Wednesday, February 1, 2023
SITCOMS MADE US, BUT CAN WE MAKE THEM? It’s a very good idea, bang on the money: David Cantor and Michael Kingsbury (TV sitcom writers with a pedigree) set their play in a bland pr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:51AMMonday, January 30, 2023
A BLAST OF DAFT JOY Zip-a-dee-doo-dah! Here’s a treat. Disney music, blasting out before this vigorous 65-minute one-man spree, sets the mood. It is carnivalesque, fantastical,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:52PMSunday, January 29, 2023
A PATIENT TO TRY PATIENCE It must be challenging to play a psychiatrist at work , maybe especially in Finsbury Park where there are bound to be a few in the audience. Yo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:11PMWednesday, January 25, 2023
Just a few new notes on this , as its completes its triumphant national tour with (amazingly) no stopping-injuries despite the heroically vigorous slapstick direction by Lindsay Posner (move…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15PMThursday, January 19, 2023
HELLMAN’S LESSON IN HUMANITY Theatre can offer few more topical messages for a nation which might hesitate over Ukraine’s needs than this neglected one-set domestic play by Lilia…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:28AMPULLING THE WOOL Most dystopian visions set themselves quite far in the future. Misha Levkov, however, keeps us in 2025, specifying that productions should always be set a cou…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:22AMWednesday, January 18, 2023
AN OLD INJUSTICE REMEMBERED An old man steps onstage alone: upright, soldierly in khaki as a former US war hero who is, he says resignedly, “brought out every year on the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:37AMFriday, December 23, 2022
A TALE FOR ALL TIMES The story of Nelson Mandela has become almost a folktale: imprisoned for 27 years for campaigning against the hideous “apartheid” regime which kept the black ma…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:42AMSunday, December 18, 2022
THIS DAME HAS A WHOLE LOT BEHIND HIM I last saw Sir Ian McKellen onstage as Lear, missed him as the oldest Hamlet ever, but far longer ago saw him in a frock at the … Cont…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:15AMFriday, December 16, 2022
BREEZILY BLOWING IN FROM 1908, FRESH AS EVER In Mole End on Christmas Eve,in a burrow cosy with domestic detail they’re breaking out the beer and sardines and reminiscing about t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:34PMTuesday, December 13, 2022
A TRAGICOMIC BEAUTY Hard to express how much I loved Stephen Karam’s play. Maybe it just hit the right moment: yomped through freezing night, strikes and ‘severe delays” readi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31AMSunday, December 11, 2022
THE MOST ENJOYABLE STRIKE YOU’LL SEE THIS CHRISTMAS I love it when the theatre perfectly fits the show. Artists can overcome a wrong space, but there’s gleeful concord when it su…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:16AMFriday, December 9, 2022
FREUDIAN ISUES IN FAIRYLAND Everyone’s got mental health issues in HEX: which is the Sleeping Beauty story extended to the troublesome folk-tale aftermath. The tousled Fairy…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:04AMMonday, December 5, 2022
A PACK OF WOOLFS PROWL ROUND THE GENDER-BEND One bespectacled, anxious-looking Virginia Woolf in a sensible brown skirt and dreary cardigan is never enough, so Michael Grandage’s prod…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:49PMFriday, December 2, 2022
A COLD ANGRY CRUSHING SYSTEM It’s a cold unadorned monochrome scene: courts, brawls and bedchamber all framed on three sides by vast looming tiered steps and a high flat parapet…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:59PMUP WEST, IT LOSES NOTHING…STILL A FIERCE TREAT Leaving the former Young Vic production a lad far too young to remember 1968 said sadly to me “It was the beginning of Now, wasn’t it?”…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:58PMWednesday, November 30, 2022
A GLORIOUS DOWNSTREAM WILLOWS FOR OUR AGE You won’t see a prettier, more refreshing or sustainable stage this Christmas: natural colours, riverbank rushes, a bare tree (which will have…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:02PMSunday, November 27, 2022
CELEBRATORY, MY DEAR WATSON I had come from the magnificent Old Vic Christmas Carol, where once again with mince pies, bells and lanterns and Dickensian cheer and a message about how poo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:47AMWednesday, November 23, 2022
CLEVER, CLOWNING, CLASSIC What could be more seasonal than Flaubert’s tale of wifely frustration, romantic illusions, disastrous adulteries and ruinous shopaholic debt? This adapt…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:57AMWednesday, November 16, 2022
A DAUGHTER OF DISREPUTE 1893, and here’s George Bernard Shaw passing the Bechdel Test with flying colours by centring the action on two women at odds , with surrounding men remarkably d…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:28PMPURE PLEASURE AT HER MAJESTY’S It seemed worth the money – these were not press tickets – to check out how good old Fanty is getting on after 36 years at Her Majesty’s The…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21AMTuesday, November 15, 2022
DRUNKENNESS AND THE DARK The studio at Hampstead has been on a roll recently, with intelligent and emotionally honest plays : FOLK, RAVENSCOURT, THE ANIMAL KINGDOM et al. It nurt…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:00AMThursday, November 3, 2022
THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT BEING TOO TRADITIONAL ABOUT IT This cheerfully exuberant rendering of Oscar Wilde’s witty rom-com is also a sort of political act. In the foyer a gorgeous selection…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:34AMMonday, October 31, 2022
ABDUCTION, ASSAULT, ABDICATION For four hundred years the reputation of Mary, Queen of Scots, has been battled over: she has been called victim and whore, murderess and heroine, flight…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:39PMWednesday, October 26, 2022
WHEN THEY PUT THE FUN – AND THE FUNDS – INTO FUNDAMENTALISM.. Rarely in the history of Islington playgoing have so many first-nighters whooped so enthusiastically at Gospe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:00PMSaturday, October 22, 2022
DODD-LEVEL HAPPINESS IN SOHO Hard, on its first night ever, not to review the theatre itself. Nica Burns and Nimax open the first new West End theatre in fifty years: agleam with …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:17AMTuesday, October 18, 2022
OLD MEN DO NOT FORGET Peter Gill’s new play has a melancholy beauty about it; it’s a sort of poem as the veteran playwright and director engages with age, regret and m…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:21PMThursday, October 13, 2022
THE PROFESSORIAL ROAD TO HELL David Tennant is a fastidious actor. That sounds negative, prim perhaps, but in fact expresses why his performance in C.P.Taylor’s extraordinary play …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:04PMWednesday, October 12, 2022
A HARLEM TRAVIATA Three in the morning and Angel the showgirl is raring , glitterimg drunk “if you caint be drunk in Harlem..” she slurs furiously. Her friend Guy brought her home, an…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:31AMMonday, October 10, 2022
RETURN OF A WILD AND QUESTIONING PLAY This is the return of Robert Icke’s modern version of Schnitzler’s 1912 play – details below, as laid out in part of my original Almeida r…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:07AMFriday, October 7, 2022
A WARNING FOR ALL TIMES This is the big one. It’s the National Theatre at its strongest: unapologetic, classic, unsparing, gripping, impassioned. Here’s the heavy art…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:17AM 
