Theatre Reviews
Raz, Trafalgar StudiosFriday, 25 March 2016
Recently, I’ve been meeting some pretty hyper people in the theatre. Fictional people. On stage. Lots of hyper women; lots of hyper agonised women. And men. Hypercative kids; hyped-up teens; hyper-Alpha adults. A lot of these encounters have been monologues; a few have been two-handers. Several have had a public health agenda. Read more... |
People, Places & Things, Wyndham's TheatreThursday, 24 March 2016
Recovery depends on honesty, but Emma – not her real name – lies for a living. Duncan Macmillan’s searing play, getting a well-deserved West End transfer from the National, complicates the familiar story of addiction and rehab by making its protagonist an actress. Read more... |
The Painkiller, Garrick TheatreFriday, 18 March 2016
The fourth production in Branagh’s Garrick season is the revival of an odd-couple romp he brought to the Lyric, Belfast in 2011. Sean Foley (best known for his superlative Branagh-directed Morecambe and Wise tribute The Play What I Wrote) adapts and directs this nostalgic English version of Francis Veber’s 1969 French farce, which wastes no opportunity for dropped-trousers, door-slamming, mistaken-identity slapstick. Read more... |
If You Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Young VicThursday, 17 March 2016
It’s easier to say what Jane Horrocks’s new musical dance-drama isn’t that what it is. Horrocks makes a short speech at the beginning and the end about the mysteries of love, as depicted in her selection of Mancunian heartbreakers from Gang of Four, Joy Division, Buzzcocks and The Smiths, among others. Read more... |
The Truth, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 17 March 2016
Infidelity, hypocrisy, disillusionment, betrayal – and yet this is by far the lightest of French playwright Florian Zeller’s current London hat trick. Premiering in 2011, and thus sandwiched chronologically between the bleak pair of The Mother (2010) and The Father (2012), it takes a comparatively sunny approach to the fracturing of trust and deconstruction of the moral ideal of truth. Read more... |
Miss Atomic Bomb, St James TheatreWednesday, 16 March 2016
As settings for musical comedy go, this one promised some boom for your buck. Las Vegas in the early 1950s was just emerging as a magnet not only for hedonists and gamblers, mobsters and showgirls, but also for the personnel of America’s Atomic Energy Commission, engaged in fortnightly A-bomb tests over the Nevada desert. Read more... |
The Destroyed Room, Traverse Theatre, EdinburghFriday, 11 March 2016
Seldom can the suggestion of a post-show discussion have seemed so… well, unappealing is probably the polite way of putting it. Because discussion is precisely what Glasgow-based theatre company Vanishing Point’s devastating new show The Destroyed Room is all about – an hour of middle-class, liberal hand-wringing, of batting issues back and forth, weighing, challenging and rejecting opinions. Read more... |
Cosy, Wales Millennium CentreThursday, 10 March 2016
Kaite O’Reilly’s new play is a dark dark comedy, a Chekhovian family saga on a mainly bare stage that handles its subjects of aging, death and family with a rich and grounded intellectualism to be expected of the playwright’s work. The production itself skips lightly along the thin line that separates reality from a discomfiting dreamscape, the waiting room: everyone is waiting, for death, for life, for family members to arrive. It is an ominous comedy. Read more... |
Motown the Musical, Shaftesbury TheatreWednesday, 09 March 2016
Shorter feels longer in the West End iteration of Motown the Musical, a minor-league jukebox venture that became a Broadway hit courtesy of an unbeatable back catalogue – keep those hits coming! – and a well-drilled production that at least delivered what it promised on the tin. Read more... |
German Skerries, Orange Tree TheatreTuesday, 08 March 2016
Birdwatching is not the most thrilling subject for a drama. In fact, next to watching paint dry, it is probably the poorer option. So there is something wonderfully clever and theatrically brilliant about Robert Holman’s 1977 play, which takes place at a popular birdwatching spot overlooking the mouth of the Tees, a location around which several lives meet and connect. 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...
theartsdesk Q&A: Oscar-winner Adrien Brody on 'The...
Adrien Brody is on a roll. Following his Golden Globe and BAFTA Best Actor wins for his performance as László Toth in...
A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, ITV1 review - powerful d...
The story of Ruth Ellis’s execution in 1955 has found its own macabre niche in British folklore, and has been been the subject of several film,...
Album: Spiritbox - Tsunami Sea
Within the loud realm of metal, it often exists happily unbothered by the mainstream. And although a metal band going mainstream isn't always well...
Towards Zero, BBC One review - more entertaining parlour gam...
The BBC’s latest “cool” Agatha Christie adaptation has many...
Album: The Burning Hell - Ghost Palace
Cultural references run up the flagpole on Ghost Palace include Deep Purple’s “Space Truckin’” buskers covering Lynryd Skynyrd and Ed...
Mansfield Park, Guildhall School review - fun when frothy, c...
Let’s call it Jane Austen fit for the West End, but with opera singers. The fact that it also serves as a fun ensemble piece for students is also...
Chuck Prophet, Mid Sussex Music Hall, Hassocks review - the...
Forty years ago, Chuck Prophet was the Keith Richards-like guitar hotshot in Green On Red, peers of R.E.M. and among the raw country-punk...
Echoes: Stone Circles, Community and Heritage, Stonehenge Vi...
Stonehenge is about 5,000 years old; three photographic artists currently exhibiting in the visitor centre are all under the age of...