shield in the opening scenes of The Wild Duck, the Ibsen play refashioned into the most scalding production in many a year by Robert Icke, here in career-surpassing form. Playing James Ekdal, the photographer previously known as Hjalmar, Hogg disarms you from the outset with a bonhomie just waiting to snap.

Read more...

A Very Very Very Dark Matter, Bridge Theatre review - black comedy falls flat

aleks Sierz

It's all in the title, isn't it? Martin McDonagh's surreal new play comes with a warning that not only screams its intentions, but echoes them through repetition. Okay, okay, I get it. This is going to be a dark story, a very very very dark story.

Read more...

Macbeth, RSC, Barbican review - Shakespeare's blood-boltered tragedy, tense but flawed

Heather Neill

It has been said before: Macbeth's reputation for bad luck has more to do with the difficulty of bringing off a successful production than the supernatural elements in the play.

Read more...

Wise Children, Old Vic review - Emma Rice in fun if not quite top-flight form

Matt Wolf

"What could possibly go wrong?" The question ends the first act of Wise Children, the debut venture from the new company birthed by a director, Emma Rice, who must have asked herself precisely that query at many points in recent years.

Read more...

A Guide For The Homesick, Trafalgar Studios review - warmly funny and deeply moving

Rachel Halliburton

This blisteringly intense evening at Trafalgar Studios begins with two strangers in an Amsterdam hotel bedroom and – through a series of personal revelations – ends up spanning continents.

Read more...

Company, Gielgud Theatre review - here's to a sensational musical rebirth

Marianka Swain

The most thrilling revivals interrogate a classic work, while revealing its fundamental soul anew. Marianne Elliott’s female-led, 21st-century take on George Furth and Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical comedy Company makes a bold, inventive statement, but somehow also suggests t

Read more...

Stories, National Theatre review - comic conception capers

aleks Sierz

In 2017, playwright Nina Raine's Consent, an excellent National Theatre play about lawyers and rape victims, was hugely successful, winning a West End transfer, as well as generating a lot of...

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...

Oliver!, Gielgud Theatre review - Lionel Bart's 1960 ma...

Into a world of grooming gangs, human trafficking and senior prelates resigning over child abuse cases comes Oliver!, Lionel...

What's the Matter with Tony Slattery?, BBC Two review -...

In the late Eighties and Nineties, Tony Slattery became one of the most ubiquitous faces on television, appearing regularly on Whose Line Is...

Album: Ethel Cain - Perverts

Ethel Cain’s Perverts is a dark and experimental follow-up to her debut album, Preacher’s Daughter. It takes listeners on a...

Leif Ove Andsnes, Wigmore Hall review - colour and courage,...

Forthright and upright, powerful and lucid, the frank and bold pianism of Leif Ove Andsnes took his Wigmore Hall audience from Norway to Poland (...

American Primeval, Netflix review - nightmare on the Wild Fr...

It seems The Osmonds may not have been the worst outrage perpetrated on an unsuspecting public by the Mormons. American Primeval is set...

Chamayou, BBC Philharmonic, Wigglesworth, Bridgewater Hall,...

Top Brownie points for the BBC Philharmonic for being one of the first (maybe the first?) to celebrate the birth centenary of Pierre Boulez this...

The Maids, Jermyn Street Theatre review - new broom sweeps c...

There are two main reasons to revive classics. The first is that they are really good; the second is that they have something to...

Gala Preview Show, De Montfort Hall review - Leicester Comed...

Europe's biggest comedy festival, which showcases established stars,...

Album: Moonchild Sanelly - Full Moon

Rooted in South African electronic styles such as...