Theatre Reviews
The Tempest, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane review - Sigourney Weaver's impassive Prospero inhabits an atmospheric, desolate worldFriday, 20 December 2024
Shakespeare must have relished the opportunities brought by the indoor Blackfriars Theatre in 1611: sound magnified in a way impossible outdoors, magical stage effects in the semi-darkness, possibly even fireworks - and all at a time when the masque was the most fashionable theatre form. The Tempest, written especially for the venue, includes a masque and has masque-like properties throughout. Read more... |
Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Donmar Warehouse review - a blazingly original musical flashes into the West EndWednesday, 18 December 2024
Broadway shows sometimes hit the West End like, well, like a comet, burning brightly but briefly (Spring Awakening, for example), while others settle into orbit illuminating Shaftesbury Avenue with a neon blaze every night for years. Read more... |
The Invention of Love, Hampstead Theatre review - beautiful wit, awkward stagingTuesday, 17 December 2024
Can men really love each other – without sex? Or, to put it another way, how many different forms of male love can you name? These questions loiter with intent around the edges of Tom Stoppard’s dense history play, which jumps from 1936 to the High Victorian age of the 1870s and 1880s, and is now revived by the Hampstead Theatre starring Simon Russell Beale. Read more... |
Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, New Adventures, Sadler's Wells review - 30 years on, as bold and brilliant as everMonday, 16 December 2024
How do you refresh a masterpiece? Bringing back his first and still greatest hit, Swan Lake, Matthew Bourne seems to have changed only minor details since its 1995 premiere at Sadler’s Wells. Its core brilliance is untouched. Read more... |
The Little Foxes, Young Vic review - timeshifted production blurs the play's focusSaturday, 14 December 2024
The Young Vic has opened under a new artistic director with a puzzle play. The puzzle is, why stage this piece today? Read more... |
The Legends of Them, Royal Court review - reaching out for serenityFriday, 13 December 2024
I live in Brixton, south London. To get to the tube, I have to cross Windrush Square. Since 2021, I go past the Cherry Groce memorial, which honours the woman who was wrongfully shot by the Met in 1985, an event which sparked the riots I remember so well from 40 years ago. Amazingly enough, I have now seen her sister, Sutara Gayle AKA Lorna Gee, performing a gig theatre piece on the main stage at the Royal Court. Read more... |
The Producers, Menier Chocolate Factory review - liberating taboo-busting fun for grown-upsWednesday, 11 December 2024
There is something deliciously perfect about the timing of The Producers’ arrival at the Menier Chocolate Factory. In these twitchy times, Mel Brooks’s scurrilous Hitler musical lands like a stinkbomb in a parfumerie. Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, RSC, Barbican review - visually ravishing with an undercurrent of violenceWednesday, 11 December 2024
Hermia is a headbutting punk with a tartan fetish, Oberon looks like Adam Ant and Lysander appears to have stumbled out of a Madness video. Yet Eleanor Rhode’s exuberant A Midsummer Night’s Dream – which has transferred from a triumphant run at Stratford-Upon-Avon – is no straightforward Eighties tribute, but a psychedelic mashup that’s as ravishing as it’s gritty. Read more... |
The Devil Wears Prada, Dominion Theatre review - efficient but rarely inspiredWednesday, 11 December 2024
It's second time only quasi-lucky for The Devil Wears Prada, the stage musical adaptation of the much-loved Meryl Streep film from 2006 that nosedived in Chicago a few summers ago and has resurfaced on the West End to see another day. Read more... |
Hansel and Gretel, Shakespeare's Globe review - too saccharine a retelling for our timesSaturday, 07 December 2024
Growing up within a few hundred yards of a major dock, I hardly knew darkness or quiet – the first time I properly felt their terrible beauty was on the Isle of Man ferry in the middle of the Irish Sea, its voids still vivid half a century on. 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...
Batsashvili, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester revie...
Mariam Batsashvili, the young virtuosa pianist from Georgia, is a star. No doubt about that. Trained at the Liszt Academy in Weimar and winner of...
Blu-ray: Lifeforce
Tobe Hooper changed cinema with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) for pennies in rancid Southern heat, but came closest to a mainstream...
Der fliegende Holländer, Irish National Opera review - saili...
So much looked promising for Irish National Opera’s first Wagner: the casting, certainly, the conductor – Music Director Fergus Sheil knows and...
The Potato Lab, Netflix review - a K-drama with heart and wi...
When the world’s darkness is too much, there is a Netflix rabbit-hole you can disappear down to a kinder place: the...
Lauren Mayberry, Barrowland, Glasgow review - solo star stay...
It took until the last song before Lauren Mayberry started to well up onstage, which was good going. The singer had mentioned early on the...
Album: Toria Wooff - Toria Wooff
On the cover of her eponymous debut album, the Bolton-raised Toria Wooff reclines on a church pew located in Stanley Palace, a 16th-century...
Music Reissues Weekly: Too Far Out - Beat, Mod & R&B...
The thrill of hearing “Crawdaddy Simone” never wears off. As the September 1965 B-side of the third single by North London R&B band The...
Naumov, SCO, Egarr, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh review - or...
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra has had to put up with its fair share of artist cancellations over the last month, and the ensuing games of musical...
Brief History of a Family review - glossy Chinese psychologi...
Brief History of a Family is a psychological thriller with a story familiar to anyone who has seen Ripley, ...