West End
Twelfth Night/Richard III, Apollo TheatreMonday, 19 November 2012
Something new is happening in the West End. Just up the road from Thriller and down a bit from Les Misérables a billboard the colour of weak tea (positively consumptive compared to the full-colour, neon assaults on either side) proclaims the arrival... Read more... |
What You Will, Apollo TheatreWednesday, 19 September 2012
As long as Simon Callow is around, London’s theatre scene will never be short of one-man shows, nor of Shakespeare. A new pretender to the Shakespearian throne, a rival for the hollow crown (and, just occasionally, the hollow laugh) has however... Read more... |
The Sunshine Boys, Savoy TheatreFriday, 18 May 2012
Being in a comedy double act is like being in a marriage. Except, as half of a humorous twosome once told me, with less sex. There are ups and downs and the chances of splitting are high. The push-pull tensions of the double act are explored in Neil... Read more... |
Top Hat, Aldwych TheatreThursday, 10 May 2012
David Cameron could hardly wish for a more apt musical to pep up the people’s spirits than Irving Berlin’s Top Hat, with its wheedling entreaties about the advantages of being caught in the rain, or putting on your best front, and all. Matthew White... Read more... |
Long Day's Journey Into Night, Apollo TheatreWednesday, 11 April 2012
We’ve seen a few American film and TV actresses grace the West End stage with surprising potency, but no one surely will surpass Laurie Metcalf for profound emotional truth-telling in Eugene O’Neill’s shattering family drama, given an unbeatably... Read more... |
Wonderful Town, The Lowry, SalfordThursday, 05 April 2012
The cultural triumvirate of the Hallé Orchestra, the Royal Exchange Theatre and The Lowry have joined forces for this new production of the 1953 hit musical Wonderful Town. Leonard Bernstein would surely have been a happy man to hear his score,... Read more... |
RSC directorship goes to odds-on favouriteThursday, 22 March 2012
Gregory Doran was today named the incoming artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he will succeed Michael Boyd in the post later this year. The announcement came as no surprise given Doran's longstanding commitment to an... 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... 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... Read more... |
Hay Fever, Noël Coward TheatreMonday, 27 February 2012
“Winsome” isn’t a word you hear very often these days. The taint of coy, simpering campery already hung about it in the 1920s when Noël Coward gave it a starring role in the after-dinner word-charades of his hit Hay Fever. Yet now (as then) it’s a... Read more... |
The Recruiting Officer, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 15 February 2012
Drum rolls, fiddles and flutes were all in action last night at the Donmar Warehouse to herald the beginning of an era. After ten successful years under the direction of Michael Grandage, it was the turn of the theatre’s new Artistic Director Josie... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Zach BraffSunday, 12 February 2012
Zach Braff (b 1975) is overwhelmingly known as the star of Scrubs, the hugely popular American hospital comedy which came with a side order of surrealism. But fans of low-budget indie cinema will also cherish fond memories of Garden State, which he... Read more... |
