Theatre Reviews
Dixon and Daughters, National Theatre review - cold discomfort harmThursday, 27 April 2023
Men are bastards. Okay, not all of us, but enough to make the lives of millions of women a misery. This we know, but anyone who has any doubts might be educated by some of the horrific statistics of sexual assault and domestic violence in the programme of Deborah Bruce’s Dixon and Daughters, a new play at the Dorfman space of the National Theatre. Read more... |
The Secret Life of Bees, Almeida Theatre review - stirringly delivered musical about civil rightsTuesday, 25 April 2023
The cast of The Secret Life of Bees first parade onto the Almeida stage hefting big glass storage jars full of a golden substance: honey. The jars glow as if they are beacons, lights that guide. Which they turn out to be. Read more... |
Dancing at Lughnasa, National Theatre review - largely ravishing Brian Friel revivalMonday, 24 April 2023
It's saying a lot when a production lives up to its gasp-inducing set. That's the happy case with Josie Rourke's loving revival of Dancing at Lughnasa, which returns Brian Friel's modern-day classic to the building, the National, where this Olivier and Tony Award-winner first played London over 32 years ago. Read more... |
The Good Person of Szechwan, Lyric Hammersmith review - wild ride in hyperreality slides byMonday, 24 April 2023
As the UK undergoes yet another political convulsion, this time concerning the threshold for ministers being shitty to fellow workers, it is apt that Bertolt Brecht’s parable about the challenges of being good in a dysfunctional society hits London. Read more... |
Ain't Too Proud, Prince Edward Theatre review - Temptations musical is none too temptingSaturday, 22 April 2023
Ain’t Too Proud? Ain’t too good either, I’m afraid. Which is a shame as there’s plenty of the raw material here that powers juggernaut jukebox musicals around the world, but this production has the feel of a cruise ship show with a much tighter band and better singers. Read more... |
The Meaning of Zong, Barbican review - didactic tale based on the 1781 massacre of 132 slavesSaturday, 22 April 2023
There’s a moment in the opening stretch of Giles Terera’s The Meaning of Zong where you think the former Hamilton star has written a piece about slavery that’s in much the same idiom as the hit musical. Read more... |
Private Lives, Donmar Warehouse review - Coward revival cuts to the quickFriday, 21 April 2023
It's not often with Private Lives that you feel Amanda and Elyot are one step away from a visit to A&E. But such is the startling force of Michael Longhurst's Donmar Warehouse revival of arguably Noël Coward's most durable play that you are aware throughout of violence and pain as the flipside of passion at its most intense. Read more... |
Life is a Dream, Cheek by Jowl, Barbican Theatre review - savouring the Spanish of a singular masterpieceSaturday, 15 April 2023
Dream versus reality, fate and free will, love and death, nature versus nurture: they’re all here in Calderón de la Barca’ s ever-startling baroque panopticon, a play so precociously meta that every theatrical game from Pirandello onwards deserves the epithet “Calderonian”. Read more... |
Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial, Ambassadors Theatre review - courtroom drama hits the back of the netThursday, 13 April 2023
“Wagatha Christie” – I salute the bright spark who coined the term – describes, for those who don't follow such fripperies, the social media spat between footballers' wives Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney (married to Jamie and Wayne respectively), which later became the subject of an multimillion-pound court case. Read more... |
The Dry House, Marylebone Theatre review - fine performances in Irish three-handerSaturday, 08 April 2023
Eugene O’Hare’s The Dry House is the kind of spare but oddly lyrical three-hander that would have made a good Wednesday Play back in the day. For Conor McPherson fans, it will seem like familiar terrain, with all the ingredients for an unusual domestic drama. Think, one interior, probably a humble home or a pub, where a small cast sit and drink, talk, confess, drink some more. Some of them are dead. 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
Taylor Swift, Wembley Stadium review - the Eras Tour lights...
Unless you were around when The Beatles toured America in the mid-1960s, it’s doubtful you've heard anything like this. In 40 years of extensive...
Album: Linda Thompson - Proxy Music
She has one of the most distinctive voices in folk and contemporary British music, impossible to forget once heard, and impossible to ignore. Even...
Bartlett, Fantasia Orchestra, Fetherstonhaugh, Proms at St J...
Any programme featuring Gershwin’s top large-scale works might tend to the “pops” side. Bernstein’s West Side Story Overture and even the...
My Father's Fable, Bush Theatre review - hilarious and...
Following the huge success of Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, which transfers soon to the West End, the...
Blu-ray: Army of Shadows
One of those rare films that leaves you speechless after the closing credits, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (L'Armée des...
Giulio Cesare, Glyndebourne review - every number a winner f...
How much better can a classic get? Sebastian Scotney more or less asked the same question on theartsdesk the last time Giulio...
Kelly Clancy: Playing with Reality - How Games Shape Our Wor...
For a couple of decades, the free video game America’s Army was a powerful recruitment aid for the US military. More than a shoot-em-up,...
Album: Madeleine Peyroux - Let's Walk
Madeleine Peyroux made her name with her second album, 2004’s Careless Love. It consists almost completely of cover versions, delivered...
Music Reissues Weekly: The Cryin’ Shames - Please Stay, Do T...
Liverpool’s The Cryin’ Shames were responsible for two of mid-Sixties Britain’s most striking single’s tracks. The February 1966 top side “Please...
theartsdesk at Smetanova Litomyšl - three fascinating operas...
What did they put in the water of Czechia’s central Bohemia/Moravia borderlands? From south to north there's Mahler’s birthplace in Kali...