Theatre Reviews
Declan, Traverse Theatre online review - compressed and compellingFriday, 28 August 2020
In normal times, Edinburgh Festival audiences would now be packing into the city’s invaluable Traverse Theatre, home to some of the most vibrant new writing in the country. Read more... |
A Little Night Music, Opera Holland Park review - wasn't it bliss?Tuesday, 18 August 2020
A lot of rain and untold bliss: those were the takeaways from Saturday night’s alfresco Opera Holland Park concert performance of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s eternally glorious 1973 musical, A Little Night Music. Read more... |
Alice, A Virtual Theme Park review – down the technological rabbit holeMonday, 17 August 2020
I have a confession to make: I don’t like Alice in Wonderland. I know, I know, a lot of people disagree. I do appreciate its place in the cultural pantheon – I just find all the caterpillars and tea parties and pointless riddles really, really dull. Read more... |
Fanny and Stella, Garden Theatre review - a saucy slice of queer historyWednesday, 12 August 2020
In a purgatorial summer, this boisterous, camp and chaotically charming musical is a tonic. It’s a winning combination of slick and slapdash, performed before a masked, socially distanced audience in a hastily repurposed beer garden behind the Eagle pub in Vauxhall. Read more... |
Blindness, Donmar Warehouse review - a beautifully haunting parableMonday, 10 August 2020
Wowee! Twenty weeks after the last time I set foot in a theatre, I was able to visit a venue once more. Hello again Donmar! It’s great to see you again. Not for a show featuring live performers, who are currently banned, but for a theatre experience in the guise of an art installation, which is allowed. Read more... |
Imagine... My Name is Kwame, BBC One review - interesting but incompleteFriday, 07 August 2020
Filmed, as one would, well, imagine, prior to lockdown, Imagine .... My Name is Kwame hearkens to what now seems a bygone era of full and buzzy playhouses and adventurous theatre-making that was about the live experience and not some facsimile online. Read more... |
Scrounger, Finborough Theatre online review – autobiography meets meta-theatreTuesday, 04 August 2020
During the current pandemic, stories about isolation have a particular resonance. Feelings of claustrophobia, loneliness and frustration slide off the stage and echo in our subconscious – yes, this is us alright. Read more... |
The Merchant of Venice, BBC iPlayer review – a parable on the limits of toleranceFriday, 31 July 2020
Ah, 2015. Those halcyon days of packed theatres. Thank God the RSC had the presence of mind to film Polly Findlay’s production of The Merchant of Venice, now streaming on BBC iPlayer. Read more... |
Songs for a New World, The Other Palace Digital review - chimes with our extraordinary 'moment'Saturday, 25 July 2020
We’ve already had The Last Five Years in lockdown; now, we get a digital production of American composer Jason Robert Brown’s earliest work. Read more... |
My White Best Friend (And Other Letters Left Unsaid), Royal Court review – raw but generousWednesday, 22 July 2020
The strength of the response to the re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter campaign has provoked some theatres to create provocative new work. Often, the keynote is personal feeling. 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 Habits, Hampstead Theatre review - who knows what advent...
“The exercise of fantasy is to imagine other ways of life,” says one of the role-players during a Dungeons & Dragons marathon, because “...
Levit, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer, RFH review - an...
A showstopper for starters followed by dark depths, a quirky compilation after the interval: it’s what you might expect from Iván...
Farewell Mister Haffmann, Park Theatre review - French hit o...
When Yasmina Reza’s cerebral play Art arrived in London in 1996, we applauded it as a comedy. Now another French hit,...
Album: Coheed and Cambria - The Father of Make Believe
The Father of Make Believe is the latest instalment in the cinematic fantasy world that Coheed and Cambria have meticulously crafted over...
theartsdesk Q&A: Raoul Peck, director of the documentary...
With his furious docu-essay I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck caused a stir in 2016. The film...
Jonathan Buckley: One Boat review - a shore thing
One Boat, Jonathan Buckley’s 13th novel, captures a series of...
Blu-ray: The Barnabáš Kos Case
One of The Barnabáš Kos Case’s incidental pleasures lies in its relatively accurate depiction of orchestral life. Much of the action in...
A Form of Exile: Edward Said and Late Style, CLS, Wood, QEH...
You could plan an entire concert season around the theme of “late style”, its paradoxes and variations. For this one-off, many of us expected a...
Edward II, RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford review - monarchs, m...
“Don’t put your co-artistic director on the stage, Mrs Harvey,” as Noel Coward once (almost) sang.
Tamara...