Theatre Reviews
Filumena, Almeida TheatreSunday, 25 March 2012
If it's possible to take a loving and empathic approach to decidedly intractable material, the director Michael Attenborough achieves precisely that with Filumena, in which Samantha Spiro follows on from (and surpasses) Judi Dench in author Eduardo De Filippo's title role of the one-time Neapolitan prostitute who in early middle age decides that what matters most is to be una mamma. Read more... |
The Girl in the Yellow Dress, Theatre 503Saturday, 24 March 2012
Ethnic tensions in France have been in the news this week, with the siege of the gunman Mohammed Merah, so award-winning South-African penman Craig Higginson’s new play seems really timely. First seen in this country at the Salisbury Playhouse, and opening last night at Theatre 503 in south London, this story about the relationship between a French-Congolese student and an English teacher during a hot Parisian summer is full of emotion, and ideas. Read more... |
The Master and Margarita, Barbican TheatreFriday, 23 March 2012
The Master and Margarita is a rare beast. Not only is it considered to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, it also regularly tops reader-lists of all-time favourite books. So it’s no wonder that, since its publication in 1966, 26 years after the author’s early death, Mikhail Bulgakov’s Soviet-era masterpiece has attracted a steady stream of film-makers and theatre directors. Read more... |
After Miss Julie, Young VicThursday, 22 March 2012
In 1888, the extremely weird Swedish playwright and novelist August Strindberg, the radical lefty son of a shipping merchant and a housemaid, wrote a play called Miss Julie about the conflict between the classes, between love and lust, between obedience and servitude, and between all the possible variations on these knotty and tortu(r)ous themes. Read more... |
Sweeney Todd, Adelphi TheatreWednesday, 21 March 2012
Melodrama is not something we accept easily these days, tittering gently as the gore runs, moving restlessly in our seats as heroes or villains declaim to the gallery. So all the more odd, on the surface, that Sweeney Todd is the most popular of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals. On the surface. Because, under the melodramatic posturing, Sondheim creates a cold, hard, bleak world. Read more... |
Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, National TheatreThursday, 15 March 2012
Like many a regular theatregoer, I have a little list of classic plays that I’ve never seen, or even read. One of these is, or rather was, Errol John’s evocatively titled Moon on a Rainbow Shawl. Written in 1953, this definitive “yard play” was a historic breakthrough for Caribbean playwrights in Britain. So it was with considerable anticipation that I went to this revival, which opened last night at Britain’s national flagship venue. But can this classic stand up to scrutiny? Read more... |
One Man, Two Guvnors, Theatre Royal HaymarketWednesday, 14 March 2012
Was it the players, or the play, that has made a phenomenon out of One Man, Two Guvnors, the prize-winning comedy now on its third London theatre and preparing to hop the pond to Broadway next month? Well, bacon and eggs(!), it turns out there’s life aplenty in Richard Bean’s Goldoni rewrite yet, even without the star wattage of James Corden and the insanely arched eyebrows of Oliver Chris. Read more... |
Shivered, Southwark PlayhouseWednesday, 14 March 2012
Polymath Philip Ridley is British theatre’s prince of imaginative writing. At the moment, he’s clearly on a roll, and this year his diary has been filing up fast. Read more... |
Can We Talk About This? DV8 Physical Theatre, National TheatreTuesday, 13 March 2012
“Do you feel morally superior to the Taliban? Well, do you?” And we’re off, with another of director/choreographer Lloyd Newson’s interrogations of a taboo subject. DV8 Physical Theatre is 25 years old this season, yet if anything, it, and Newson, have become more challenging, not less as the years go by. Read more... |
Abigail's Party, Menier Chocolate FactoryFriday, 09 March 2012
Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party: comedy classic or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with added sneering? Ever since its first appearance on stage in 1977 and its subsequent record-breaking broadcast as a BBC Play for Today with an eye-widening 16 million viewers (not to mention those watching the subsequent DVD), there has been disagreement. 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...
Hamlet Hail to the Thief, RSC, Stratford review - Radiohead...
The safe transfer of power in post-war Western democracies was once a given. The homely Pickfords Removals van outside Number Ten...
Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons, Dulwich Picture Gallery review...
I first came across Rachel Jones in 2021 at the Hayward Gallery’s painting show Mixing it Up: Painting Today. I was blown away by the...
Album: The Young Gods - Appear Disappear
Swiss electro-rockers, Young Gods have been around for 40 years, but this in no way should suggest that they’ve gone soft in their old age. These...
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the...
Do the French do irony? Well, was Astérix a Gaul? Obviously they do, and do it pretty well to judge by many of their movies down the...
The King of Pangea, King's Head Theatre review - grief...
There’s an old theatre joke. “The electric chair is too good for a monster like that. They should send him out of town with a new...
Album: Sam Binga - Sam Binga Presents Club Orthodontics
When I was writing the introduction to my book, Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Soundsystem Culture, I came up with a phrase, which...
Yoshitomo Nara, Hayward Gallery review - sickeningly cute ki...
It’s been a long time since an exhibition made me feel physically sick. The Hayward Gallery is currently hosting a retrospective of the...
Hespèrion XXI, Savall, QEH review - an evening filled with l...
For the first encore of the evening, it was not just the audience but the whole ensemble of Hespèrion XXI that was mesmerised as its leader,...
Album: Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts - Talkin' to...
When Neil Young releases a new album, you can be reasonably sure that you’ll get either a disc of melancholy singer-songwriter fare or a set of...