Theatre Reviews
The End of Hope, Soho Theatre review - initially bold but not quite enoughThursday, 19 October 2017
In David Ireland's new hour-long two-hander – a co-production between Soho Theatre and west London's Orange Tree – two strangers, Janet and Dermot, meet for a casual hook-up arranged over the internet. Read more... |
Venus in Fur, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - pain and pleasure in a starry two-handerWednesday, 18 October 2017
A hit on Broadway, David Ives’s steamy two-hander now boasts Natalie Dormer and David Oakes, well-known for their screen work, in its West End cast, with Patrick Marber on directing duties. Read more... |
Albion, Almeida Theatre, review – Victoria Hamilton’s epic performanceWednesday, 18 October 2017
Prolific writer Mike Bartlett is the most impressive penman to have emerged in British theatre in the past decade. The trouble is that his work is so uneven. Read more... |
A Woman of No Importance, Vaudeville - Eve Best is superb as a woman scornedTuesday, 17 October 2017
In a rather clever wheeze, Dominic Dromgoole, former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe – who therefore knows a thing or two about historically accurate stagings – has established Classic Spring, a new company dedicated to celebrating work by “proscenium playwrights” and staging their plays in the theatres they were written for. Read more... |
Beginning, National Theatre review - assured, intimate, but short of surprisesSaturday, 14 October 2017
Loneliness: in the age of the digital hook-up and the flaunting narcissism of social media, it’s become a strange sort of taboo – a secret shame, the unsexy side of singledom. So it’s good to see playwright David Eldridge putting it centre-stage in this tender, pleasingly unsentimental two-hander. Read more... |
The Seagull, Lyric Hammersmith review – is Lesley Sharp's Irina a sex addict?Saturday, 14 October 2017
The awful mother, the celebrity-obsessed teenager, the mediocre old writer who wants some young sex in his life – there are motifs in Chekhov’s The Seagull that fly merrily from one century to another, and Simon Stephens and... Read more... |
The Busy World Is Hushed, Finborough Theatre review - new play puts the G-word centre stageFriday, 13 October 2017
God makes few appearances at the modern playhouse – so few that the Finborough Theatre saw fit to print a glossary in the programme for its latest production. Read more... |
Young Frankenstein review - Mel Brooks musical is blissfully bonkersThursday, 12 October 2017
What a difference an ocean and a change of scale can make. When I saw the Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein on Broadway a decade ago, the show seemed to take its cue from the lumbering monster contained within it, who stutters and sputters before eventually being kickstarted into something resembling life. Read more... |
Saint George and the Dragon, National Theatre review – a modern folk tale in the OlivierThursday, 12 October 2017
Bold and fearless are adjectives that might describe playwright Rory Mullarkey as accurately as any chivalrous knight. He made his name in 2013 when, at the age of 25, his play Cannibals, part of which was in Russian, took to the main stage at the Manchester Royal Exchange and went on to win the James Tait Black Prize. Read more... |
Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle, Wyndham’s Theatre review – paradoxically predictableTuesday, 10 October 2017
Playwright Simon Stephens and director Marianne Elliott are hyped as a winning partnership. 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
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
What better way to start a season about the Earth than by looking back on it...
Being unknowable has been almost as much of a preoccupation for the erstwhile Robert Zimmerman as writing songs. Previously on film he has played...
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. But in Love Life, Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s...
Another new release opens with the sounds of people in bed playing over the credits, but these are not Babygirl’s sighs of a...
Of the big UK indie bands of the 00s wave, Bloc Party were always the most austerely art-rockish. Where Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Franz Ferdinand...
Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela took the Barbican by storm last night with a thrilling account of Mahler’s...
This was always going to be Jakub Hrůša’s night, his first at the...
This concert was an effusion of pure joy. Billed as the German National Orchestra, the Bundesjugendorchester (Federal Youth Orchestra), all of...
By all accounts Chris McCausland had to be persuaded to take part in the most recent series of Strictly Come Dancing, which he won with...