UPMARKET EDINBURGH ROCK, SORT OF Sir Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus accounts for a tenth of all crime bestsellers in the UK: the ancient mazes around Edinburgh Castle, set against…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:46AMA MOMENT FOR REMEMBERING A desk, leather chairs, a heap of file boxes, a single sunflower in a pot. The century has turned, and it’s the last day in the office for Simon Wiesenthal…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:53AMOn this day of the report, a reminder of those two excellent verbatim plays from two stages of the inquiry. How theatre, with Nicholas Kent, reacted . There have been other plays about the e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:25AMI IMPERSONATION, ILLUSION AND INTRIGUE Cottonwool clouds, a scatter of furniture and instruments, an ancient cine camera, a noble arch and some pillars and fake trees. On a 19…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:54PMROLL UP, ROLL UP… What sharper summer draw than “The Greatest Show On Earth” remembered within one of the smallest theatres? Jonathan O”Boyle’s production has the pre…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:49AMLAUNDRY, LECHERY, LADIES, LAUGHTER if anyone is ever so impertinent as to demand an audition piece from the RSC-seasoned John Hodgkinson, I suggest he delivers – with or witho…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:42PMA TALL TALE, A SHIMMERING MAGIC Of all Shakespeare’s plays this is now the rarest staged, not without reason: some early scenes are co- written with a contemporary John Wilkins, its tale i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:06PML’CHAIM ! THE VERY STUFF OF LIFE Of course it helps to be under a real sky: a lone fiddler high above the cornfield scratches out the first lonely notes against the evening clou…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:13PMDuke Theseus offers instructions, Act 1 Scene 1. “Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments, Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth!” You can tru…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:01AMAS LONG AS WE NEED IT… To do a timeworn musical, entangled in all- too -familiar earworms, you can either sharpen, challenge and update it or lovingly polish the old machine. If you s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:27PMUP WHERE SHE BELONGS Imelda Staunton is a marvel, from Mama Rose in Gypsy to HMQ in The Crown. There is no lady of the stage more worthy of being greeted at the top of a Grand Staircase b…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:23AMGRISLY GLEE If there is any aspect of 21c Western culture sorely in need of being laughed at, it s ithe morbid fascination with police-procedural telly,, especially true-crime and i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:38AMAN OVEN-READY MUSICAL, NEVER MUFFIN A MOMENT As summer heats the merciless city, good to know that five minutes’ south of London Bridge station is La France Profonde, a village …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:40AMGEORGIANS IN THE PINK, AND SOMEWHAT PUNK Sheridan’s social satire from the 1770s hits the age of fake news, viral reputation-trashing and post-imperial embarrassment. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:30AMON THE EVE OF THE ELECTION…. …I emerged onto the Cut in a grey afternoon blinking tears, unable to process having been made to cry by James Corden. He’s been for me a fig…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:53PMTEENAGE DREAMS, AND FAME AS NIGHTMARE Got to love the dedication of the Southwark: to mark its smaller-space production of Samantha Hurley’s New York play about a demented teenage fan, it …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:53AMA THING OF WONDER People who saw Mnemonic at its origin 25 years ago still talk about it. A few say it changed them. It was a collaborative, at first wholly unscripted , creatio…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:05AMA WARTIME SPRINGTIME It’s not the reptile but the turtledove, as in the Song of Solomon “The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our l…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:04PMAN ANGLO-INDIAN EDWARDIAN YORKSHIRE… Good to be back for another year, up on the high tiers in the last golden hour, waiting to watch the great trees darken against the sky. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:05AMYOUNG GENTLEMEN (AND LADIES) TO CELEBRATE This is very good fun indeed. Who does not want an onstage dog called Crab, benignly upstaging a rarely seen Shakespeare clown? And a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:20PMTWO YEARS AFTER THE NEXT ELECTION.. Here, a mere meringue’s throw from Eton itself, is an imaginary Prime Minister of that ilk. Tidier in person and with a touch more integrity …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:10AMNYPD FAMILY BLUES I fell for the solid, paternal, irascible Walter “Pops” Washington immediately over his whiskey breakfast, as he listens half-patiently to the unreliably …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:38AMA LOST WEEKEND WORTH FINDING It helps if you fall in love with the set; even more if the set helps tell the story. For this tale of a louche, tender, disreputably memorable week…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:38AMGANG LIFE, GRIEF AND GREATNESS There is a very tense moment late on in the second half when Jacob Dunne, only just holding himself together, finally sits down in person opposite …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24AMA RIOTOUS RUSSIAN SATIRE, FOR ALL TIMES The local governor and councillors are posing for a photograph, more than satisfied with themselves and their genteelly corrupt side-h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:05AMMODERN ECHOES OF A DYING FALL Years ago I came out of a dullish production in Yorkshire of Chekhov’s last play, set very traditionally with samovar, parasols and big hats. A …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:48AMA BOY BETRAYED Connor was 18 when he drowned in the bath with an epileptic seizure. It needn’t have happened. He was under slipshod care, away from the family who loved him, in an NHS �…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:47AMA FEARFUL FUTURE I am wary of futurist dystopias, but this is a real treat: intelligent sci-fi with serious thrills. As it opens, we are the 2050 audience at the celebration of ten…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:35AMTHE COURT AND THE BEDCHAMBER Theatre will never tire of the Tudors, nor should it. From every new angle they offer a dramatic gift which never stops giving. Here’s 1534, and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:10AMMEN BEHAVING RIDICULOUSLY The lord of Navarre and three nobles have resolved to retreat and study for three years, eschewing female company: so even the princess suing for land has to be…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:47AMMUD, MARSH, MONEY Now here’s a bracing new way to do Dickens: avoid sets full of Victoriana by keeping the stage pretty much empty beneath a set of uneasily moving lighting-bars …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:20AM