3,489 stories from The Arts Desk
From post-breakup blues to sweet-shop conflagrations in three early Fringe shows
Heartbreak Hotel, Summerhall ★★★★Â
Timely arrival for Lucas Hnath's play about the cost of winning
Before Lucas Hnath wrote Red Speedo, he had heard a 2004 speech at a hearing investigating baseball doping that declared the p…
Nassim Soleimanpour's latest 'cold read' work is a unique experience
The Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour is many things, some seemingly contradictory: a) a clever, poetic playwright w…
Katori Hall is back in her native Memphis with an exuberant ensemble piece
There's an exuberant comedy from the start in Katori Hall's The Hot Wing King, which comes to London after an initi…
An imperfect show arrives boasting a quasi-immersive charm
The Baker's Wife closed on the way to Broadway in 1976, since which time Stephen Schwartz's stubbornly resistent if sweetly scored…
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Operettaish bitter-sweetness raised to the sublime in a miracle of perfect timing
Jerry Herman is the king of pep. Way too much of it in the first 20 minutes of the recent re…
Cardboard Citizens shine an unforgiving light on poverty in the UK
A stark end-title at the end of this collection of short films sums up the dire situation the UK is in: one in five people,…
Christopher Hampton's love of Stefan Zweig's text becomes a drawback
Who was Stefan Zweig? It's likely that it's mostly older folk who studied German literature at A-level who have encounter…
Two awkward science nerds and a violent alcoholic father are oddly likeable company
Sarah Power, the writer of Grud, now in the Hampstead's smaller space, is a self-confessed geek who…
A fine cast spell out the cost of survival in today's ailing industries
For a long stretch of its first half, Dominique Morrisseau's 2016 award-winner, Skeleton Crew, seems a conventional…
★★★ NEXT TO NORMAL, WYNDHAM'S THEATRE Technically superb show gets ovation and tearsÂ
Award-winning comes to West End - bring your handkerchiefs
We open on one of tho…
Complicité's reflection on memory, connection and storytelling remains as potent as ever
I'm sitting in the Olivier waiting for the show to start, comfortable in the knowledge that I've see…
Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1980s spectacular skates into a new era
The reinvigoration of Andrew Lloyd Webber continues apace. New York is now hosting a ballroom culture, drag-inflected Cats, and…
New play about the death of the most famous American woman of the Camelot era
The death of Marilyn Monroe is a wet dream for conspiracy theorists. Like the assassination of JFK in the follo…
Fans of the film will love it, but it's like being in a pink fever dream
Nothing anybody over the age of 30 says about the new Mean Girls musical, spawn of Tina Fey's witty script for the 20…
A production with a green message for younger audiences
It's a bold move by Regent's Park Open Air Theatre to tackle Frances Hodgson Burnett's children's classic, a story that's been notably…
New play about secrets from the past is both funny and profound
Following the huge success of Benedict Lombe's Shifters, which transfers soon to the West End, the Bush Theatre is riding hig…
'Brush Up Your Shakespeare' brings the house down in a strongly cast lineup
Lincoln Center's Bartlett Sher is back in town to direct the Barbican's latest summer blockbuster, Cole Porter's c…
New history play about football has a flawed second half
Every day this week I'm watching a football match, and now " after April's production of Lydia Higman, Julia Grogan and Rachel Lemon'…
This 'Shrew' has many fine elements but ultimately they don't coalesce
A recent Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that 2.1 million people in the UK had been victims of domestic ab…
★★★★ MISS JULIE, PARK THEATRE Sparks fly across class and gender divides that persist today
Much adapted play gets a traditional staging fuelled by electric leads
…
Adrian Lukis revisits his disruptive character from the beloved BBC television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an actor tends to take a sympathe…
★ MARIE CURIE, CHARING CROSS THEATRE Korean musical makes elementary mistakes
Celebrated scientist is ill-served by confused and dull show imported from Seoul
There are many women w…
Alice Childress's 1962 play about interracial love has lost none of its richness and fire
Alice Childress's Wedding Band has arrived at the Lyric Hammersmith like an incendiary bomb, a weapo…
★★★ACCOLADE, WINDSOR THEATRE ROYAL Pokey questions about public figures' private lives
Vintage Emlyn Williams play asks pokey questions about private-public tolerance, desp…
