Articles by Arifa Akbar

End review – Saskia Reeves and Clive Owen draw couples trilogy to a tender close

David Eldridge’s two-hander depicts the difficult conversations that follow one partner’s cancer diagnosis

Precipice review – horror on the Thames in a baffling musical dystopia

Two stories, centuries apart, are used to chart climate disaster in this ambitious musical with bitty scenes and cumbersome lyrics

2 days ago

Entertainment

Coven review – witchcraft musical cursed with cartoonish characters

The accused of the Pendle witch trials are given a voice but this glib production fails to do them justice

Nov 13, 2025

Entertainment

The Hunger Games: On Stage review – thundering fight to the death in a dazzling dystopia

Eye-popping visuals and a strong lead performance energise Matthew Dunster’s production – but the emotion gets lost amid the action

Nov 13, 2025

Health

‘Ambition is a punishing sphere for women’: author Maggie Nelson on why Taylor Swift is the Sylvia Plath of her generation

What do Swift and Plath have in common, and should Kamala Harris have spoken out about her political ambitions? The Argonauts author turns her lens on poetry, pop and patriarchy

Nov 9, 2025

Entertainment

The Red Rogue of Bala review – outlaw comedy has glimmers of renegade spirit

This could have been a powerful play about rebellion but a busy plot and flatly drawn central character make it a missed opportunity

Nov 8, 2025

World

The Meat Kings! (Inc) of Brooklyn Heights review – the American dream on the chopping block

Alliances and enmities form among a crew of butchers who are trying to shape new lives after prison despite ICE, addiction and the financial lure of criminality

Nov 6, 2025

World

Othello review – David Harewood makes a commanding return to landmark role

Harewood is captivating alongside Toby Jones and Caitlin FitzGerald but Tom Morris’s stylish staging could probe greater depths

Nov 5, 2025

‘We stick two fingers up at Henry VIII’: can the riotous all-Japanese Six out-Tudor-queen the original?

The Japanese version of the pop-rock phenomenon about the six ill-fated wives caused a sensation in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. As that production now hits the UK, we go behind the scenes (and thrones)

Oct 31, 2025

Wendy & Peter Pan review – sugar-rush spectacle with an awfully big hormonal hot-crush

The RSC production of Ella Hickson’s feminist take on JM Barrie’s tale has grown into quite the theatrical monster, big on lights, waves and clashing cutlasses

Oct 30, 2025

The Line of Beauty review – Hollinghurst’s Gatsby-esque social satire is a class act

Jack Holden has elegantly adapted Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker winner about class envy, gay culture and political scandal in 80s Britain

Oct 30, 2025

‘I spoke complete twaddle for four minutes’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and more on the terror of stage fright

Forget Halloween! Real scares can happen to actors any night of the year. Big name actors, including Zachary Hart and Harmony Rose-Bremner, recall their worst moments – and how they overcame their fears

Oct 28, 2025

The Unbelievers review – Nicola Walker grapples with family tragedy in a flat drama

Marianne Elliott directs Nick Payne’s tonally uneven play about a missing son that comes with ill-fitting moments of comedy

Oct 21, 2025

Mary Page Marlowe review – Susan Sarandon shines in slippery study of a life in pieces

Five actors play the protagonist at different stages over 70 years in Tracy Letts’ play, co-starring Andrea Riseborough

Oct 9, 2025

Troilus and Cressida review – history repeats as farce in Pythonesque takedown of ancient heroes

Achilles is a slob and Ajax is a meathead in Owen Horsley’s streamlined production, which is bursting with invention and comic inversions

Oct 5, 2025

Uprooted review – the female fightback against the exploitation of Latin America

Ephemeral Ensemble’s atmospheric but unfocused follow-up to Rewind depicts the west’s ecologically ruinous colonisation of Latin America from a feminist perspective

Oct 5, 2025

Hamlet review – a cocky prince of infinite jest runs riot at the National

Hiran Abeysekera brings humour to the tragedy and Francesca Mills steals the show as Ophelia but this staging pulls its emotional punches

Oct 3, 2025

Lee review – portrait of the artist stepping out of Jackson Pollock’s shadow

Painter Lee Krasner’s rivalry with her husband is laid bare in an affecting play about a relationship both loving and riddled with hostility

Oct 2, 2025