Theatre Features
theartsdesk Christmas Quiz - AnswersSunday, 25 December 2011
Here are the answers to our monster Christmas arts quiz of 12 dozen questions on the year past, as seen by theartsdesk writers. There are clues in all the questions in the main quiz page. If you don't want to know the answers just yet till you've grappled with them, close this page now. Read more... |
Christmas on theartsdesk: Brainteasers, Bran Tub, and the Best of 2011Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Any day now most of us will be hunkering down and for the most part drawing a curtain about the world outside. Before that happens, we’d like to tell you about theartsdesk’s plans for Christmas and the New Year. Read more... |
Václav Havel, 1936-2011Sunday, 18 December 2011
In Rock’n’Roll, the play by Tom Stoppard, two characters haunt the stage without actually appearing on it. One of them, Syd Barrett, absconded from Pink Floyd to lead the life of a hermit. The other, Václav Havel, gave up the life of an internationally acclaimed, domestically banned playwright to become a head of state. Only one of them was in the audience for the premiere at the Royal Court. And it wasn’t the hermit. Read more... |
Interview: Pantomime Dame Berwick KalerSaturday, 17 December 2011
To just about everyone, the name will mean absolutely nothing. "I'm a jobbing actor," he says, and for most of the year it is true. He does little bits of telly, the odd tiny film role, a certain amount of provincial theatre. Every Christmas, though, Berwick Kaler strides forward into the spotlight of the ravishing, intimate York Theatre Royal and bids welcome to a fanatical army of devotees. Read more... |
Jamila Gavin: Writing Coram BoySaturday, 17 December 2011
Someone told me that the highways and byways of England were littered with the bones of little children. It was a shocking statement and of course I asked, “What do you mean?” I was told that abandoned children were a common feature of the past, but that in the 18th century someone called a “Coram Man” used to wander about from village to village and town to town – a bit like a tinker – picking up unwanted children. Read more... |
Opinion: There's more to children's theatre than pantoMonday, 05 December 2011
So, Christmas again then. Ho ho ho. It comes around every year. Cards, crackers, baubles, TV specials. And panto. I am a playwright. I write mostly for children and their families. I tend not to say I'm a children's writer because it's rare that a child has made the decision to come to one of my plays. A parent, teacher or loving adult has made that decision and forked out the money. Children can't access my work by turning on the telly or going to the library. Read more... |
Gillian Slovo: Writing The RiotsWednesday, 23 November 2011
I was shocked by the riots. I think everybody was shocked by the riots. It’s not just the scale of the rioting that was shocking. It’s the failure of the police and the fire services to take control of the situation. During my research for The Riots I interviewed a man who had his flat burned down and he told me that he couldn’t believe this could happen in a democracy. Read more... |
theartsdesk Debate: The Art of PerformanceSaturday, 10 September 2011
To celebrate theartsdesk's second birthday on Friday, we held a panel discussion on The Art of Performance at Kings Place, London, in the Kings Place Festival. Read more... |
theartsdesk MOT: The Lion King, Lyceum TheatreSunday, 04 September 2011
When The Lion King first opened in London in October 1999, there were cries from some quarters that it was merely following in a long line of stage shows that had been lifted lazily from films. Read more... |
The Lion King's West End ReignSunday, 04 September 2011
The stage musical The Lion King has been seen by nearly 10 million people in the UK - almost 60 million worldwide – and Lord only knows how many must have seen Walt Disney’s animation. I have a friend who reckons he has seen it at least 26 times and a... 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
Aircraft hijacking is a ghoulishly popular theme in films and TV, but Red Eye brings a slightly different twist to the perils of air...
In Vivaldi’s more extravagant operas, some of the arias can seem like a competition for the gold medal. L’Olimpiade is relatively modest...
Parentheses, I is an album title – (I) – that’s a hieroglyph of the self, the brackets like...
West Coast Consortium’s first single was July 1967’s “Some Other Someday,” a delightful slice of Mellotron-infused harmony pop which wasn’t too...
Somewhere along a desert highway in the American Southwest, where there's not much to do besides get drunk, shoot guns, and pump iron, a stranger...
As a human being of immense warmth, humour and erudition, Andrew Davis made it all too easy to forget what towering, incandescent performances he...
120 sculptures, and so much more: the current Brancusi blockbuster at the Centre Pompidou, the first large Paris show of the Romanian-born...
The joy of CVC, when they catch fire, is the zing of gatecrashing a gang of cheeky, very individual personalities having their own private party....
Kahchun Wong, the Hallé’s principal conductor from the coming autumn season, presided in the Bridgewater Hall for the first time yesterday since...
Iain Sinclair is a writer, film-maker, and psychogeographer extraordinaire. He began his career in the poetic avant-garde of the Sixties and...