Theatre Reviews
The Baker's Wife, Menier Chocolate Factory review - loving reappraisal doesn't entirely, well, riseFriday, 19 July 2024
The Baker's Wife closed on the way to Broadway in 1976, since which time Stephen Schwartz's stubbornly resistent if sweetly scored musical has been revived and reworked all over the map, not least by Gordon Greenberg. Read more... |
More Than One Story review - nine helpings of provocative political theatreMonday, 15 July 2024
A stark end-title at the end of this collection of short films sums up the dire situation the UK is in: one in five people,14 million Britons, are now living in poverty. Read more... |
Visit from an Unknown Woman, Hampstead Theatre review - slim, overly earthbound slice of writer's angstSaturday, 13 July 2024
Who was Stefan Zweig? It's likely that it's mostly older folk who studied German literature at A-level who have encountered this superb Viennese writer in his native language, though his short story from 1922, Letter to an Unknown Woman, eventually emerged as a starry Hollywood film in 1948. Read more... |
Grud, Hampstead Theatre review - sparky investigation of a geeky friendshipWednesday, 10 July 2024
Sarah Power, the writer of Grud, now in the Hampstead’s smaller space, is a self-confessed geek who excelled at science at school. She also had an alcoholic parent, and both autobiographical strands have turned up trumps in this, the second of her plays to be produced professionally. Read more... |
Skeleton Crew, Donmar Warehouse review - slow burn that satisfyingly catches fireTuesday, 09 July 2024
For a long stretch of its first half, Dominique Morrisseau’s 2016 award-winner, Skeleton Crew, seems a conventional workplace drama, though in a much gentler key than Lynn Nottage’s Sweat. But this slow burn catches fire. Read more... |
Next to Normal, Wyndham's Theatre review - rock musical on the trauma of mental illnessFriday, 05 July 2024
We open on one of those suburban American families we know so well from Eighties and Nineties sitcoms - they’re not quite Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, but they’re not far off. As usual, we wonder how Americans have so much space, such big fridges and why they’re always shouting up the stairs. Read more... |
Mnemonic, Olivier Theatre review - thanks for the memoriesThursday, 04 July 2024
I’m sitting in the Olivier waiting for the show to start, comfortable in the knowledge that I’ve seen the original production of Mnemonic, one of Complicité’s most lauded plays, in 1999; but I struggle to remember anything about it, the detail is fuzzy. A play about memory is challenging my own faltering apparatus. Read more... |
Starlight Express, Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre review - freight is kinda greatTuesday, 02 July 2024
The reinvigoration of Andrew Lloyd Webber continues apace. New York is now hosting a ballroom culture, drag-inflected Cats, and the Olivier-laureled Sunset Boulevard, a breakaway hit last year on the West End, hits Broadway in the autumn. Read more... |
The Marilyn Conspiracy, Park Theatre review - intriguing murder mysteryMonday, 01 July 2024
The death of Marilyn Monroe is a wet dream for conspiracy theorists. Like the assassination of JFK in the following year there is plenty of material in the official accounts that doesn’t quite make sense – which opens the door to free-form speculation. Read more... |
Mean Girls, Savoy Theatre review - standout performances save a thin scoreSaturday, 29 June 2024
Nothing anybody over the age of 30 says about the new Mean Girls musical, spawn of Tina Fey’s witty script for the 2004 screen sideswipe of that name, will make any difference. As with all things Barbie, the pink madness seems deathless. 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...
The Tales of Hoffmann, Royal Opera review - three-headed mon...
Having all but sunk one seemingly unassailable opéra comique, Bizet’s Carmen, director Damiano Michieletto...
The Day of the Jackal, Sky Atlantic review - Frederick Forsy...
Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 film The Day of the Jackal was successful thanks to its lean, almost documentary-like treatment of its story of a...
Kolesnikov, Hallé, Elts, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review...
Pavel Kolesnikov returned to the Hallé last night with a bobby-dazzler of a concerto. He’s a laid-back dude in appearance, with no tie, flapping...
L’Addition, BAC review - top billing for physical comedy duo
Can experimental theatre survive the decades? This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Forced Entertainment theatre company, whose mission is...
The Problem With People review - local zero
A quarter of an hour into The Problem With People, there’s a 15-second clip of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero – and it’s the best...
Album: Garfunkel & Garfunkel: Father and Son
A father and son union – the first joint collaboration by Garfunkel père et fils. Art Junior it seems has already released two solo...
Tucker Zimmerman, The Lexington, London review - undersung o...
Tucker Zimmerman is singing a number called “Don’t Go Crazy (Go in Peace)”. At 83, he performs sitting down. Surrounded by support band Iji, who...
Album: Primal Scream - Come Ahead
In many ways, Primal Scream have had a strikingly similar career path to the Rolling Stones – despite them forming some 20 years after Mick and...