POLITICAL ECHOES, CLASS ARROGANCE, THRILLS The award for ExIt of the Year goes to the magnificent David Oyelowo, tearing up the central aisle of the Olivier in a fury as the f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:57AMFIRST CLASS FROM CHRISTIE, LUDWIG AND BAILEY This could have been a bit of a groan, like the overcomplex Rebus Game Called Malice , also on tour . But actually it’s a class act in ever…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:30AMFRIENDSHIP HITS THE ROCKS OF TASTE : MISCHIEVOUS, SAD AND FUNNY Not everything that tours the country is Agatha Christie or star-fed froth: sometimes a serious emotional and in…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:59AMREACH FOR THE STARS: IT TAKES HARD GRAFT AND VODKA Any week now at the Gielgud we shall hear the famous drunken cry in Juno and the Paycock “what is the stars?”. At the heart of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:49PMDATING FOR A CONFUSED AGE I have written before of the particular glee I feel when a brand-new and original show emerges , not from anxious corporate calculations but from young a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:57AMWORTH ANOTHER VISIT? O YES It’s a gig, it’s a party, it’s as glorious as ever. Down on the floor the promenaders surge between changing stages as they rise and fall to create old Man…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:18AMUPMARKET 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 02:05AM