Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical review – a powerful spirit
It’s the music that carries the emotional weight in this tale of love, loss and roots rock, starring the superb Arinzé Kene
September 2021
Arinzé Kene on playing Bob Marley: ‘You can’t just sit back and enjoy my work. I want you to be challenged’
The actor and playwright is rapidly becoming one of the most exciting faces of British theatre. Now he’s stepping into the shoes of Bob Marley in the new West End musical Get Up, Stand Up!
June 2020
Black Lives Matter: four plays that resonate amid the protests
Roy Williams, Rachel De-lahay, Justin Audibert and Charlene James select dramas that speak to our current moment
December 2019
Readers' favourite stage shows of 2019
Andrew Scott was spellbinding in Present Laughter, Life of Pi stunned Sheffield and Tao of Glass was a tour de force
October 2019
Little Baby Jesus review – Arinzé Kene's thrilling teens triumph
Standup, storytelling and poetry combine in this brilliant show about an inner-city trio on the verge of adulthood
April 2019
From Misty to Miller… how Arinzé Kene is reshaping theatre
Twelve of the best new British stage designs – in pictures
February 2019
Good Dog review – tapestry of Tottenham life on the eve of riots
Kwaku Mills is a revelation as a boy growing up amid poverty in this touring revival of Arinzé Kene’s crackling, compelling monologue
December 2018
Readers' favourite theatre of 2018
From rapping and rambling to Victorian female boxers, via Liverpool’s Dream, Asian football casuals and a teenage dance troupe, here are some of our readers’ top shows of the year
October 2018
Been So Long review – Michaela Coel tremendous in movie musical
'We're here!' The black playwrights storming the West End
March 2018
Misty review – vivid vision of the virus infecting city life
Arinzé Kene: ‘When I first started writing, it was raps’
January 2018
Girl from the North Country lets us hear Bob Dylan's mysteries anew
Conor McPherson’s West End musical puts a simple twist on familiar and obscure tracks, finding new shades of meaning
July 2017
Girl from the North Country review – Dylan's songs are Depression-era dynamite
Old Vic, London: A superb cast use Bob’s back catalogue to glorious effect in Conor McPherson’s astonishing cross-section of hope and stoic suffering in Depression-era Minnesota
February 2017
‘No one’s faced it down’: Arinzé Kene on tackling the UK riots in Good Dog
He’s played Sam Cooke, an EastEnders bad boy and a closeted footballer in The Pass. Now, Arinzé Kene has returned to writing plays – and to the violent summer of 2011 – with a searing account of escalating tension in London
December 2016
The Pass review – not enough thinking outside the box
The Pass review – ambitious and insightful drama about gay footballers
October 2016
One Night in Miami review – a crucible moment for black America
Fine performances carry Kemp Powers’s dramatisation of a momentous meeting between Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke
