Friday, April 11, 2025
TWO WOMEN, LONG YEARS ACROSS HALF A CONTINENT 1935: below projected headlines about Communists executed in Shanghai and the war between Japan and Red China comes an audition call fo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:18AMThursday, April 10, 2025
A HAMLET THAT STANDS ALONE “is it not monstrous that this player here,But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,Could force his soul so to his own conceitThat from her working all his visage…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:38AMRIEN TO REGRET! This is a terrific, impassioned production: not only does Kimberley Sykes’ direction and Michele Meazza’ s movement work keep it watchably, startlingly vigorous, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:25AMWednesday, April 9, 2025
TRAGEDY WITHOUT A MORAL Raoul Moat used steroids and bulking-powder to armour himself in muscle, nourished a bottomless well of grievance and self-pity , and imposed his needy will…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:08AMSaturday, April 5, 2025
THE DEPTHS BELOW THE WIT The plays, ever revived, we know well; the wit is often cited, the old injustice of his downfall recreated in plays and films: most recently we’ve seen…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:30AMThursday, April 3, 2025
VENEZIANA ! Buongiorno to Venice 1730, a city stage topped with the golden winged lion of St Mark, arched and curtained and lit with candelabras . Overhead a twelve-piece orchest…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:43AMTuesday, April 1, 2025
DARK FANGTASY IN A SCAFFOLDING CITY For this compact and creepy little atmospheric treat, John Donnelly turns to vampires. That’s not a spoiler: the programme is full of learned stuf…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:59AMThursday, March 27, 2025
BEYOND QATAR… Two years ago this show was a pleasure – (https://theatrecat.com/2023/06/21/dear-england-olivier-se1/) , and now, on the far side of more efforts and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:14PMWednesday, March 26, 2025
POWER, MAJESTY AND JUSTICE Very good to see this intense three-hander by Ryan Calais Cameron (who gave us “For Black Boys..” ) migrating to Shaftesbury Avenue with increa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:46PMFriday, March 21, 2025
THE 1660’s AND ALL THAT: THEATRE REBORN Oddly, for theatrecat it’s the second day running of enliveningly energetic female history. After six women told the story of Mary…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:03PMA ROUSING RACKET TO HONOUR A LIFE Mary Wollstonecraft was a pearl of the 18c Age of Reason, even more treasurable for having – as a woman – a harder time of it than all the Locke…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:19AMTuesday, March 18, 2025
THE UNSERIOUS UNDEAD “You will be horrified!” The five players announce, “- one way or another”. And with a flourish they hurl Bram Stoker’s book behind them into Tijana Bjela…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:27AMThursday, March 13, 2025
A STRANGE WARTIME FABLE OF LIFE, BIRTH AND JEWELLERY In a little Jeweller’s shop in 1942 Paris Joseph Haffmann is making a deal with his young assistant Pierre. He is Jewish, and h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:41PMSaturday, March 8, 2025
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 04:25AMWednesday, March 5, 2025
BRUTAL, 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 06:30PM HEROIC 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 04:44AMSaturday, March 1, 2025
A 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 06:47AMThursday, February 27, 2025
HEART 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 01:28PMFriday, February 21, 2025
MOTHERHOOD, 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 06:30AMThursday, February 20, 2025
A 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 06:20PMWednesday, February 19, 2025
VOYAGE 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 06:33PMTuesday, February 18, 2025
RICHARD 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 08:05PMFriday, February 14, 2025
A 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 04:52AMThursday, February 13, 2025
A 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 06:05AMTuesday, February 11, 2025
A 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 06:36PMMonday, February 10, 2025
A 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 06:41AMThursday, February 6, 2025
ABSURDITY 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 04:56AMTuesday, February 4, 2025
A 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 06:42PMTuesday, January 28, 2025
FUNNY 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 06:36PM 
