Theatre Reviews
One Day When We Were Young, Park Theatre review - mini-marvel with a poignant punchWednesday, 05 March 2025
Nick Payne, the writer of Constellations, has created another 90-minute zinger for two actors. This one is much simpler in structure but poses equally potent questions about the nature of love and how it’s moulded by the passage of time. Read more... |
Alterations, National Theatre review - high emotional costs of ambitionSunday, 02 March 2025
Plays about the Windrush Generation are no longer a rarity, but it’s still unusual for revivals of black British classics to get the full resources of the National Theatre. Guyana-born playwright Michael Abbensetts, who died in 2016, is often mentioned in books about black British drama, but his plays are infrequently revived. Read more... |
A Knock on the Roof, Royal Court review - poignant account of living under terrorFriday, 28 February 2025
The war in Gaza has been going since 7 October 2023 – that’s about 15 months. But it’s strangely absent from British stages. Of course, it’s a divisive issue, a difficult issue, a painful issue – but isn’t that what contemporary theatre should be about? Instead, we prefer to stage bellicose horrors in plays by ancient Greek tragedians, or mention Palestine in Shakespeare plays, but really… Read more... |
The Score, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - curious beast of a play fails to engageFriday, 28 February 2025
Why is it so hard to write a decent play about Bach? Maybe, in part, because there are no words that can express anything as eloquently as his music did – about life and death, pain and transcendence, wretchedness or rapture at the simplest aspects of existence. Read more... |
The Ferryman, Gaiety Theatre, Dublin review - Jez Butterworth's Northern Irish epic comes close to homeThursday, 27 February 2025
Dublin theatregoers have been inundated with Irish family gatherings concealing secrets or half-buried sorrows, mixing “bog gothic” with very real horrors. Clearly they’re willing to try again with Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, because its run has just been extended. The vanishings familiar to Butterworth’s wife Laura Donnelly, whose uncle was among the disappeared, still resonate, as a programme article by Sandra Peake, CEO of WAVE Trauma Centre, reinforces. Read more... |
Richard II, Bridge Theatre review - handsomely mounted, emotionally mutedSaturday, 22 February 2025
Screen stardom is generally anointed at the box office so it's a very real delight to find the fast-rising Jonathan Bailey taking time out from his ascendant celluloid career to return to his stage roots in Richard II. Read more... |
Backstroke, Donmar Warehouse review - a complex journey through a mother-daughter relationshipSaturday, 22 February 2025
The theatre director Anna Mackmin has written and directed an extraordinary play about a mother and daughter relationship: extraordinary because it puts the audience inside the maelstrom of these characters’ lives, forcing us to focus on how we interpret them and how our lives might resemble theirs. Read more... |
Otherland, Almeida Theatre review - a vivid, beautifully written take on the trans experienceFriday, 21 February 2025
“Who’d be a woman?... Who in their right mind would choose all that?” The question comes towards the end of a conversation where two former lovers are comparing notes on their tumultuous recent past. Read more... |
Much Ado About Nothing, Theatre Royal Drury Lane review - this shamelessly hedonistic production is a triumphThursday, 20 February 2025
Over the last few months, celebrity-driven West End productions have suffered some inglorious crashes. So there was a certain degree of trepidation at the opening night for this star vehicle for Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell. For five minutes, it must be confessed, this reviewer was worried; it seemed so over-miked, so hyper, so, well PINK. Read more... |
Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Theatre - Luke Thallon triumphs as the state succumbs to stormsThursday, 20 February 2025
The date, projected behind the stage before a word is spoken, is a clue - 14th April 1912. “Why so specific?” was my first thought. My second was, “Ah, yes”. 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...
theartsdesk Q&A: Oscar-winner Adrien Brody on 'The...
Adrien Brody is on a roll. Following his Golden Globe and BAFTA Best Actor wins for his performance as László Toth in...
A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, ITV1 review - powerful d...
The story of Ruth Ellis’s execution in 1955 has found its own macabre niche in British folklore, and has been been the subject of several film,...
Album: Spiritbox - Tsunami Sea
Within the loud realm of metal, it often exists happily unbothered by the mainstream. And although a metal band going mainstream isn't always well...
Towards Zero, BBC One review - more entertaining parlour gam...
The BBC’s latest “cool” Agatha Christie adaptation has many...
Album: The Burning Hell - Ghost Palace
Cultural references run up the flagpole on Ghost Palace include Deep Purple’s “Space Truckin’” buskers covering Lynryd Skynyrd and Ed...
Mansfield Park, Guildhall School review - fun when frothy, c...
Let’s call it Jane Austen fit for the West End, but with opera singers. The fact that it also serves as a fun ensemble piece for students is also...
Chuck Prophet, Mid Sussex Music Hall, Hassocks review - the...
Forty years ago, Chuck Prophet was the Keith Richards-like guitar hotshot in Green On Red, peers of R.E.M. and among the raw country-punk...
Echoes: Stone Circles, Community and Heritage, Stonehenge Vi...
Stonehenge is about 5,000 years old; three photographic artists currently exhibiting in the visitor centre are all under the age of...