Wednesday, December 20, 2023
BRAINS AND HOW TO MAKE THEM USEFUL Clearly it is the mission of Hampstead Downstairs to broaden our education, no bad ambition. Not long ago I learned a lot about the life and em…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PMWednesday, December 13, 2023
A BLAST FROM THE PAST TO INSPIRE OR IRRITATE By the interval I was mournfully unconvinced that there was any point at all in reviving Tom Stoppard’s 17-year-old play , about Commu…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35AMTuesday, December 12, 2023
CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SPIRIT Can this really be the first Jewish pantomime? Oy vay, surely this culture with its musical genius, ironic jokes , family warmth, tall tales and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:29PMANOTHER KIND OF INQUIRY I suppose we will have to wait a few years for the dust to settle and James Graham to write a nuanced play about the Boris-Covid-Tory-pocalypse. Meanwhile this 8…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:08AMSunday, December 10, 2023
DICKENS IN RIOTOUS RHYME AND BAGPIPES – ON TOUR Wouldn’t be right to get through December without Dickens, would it? But I have seen the magnificent Old Vic adaptation by Jack…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:43AMWednesday, November 29, 2023
I don’t usually record anything that’s two-nights-only, but this one I think will flower and fly, so watch out for it. It’s already looking like turning up in March at TR Haymar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:32AMTuesday, November 28, 2023
BEWARE OF GREEKS BRINGING GAGS Where does Kylie get her kebabs? From Jason’s doner van! If that makes you scuttle away in fright, you have not yet achieved the correct seasonal a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:02PMSaturday, November 25, 2023
DARK BEFORE THE DAWN To emerge with any redemptive sense from Joe Hill-Gibbins’ spare, scorching rather brilliant production, it helps to remember that Henrik Ibsen, after…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:21AMFriday, November 24, 2023
ANY TOIL AND TROUBLE WAS WELL WORTH IT Everything a child could want is here: the dark thrill of imagined orphanhood, a quest, baddies , jeopardy and jokes, bouncy musical spectacle, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:30AMWednesday, November 22, 2023
GOLDSMITH BEATEN LIGHT AS AIR Nice symmetry in Tom Littler’s decision to set Oliver Goldsmith’s 1773 comedy in the Wodehousian Jazz Age: the Georgians, with their boozy monarch…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:43PMFriday, November 10, 2023
FLAT WHITE AND WOEFUL If you’re going to splash out on a visually arresting finale of assassination, a vivId fire destroying a Norman tower and a lyrical monologue about Lenin,�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:10AMECHOES OF DARKNESS Jews gather, laughing and chattering, offering a toast as they run down the aisles to settle downstage for a Passover meal with candles, prayers and the ancient ques…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55AMThursday, November 9, 2023
FAR MORE THAN A SNACK Caught this late, and it’s much reviewed and almost sold out. But it’s worth saying in a brief word here that if you buy a return as I did, you are in luck.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:58PMTuesday, November 7, 2023
A QUEEN WHO NEEDED QUEENS The curtain rises on the Clarence House garden room in 1979, where the Queen Mother held her eccentric little court. Much gilding, unreasonably many oil …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:58PM WHEN WE THAT ARE LEFT GROW OLD…. Sometimes you have to rely on a team with multiple comedy awards to hold a mirror to society and move your heart. This is by Richard …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:13AMThursday, November 2, 2023
DIANA AND THE DECEIVER Jonathan Maitland did a superb play for this theatre about Thatcher and Howe, “Dead Sheep”, and one on Jimmy Savile which was far more telling and cathartic than t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:42PMWednesday, November 1, 2023
SCIENCE FANTASY AND HONEST EMOTION I don’t normally indulge in first-night anecdotes, but feel I should mention that in the big wedding scene Joanna Woodward tossed her bouque…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:23PMAGATHA STRIKES AGAIN This is Extreme Agatha Christie, her most preposterous (and bestselling) plot and one of the most murderously morbid (NB the final moments of the staging are no…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:59PMTuesday, October 31, 2023
MEMORIES OF A MAVERICK It’s an immersive show, in that you buy a drink in the cramped saloon of the old pub on Greek Street, find a corner, and ideally fall into conversation with anoth…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:20PMWHILE THE REAL ONE RUNS…. With the Covid Inquiry surging along in a froth of accusations and curses and scandalous Whatsappery, it was hard to resist a hasty day-return to Harry Davies’ …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:12PMFriday, October 27, 2023
THE FIRST WITCHFINDER, NOT WITHOUT LESSONS FOR TODAY This is remarkable, Joanna Carrick’s best and deepest play yet, following her acclaimed Reformation trilogy. In its sm…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:44AMWednesday, October 25, 2023
A MOTHER’S LIFE, A SON’S PERSPECTIVE Sometimes it is almost useful to be a day late (sorry, tied up yesterday) because it gives a chance to read other people’s take on the play you s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:25AMFriday, October 20, 2023
GENIUS, REALPOLITIK, RELIGION In days of horrifying conflict there was quite a jolt in a confrontation between Stephen Hagan’s resplendently silver-suited Frederick the Great a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:16AMTuesday, October 17, 2023
PROPERTY RAGE FROM ANOTHER AGE Here’s a curiosity from 1972; an early , rarely-seen Caryl Churchill play revived with dashing elegance under the Jermyn’s Artistic director Stella Pow…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:18PMGRIM AND PURE BY THE DOCKS, PITY AND POETRY The lawyer Alfieri, prowling in memory round Arthur Miller’s stark tale of immigrant longshoremen on the 1940’s Brooklyn docks, speak…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:12PMMonday, October 16, 2023
A LEARNED FRIEND REMEMBERED Rumpole of the Bailey is occasional comfort-viewing in our house, thanks to Talkingpicturestv repeats. John Mortimer’s portrait of the old barrister a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12AMFriday, October 13, 2023
ITS THE PICTURES THAT GOT SMALL? Not if Lloyd can help it. It felt strange to see this in the bowels of a gala-night Savoy, only a week or two after our local arts centre showed the 1950…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:16AMSunday, October 1, 2023
IT’S BACK, THROUGH THE NURSERY WINDOW, STILL FLYING Just to reassure you: this offshoot from Mischief, the team who brought you the perennial Play-goes-wrong, is still a lot o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:50AMThursday, September 28, 2023
THE TWIG WHO BRANCHED OUT We get up to speed on the period, with irresistible tracks from the golden age of pop: Beatles, Stones, Animals. Onstage is a photographer’s white…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:33PMTuesday, September 26, 2023
A TANKFUL OF EMOTIONAL TENTACLES Where better than Hampstead to watch the interplay of cutting-edge science with emotional intensity and philosophical unanswerables? Upstairs we h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:38AMFriday, September 22, 2023
PHONETICALLY PHABULOUS Last time Bertie Carvel was on this stage it was as Donald Trump. Now our best shapeshifter is Henry Higgins: capering, swearing, somewhere on the far side of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:17AM 
