Theatre Reviews
The House with Chicken Legs, Queen Elizabeth Hall review - a potential charmer swamped by its settingMonday, 18 December 2023
There are probably two distinct audiences for the latest adaptation from Les Enfants Terribles, The House with Chicken Legs: the young teens who lapped up the fantasy novel by Sophie Anderson on which it is based, and the adults who came with them. The latter may not be as enraptured as fans of the book by the piece’s staging, not to mention its almost three-hour length. Read more... |
Ulster American, Riverside Studios review - knockabout comedy with an acid biteSaturday, 16 December 2023
David Ireland’s Edinburgh Fringe hit Ulster American is essentially a play about a play that a Hollywood big name has been cast in by a leading English theatre director. Appropriately, it stars two actual Hollywood “big names”, Woody Harrelson and Andy Serkis, the latter seen here for once without motion-capture tags or prosthetics. Welcome back. Read more... |
Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Phoenix Theatre review - formidable stagecraft unlocks new depths to the popular seriesFriday, 15 December 2023
Stranger Things has shown us over four seasons that the alternate dimension known as the Upside Down can be the seat of many things: terror, mystery, camaraderie, compassion. As it turns out, it can spawn great theatre, too, for Stephen Daldry’s much-anticipated stage production of the prequel to the Netflix mega-hit has finally summoned its demonic energy to take the West End by storm. Read more... |
Cold War, Almeida Theatre review - compelling bittersweet tale of love in post-war EuropeFriday, 15 December 2023
There’s a touch of Dr Zhivago about director Paweł Pawlikowski’s screenplay for his 2018 film Cold War. Its plot is driven by the same Lara/Yuri dynamic, of an overwhelming love affair trying to outflank the forces of history. Now it's been adapted at the Almeida as a play-with-music by Conor McPherson, with lush songs by Elvis Costello, directed by Rupert Goold. It’s not remotely Christmassy, though offers a gift of no ordinary kind. Read more... |
A Woman Walks into a Bank, Theatre 503 review - prize-winning play delivers on its promiseThursday, 14 December 2023
We’re in Moscow (we hear that quite a lot) where an ageing woman on a rare trip out of her apartment block catches sight of an advert in a bank’s window. She is soon inside and subjected to a sales pitch by a keen young bank "manager", torn between his understanding of her dementia and the career-boost the loan will bring. Read more... |
Pandemonium, Soho Theatre review - satire needs a shot of Pfizer's finest to revive tired storylinesWednesday, 13 December 2023
In 2020, throughout the country, many people’s lives were affected adversely by an ever-present threat to our already fragile society. Though most got over it, many people still bear the cost every day, sapping them of energy, making them cough and splutter frequently, instilling a longing that it would just go away and stay away. Read more... |
Pacific Overtures, Menier Chocolate Factory review - lesser-known Sondheim scores afreshMonday, 11 December 2023
This is, by my reckoning at least, the third major London production over the years of Pacific Overtures, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's dazzling curiosity of a show first seen on Broadway in 1976 and reappraised ever since in stagings both large and small both sides of the Atlantic. Read more... |
Talking About the Fire, Royal Court review - urgent and informativeSunday, 10 December 2023
Let’s start with what we know: the climate emergency is the single most burning question facing the planet. Our life on earth depends on tackling it. Right? Well, maybe not, argues theatre-maker Chris Thorpe in his new one-man show, Talking About the Fire, currently enjoying a short run at the Royal Court theatre. Read more... |
The Homecoming, Young Vic Theatre review - Pinter's disturbing masterpiece is given a low-key revivalWednesday, 06 December 2023
As the audience enters, thick mist envelopes the thrust stage and jazz music fills the theatre. The set, designed by Moi Tran, consists of a sparsely furnished but spacious room, backed by a staircase. It is a place in the past but also anywhere and any time, both naturalistic and imaginary. Read more... |
Dreaming and Drowning, Bush Theatre - dense and intense monologue about Black queer identityTuesday, 05 December 2023
Kwame Owusu’s 55-minute one-hander does just what it says on the tin: it features a young student who dreams he is drowning. But its brevity is no bar to its being a dense and intense experience, worthy winner of last year’s Mustapha Matura Award. 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...
Currie, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - s...
Kahchun Wong’s final concert of 2024 in the Hallé Manchester season was something of a surprise. At first sight, the sparkle in the programme...
theartsdesk on Vinyl 87: Roots Manuva, Bogdan Raczynski, Son...
VINYL OF THE MONTH
Blood Incantation Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)
...
Blu-ray: Juggernaut
That Juggernaut is as good as it is seems in hindsight to have been a happy accident. Inspired by a bomb hoax on the QE2 in 1972, the...
Rigoletto, Irish National Opera / Murrihy, Collins, NCH Dubl...
How many Rigolettos have regular operagoers among you sat through where there wasn’t some major defect, in either the production or the...
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, Ta...
Last month a portrait of Alan Turing by AI robot AI-Da sold at Sotheby’s for $1.08 million – proof that, in some people’s eyes, artificial...
Album: Panelia - Nothing and All At Once
Nothing and All at Once is the debut album from New Delhi...
Music Reissues Weekly: John Cale - The Academy in Peril, Par...
The return to shops of a consecutive sequence of five of John Cale's Seventies albums through different labels is undoubtedly coincidental. All...
Blu-ray: Black Tuesday
The universal fear of dying is the theme of Black Tuesday, a terse, bleak 1954 thriller that is belatedly being recognized as a major...
The Importance of Being Earnest, National Theatre review - n...
If Harold Pinter’s work represents, as he slyly joked, the weasel under the cocktail cabinet, then...