AN ANCIENT BRUTALITY, RIGHT HERE Five women from the past mount the stage, candlelit, to enact theterrible story of the 17c Suffolk witch-trials. First there’s young Mar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:25AMBRUTAL, VIOLENT AND TENDER Around a King’s coffin surge personalities and politics , power plays and lineage . A royal bier is loaded with crown and jewelled cross, around it cou…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:30PMHEROIC STORY, NEAR MISS It could hardly be a better theme and story for this terrific little theatre, which since its opening has explored the darkness of Nazism and the heroism of th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:44AMA TROUSER-LEG TSUNAMI AND A COATHANGER DREAM They came off the boats: a Windrush generation, wanting to work and live in cold strange Britain. In an upper room Walker doe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:47AMHEART AND HUMOUR, REALPOLITIK AND GOD This is a wonderful play, all you could want: philosophy, history prefiguring the present moment, humour and character , stunning cent…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:04PMA RAVE IN MESSINA Get da kids into Shakespeare! The world worries about it. So Jamie Lloyd hits a formula hard to beat with one of the sunniest comedies (only one pretend death). So 1)…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:28PMMOTHERHOOD, FOR LIFE Had there been trigger warnings they might add “extreme nursing” alongside the usual alerts about sickness, death, abortion and conflict. Believe me, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:30AMA THREAT CALLED AGGIE . Good when the news feeds theatre-moments. This week, AI solved in two days a medical conundrum which had baffled humans for a decade. On the other hand, a mis…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:20PMVOYAGE OF THE DAMNED ON SS ELSINORE Last time the ever-inventive Rupert Goold directed here it was the Merchant of Venice, set in a casino so we could all write “merchant of Vegas” …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:33PMRICHARD II Bridge Theatre, SE1 A THRILLING DANCE AROUND A CROWN This is one of the most lyrically lovely, metaphorically rich of Shakespeare’s history plays, op…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:05PMA TRICYCLE MADE FOR THREE? After Mike Bartlett’s COCK – where one of a gay male couple falls for a girl – I wrote that the poor sap of a hero thinks he he choosing a sexuality …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:52AMA BRITISH BASTARD STALKS THROUGH HISTORY What’s to be done about truly awful people: amoral, selfishly irresponsible, arrogant and greedy? A time-honoured British approach is t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:05AMA GREAT TURNING POINT, CAUGHT IN ASPIC It is 1942. Prime minister Churchill has travelled to Moscow to meet Stalin. Each side has a problem at home with voices wanting to cut a d…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:38PMWILD SHORES IN WARTIME Risk taking a gap between seeing David Greig plays and you forget how downright louche things are likely to turn out. (I had lately revelled in Prudencia Hart …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:36PMA FEMALE EVOLUTION, FRANK AND FINE First salute the cast: Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindraand Harmony Rose-Bremner, for an unpretentiously powerful tour de force. Ea…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:41AMABSURDITY AND SUBLIMITY After the glorious Parisian detail of the revived Rigoletto here , Johannes Schutz’ spare bland box with only four flat doors is an opposite take on how …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:56AMA FEMALE EVOLUTION, FRANK AND FINE First salute the cast: Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner, for an unpretentiously powerful tour de forc…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:42PMFUNNY ABOUT THE UNFUNNY Billy Bash, rated the third most offensive comedian in Britain, was once the dominant partner in Biddle and Bash. He’s still on tour, God help us…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:36PMA DARKER THOMAS CROMWELL Edward Bennett as Thomas Cromwell is a proper thug: everyone’s memory of the HR-outplacement weasel who starts the sacking meeting with soft-soap…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:05AMSUBURBAN ANGST IN THE NEW SA There’s nothing like a tight, awkward comedy of neighbourhood strife, where neighbourly differences reveal unexpected fissures within the couples, and tiny p…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:46AMAT THE SUMMIT OF RAGE AND HOPE Fear not, this isn’t a Greta-gloom lecture but a lively, imaginative, borderline wild reconstruction of the years culminating in COP3 clim…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:28AMNO SINKING FEELINGS HERE, GIRLFRIEND Call it a jukebox musical if you like, but only if the jukebox came alive, went rogue and started tottering around the stage on rubber feet hurling insul…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:15AMSACRED MONSTERS IN THE UNDERWORLD Deep darkness within the U-shaped seating,: into it on wheels glides the dark gondola: Charon the ferryman, after millennia punting to and fro across t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:32AMA HIGH-KICKING WOODEN WONDER Serious fun, this. Never liked the Disney Pinocchio, or even in childhood the over-preachy Carlo Collodi book about the defiant wooden puppet who …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:57AMPRESENT MIRTH HATH PRESENT LAUGHTER. AND MELANCHOLY. AND FALSE NOSES In a play as familiar as this it is small touches that spring fresh life. Like the moment when the fool Feste def…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:48PMSPRINGTIME FOR…EVERYONE Joyful, headlong and full-hearted, here comes sacred outrage. If director Patrick Marber and the Menier had been minded to issue wet ‘trigger warning…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:23AMMAZELTOV! JEWISH PANTO STRIKES AGAIN Goldie Frocks, rightful heiress to an East End schmutter workshop, has been enslaved by the evil Calvin Brine, whose behemoth of too-small c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:45AMFEARED IT MIGHT BE TUTU MUCH, BUT NO… I immediately fell for Frankie Bradshaw’s set: a two- storey house lined with fossil skeletons in cases, and a spirited opening in which th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:05AMLOOK BEYOND THE LETTUCE It is a tribute to Greg Wilkinson’s monologue play that I had not previously seen the rise and fall of Liz Truss as having a gripping dramatic line. It h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:31PMHIGH SPIRITS, HIGH COMEDY, EVEN HIGHER HEELS Elton John, who jumped at the idea of writing the music, calls the 2006 film a favourite; many of us nod in blissful agreement. B…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:55PMC’EST MAGNIFIQUE ! Napoleon, defeated at Trafalgar, vows revenge on Britain and its “bootlicking monoglot monarchists”. Stalking around in breeches and bicorn hat, Ma…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:26AM