Theatre Reviews
The Little Dog Laughed, Garrick TheatreThursday, 21 January 2010
Tamsin Greig takes her mighty stage chops to a new level in The Little Dog Laughed, a minor Broadway comedy that gets a major star performance from Greig in her first West End role since God of Carnage. Read more... |
Progress, Union TheatreThursday, 21 January 2010
Sexual politics has always been fertile (oops) ground for comedy, and Doug Lucie’s vigorous satire — whose 1984 premiere starred Lindsay Duncan, David Bamber and Kevin Elyot — is here given a revival on the London fringe. We are in Kilburn during the Thatcher era, and the local trendy lefties have turned inward. Read more... |
Enron, Noël Coward TheatreWednesday, 20 January 2010
Crisis makes people hungry. In the case of the banking collapse, this seems to take the form of an ignoble itch for revenge, and a more laudable hunger for knowledge. What exactly happened and what went wrong? As Enron, Lucy Prebble's wonderful play about a previous financial scandal, roared into the Royal Court after its sell-out run at Chichester, there was time to reflect on just why this play has been such a huge success. And by success, I really mean success. Read more... |
Six Degrees of Separation, Old VicWednesday, 20 January 2010
John Guare's brittle satire, first produced in New York in 1990, was propelled by two phenomena. The first was a certain David Hampton, a con man who persuaded a suite of gullible Manhattan socialites that he was Sidney Poitier's son (and who, when Guare's play became a hit, pestered the playwright for a cut of the profits). Read more... |
Ockham's Razor, The Mill, Linbury Studio TheatreTuesday, 19 January 2010
Call me old-fashioned, but when a bunch of people have trained in circus and French mime theatre, I’m expecting to be astonished, thoroughly surprised, and occasionally to feel the sweat breaking out on my palms. Can one enjoy circus skills without fear and awe being supplied? The aerialist theatre troupe Ockham’s Razor provide a sensational hamster-wheel set for their new show, The Mill, powered by human hamsters, but don’t serve up physical jinks of matching sensationalism. I grew up... Read more... |
The Caretaker, Trafalgar StudiosTuesday, 19 January 2010
It is almost an article of faith that over the 50 years since its first production, The Caretaker has become a classic of the British theatrical canon. Read more... |
BlackSkyWhite, Institute of Contemporary ArtsSunday, 17 January 2010
I whizzed back to my previous reviews of BlackSkyWhite when I got home last night to check how much I’d enjoyed them in the past, so disappointing was their offering for the London International Mime Festival, USSR Was Here. Read more... |
The Rivals, Southwark PlayhouseSaturday, 16 January 2010
'Tis the season to be jolly. Or, if you're a small theatre and choose not to stoop to panto, time perhaps to be a little light, anyway, tickle some tastebuds. Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals (1775) is his best-known play, followed by The School for Scandal and The Critic. In his early twenties when he wrote The Rivals (and then, after its first London outing was howled down, rewrote it), Sheridan spawned a skittish, playful, self-consciously silly... Read more... |
Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, National TheatreFriday, 15 January 2010
Over the last 20 years or so, the genre of music we have learnt to associate with the violent assault of a regime upon its adversaries is hard rock blared out on massive speakers at ear-splitting volume, 24/7. First tried out with decisive results by the American military on General "Pineapple Face" Noriega of Panama in 1989, it has been refined in recent times to break down the resistance of innumerable presumed jihadis and insurgents in US detention. Read more... |
Midsummer, Soho TheatreWednesday, 13 January 2010
David Greig’s delightful Midsummer (a play with songs), opened at the Traverse in Edinburgh in 2008, was revived for last year’s Fringe and now provides a warming tonic for frozen winter nights in London. A knowing, modern romcom about two thirtysomething lost souls from opposite ends of Edinburgh who find each other over the midsummer weekend, it could just as easily serve as a love-letter from the playwright to the city of his birth. 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...
Stile Antico, Wigmore Hall review - a glorious birthday cele...
There was a wonderful festal spirit at the Wigmore Hall last night, as the vocal ensemble Stile Antico ran through a Greatest Hits selection in...
House of Games, Hampstead Theatre review - adapted Mamet scr...
There is so much that is right about Jonathan Kent’s new production of House of Games – the casting, the staging, the...
PUP, SWG3, Glasgow review - controlled chaos from Canadian p...
According to PUP lead singer Stefan Babcock, the Toronto foursome practiced together a grand total of twice before embarking on their current UK...
Zoe Lyons, Touring - midlife, without the crisis
Zoe Lyons knows her audience; as a few shoutouts confirmed, many of them are long-time fans, and have had lives with similar highs and...
The Last Musician of Auschwitz review - a haunting testament...
“It is so disgraceful, what happened there,” says Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, in a comment that is the understatement of the century. She is referring...
Giulio Cesare, The English Concert, Bicket, Barbican review...
Is Giulio Cesare in Egitto, to give the full title, Handel’s best and shapeliest opera? Glyndebourne’s revival of the legendary David...
Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - premiere...
Huw Watkins’ Concerto for Orchestra, the fourth new work of his to be commissioned and premiered by the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder, is...
DVD/Blu-ray: Slade in Flame
Over the years Slade in Flame has been hailed as one of the greatest rock movies (albeit rarely seen or screened), up...
Music Reissues Weekly: Roots Rocking Zimbabwe
“Soul Scene,” by Echoes Limited, is built from elements of the James Brown sound. But it’s put together in such a way that the result is...