Theatre Reviews
Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation, Royal Court review - brilliant meta-theatrical experienceFriday, 06 September 2019![]()
Playwright and performer Tim Crouch is one of Britain's most innovative creatives, with a big back catalogue of challenging and stimulating stage work. Typically he tells stories about profound loss, while simultaneously questioning the basis of theatrical representation: how is what we see on stage true? In what way is it real? And how can you tell? Read more... |
Falsettos, The Other Palace review - affecting search for the new normalFriday, 06 September 2019![]()
William Finn and James Lapine’s musical – which combines two linked one-acts, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, set in late 1970s/early 1980s ... Read more... |
Hansard, National Theatre review - starry argument ends poorlyWednesday, 04 September 2019![]()
In the current feverish atmosphere at Westminster, with arguments about Brexit becoming increasingly shrill, the time is right once more for political theatre: serious plays about serious issues. Oddly enough, however, while television has effectively dramatized the current crisis, in films such as Channel 4's Brexit: The Uncivil War, theatre seems to take a more oblique approach by setting its stories in the past. Read more... |
The Son, Duke of York's Theatre review - a piercing drama of depressionTuesday, 03 September 2019![]()
A tale of teenage depression and its family resonances, Florian Zeller’s The Son has a devastating simplicity. Read more... |
Bartholomew Fair, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - Jonson's chaotic slice of 17th-century lifeFriday, 30 August 2019![]()
It was a bold choice by director Blanche McIntyre to stage Ben Jonson's seldom performed, sprawling slice-of-life play in the bijou Sam Wanamaker Playhouse rather than Shakespeare's Globe's main stage – even if she has pared down both the script and what seems like a cast of thousands for her modern-dress production. Read more... |
Fleabag, Wyndham's Theatre review - superb swansong for modern classicThursday, 29 August 2019![]()
We're saying goodbye to a much treasured friend. Fleabag will live on, of course – other actresses have and will inhabit the role – but Phoebe Waller-Bridge, its creator, has said this short run at Wyndham's Theatre is the last time she will perform the character on stage. Read more... |
The Secret River, National Theatre review - turbulent tale of Australia's pastWednesday, 28 August 2019![]()
Neil Armfield’s resonant, turbulent production of Kate Grenville’s classic Australian novel The Secret River sing out from the stage of the Olivier like an epic, with its conflicts, culture clashes, and quest for new territories. Read more... |
Appropriate, Donmar Warehouse review - fraught family reunion blisteringly toldFriday, 23 August 2019![]()
You can’t fail to feel the ghosts in Appropriate at the Donmar Warehouse: they are there in the very timbers of the ancient Southern plantation house that is the setting for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s fraught... Read more... |
The Doctor, Almeida Theatre review - Robert Icke's long goodbyeWednesday, 21 August 2019![]()
After six years, associate director Robert Icke bids farewell to the Almeida Theatre. In this time he has pioneered contemporary versions of classic stories, such as 1984, Oresteia, Uncle Vanya, Mary Stuart and Hamlet with Andrew Scott. Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: The Red/ Gone Full HavishamSaturday, 17 August 2019![]()
The Red Pleasance Dome ★★★★ 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

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...

Every now and then a concert programme comes along that fits like a bespoke suit, and this one could have been specially designed for me. Two...

Nick Mohammed invented his Mr Swallow character – camp, lisping, with an inflated ego and the mistaken belief that he has creative...

Photographer Finetime and I have our first pints outside Dalton’s, a bar on...

There’s a grail, but it doesn't glow in a mundane if perverted Christian ritual. Three of the main characters have young and old actor versions...

The appalling destruction of Pan Am’s flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was put under the spotlight in January this year in Sky Atlantic’s ...

Ballet is hardly a stranger to Broadway. Until the late 1950s every other musical had its fantasy ballet sequence – think Cyd Charisse in ...

“Tell me what you see” invites Robert Forster during Strawberries' “Tell it Back to me.” The album’s eight songs do not, however,...

Quoted in an early music press article on his band Chapterhouse, singer-guitarist Stephen Patman said their ambition was “to have our records on...

Songlines Encounters is your round-the-world ticket to great...