Friday, February 25, 2022
A VIGOROUS, HEARTSHAKING BRUSH OF OPPOSITES Two artists in a studio: the older one pale and floppily blond, languidly self-protective, drawling, preaching a cool gospel of u…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:30AMTuesday, February 15, 2022
AN ORDINARY TRIANGLE TWISTS INTO NIGHTMARE The French novelist-turned-playwright Florian Zeller hit the British theatre scene a few years ago with two comedies: The Lie and The …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:58AMFriday, February 11, 2022
HOMAGE TO A HEALING CHAOS If – like Prince Charles – you grew up with the Goons in the background (“Ying Tong! Bluebottle! He’s fallen in da water!” etc) this will ring …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:31PMFriday, January 14, 2022
MIDDLECLASS MOUNTAIN MISERIES Inspired programming here. You’d find a decent overlap in any January Venn diagram of regular Donmar audiences and people who wish they were ski-i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:29AMThursday, January 13, 2022
Puppets move the heart… It was a third attempt ( like so many, it has had cancellations and suspensions), and I missed it in Sheffield 2019 through illness. So I bought any tick…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:14AMWednesday, January 5, 2022
SONGS FROM THE LAND There’s a lovely serendipity here. The main theatre is running PEGGY FOR YOU (till 29th) while the little downstairs space has Neil Leyshon’s rather lo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:18AMFriday, December 31, 2021
PLAGUE YEAR Part 2 – 2021 Below, if you care to scroll , I chronicled the shows that met my return from chemo-then-lockdown in 2020. An enfeebled theatrical year. Today a lo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:55PMThursday, December 30, 2021
PART 1: THE ONSET I set out, in this eerie Twixtmas gap, to chronicle and celebrate the return of live theatre since May 2021. And this will follow. But when I totted up the 20…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:49AMSaturday, December 18, 2021
A SHARP , SERPENTINE, SUPERB PERFORMANCE Lounging in the small hours on her office couch, under a wall of posters for her many clients’ shows – both famous and forgotten �…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:57AMFriday, December 10, 2021
A PRIMA DONNY JOINS THE FEARLESS FOUR Last year as a family we came to see the doughty quartet doing this variety show, an adult-joking non-panto to fill the fearful gap. It was th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:31AMThursday, December 9, 2021
1968 AND ALL THAT James Graham’s mission might seem unfashionable: trawling 20c history and public culture, looking not for villains and heroes but for the nuances of human behaviour, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35PMTuesday, December 7, 2021
PULLING OUT THE STOPS FOR PULLMAN First things first: this is the most wonderfully evocative, romantic and dramatic bit of set-projection you will see all year. Bob Crowley, video maes…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:07PMMonday, December 6, 2021
A REVIVING REVIVAL Do you need to be of a generation to remember Morecambe and Wise, to which this play is a loving tribute-cum-amiable-ripoff? Probably not. They are stamped on th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:36PMFriday, December 3, 2021
ISLAND OF WONDER AND UNEASE One of the interesting, rewarding quirks in Tom Littler’s small-but-perfectly-formed Tempest is that Tam Williams doubles as Ferdinand, the ultra-vi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:31AMWednesday, December 1, 2021
GLIMPSES OF ETERNITY (Review first published on D.Mail, in shorter form) This is wonderful. Sometimes a simple short performance can shake, rouse, even change you. So step a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:19AMSunday, November 28, 2021
worth going again I say.. Just thought I should mention to theatrecat readers how wonderful this show it. Saw it twice before the pandemic, nipped back to a matinee a week or so back. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:34AMWednesday, November 24, 2021
2021 BRITAIN IN A STATELY STORMY NUTSHELL Just what we needed, I thought! A good old state-of-the-nation black comedy with a semi-derelict Manor in a howling storm, the sea wall abo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:16AMThursday, November 18, 2021
SIX CENTURIES ON, IT’S GEOFFREY CHAUCER’S ROUND Zadie Smith humbly refers to her first play as more like “homework” than the novelist’s usual dread of a blank page. Ch…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:19AMA CHEKHQUERED RESPONSE Vanya and Sonia are siblings – though she is adopted – and have led dull dutiful lives in a remote country house surrounded by cherry trees and an or…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:23AMWednesday, November 17, 2021
ROLL UP! IT’S BACK! Ah, Christmastime! There’s nothing like a buff chap in spike-heeled patent thigh-boots somersaulting in the air to make you feel festive. Unless it�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:56PMA HUMAN ZOO OF ALPHA MEN There are good plays to be written about white male privilege, and about modern capitalism and its relentless expectation of self-promotion and constant advancement …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:37AMSunday, November 14, 2021
THEY DO NOT GROW OLD AS WE IN THE STALLS GROW OLD May as well tell you, last week I had the ultimate pensioner experience, and it was a blast. A midweek, senior-price matinee i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:07PMFriday, November 12, 2021
TWENTY YEARS AGO, ANOTHER HEALTH CRISIS CHANGED LIVES Just before the pandemic closed everything down, Emily Jenkins’ deft two-hander won a top Edinburgh Fringe award and many plaud…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:55AMThursday, November 11, 2021
FACE THE MUSIC, AND DANCE! This was a new outing for me. I have long loved the Watermill some miles west, but I hadn’t really registered the Mill at Sonning with it’s e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:01AMWednesday, November 10, 2021
Reprise: they’re still at it, as good as ever If I were a PR for the Society of London Theatres, I would get these six performers together for a photocall with the five from Prid…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:15AMMonday, November 8, 2021
THE MYTH AND TERROR THAT CHILDREN KNOW Sometimes a violent rip occurs in the thin veil of materialism ,commonsense, morality and law. Children know this: a bereaveme…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:28AMThursday, November 4, 2021
COULD YOU? WOULD YOU? FOR A MILLION BUCKS? Here’s a struggling young couple (well, not that young, both on second marriages and he has a daughter going to college). Along comes a billion…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:18AMWednesday, November 3, 2021
UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED TO BE A HOOT It had to happen: someone had to notice that in the comfortable upper-middle and aristocratic worlds of Jane Austen’s novel, nothing c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:43PMSaturday, October 23, 2021
NOT A REVIEW BUT SOME JOLLY NEWS Not a review, because this was the first performance of a modest weekend testing the water: a script-in-hand, moustaches-falling-off, fresh-outta-wor…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:49AMTuesday, October 19, 2021
THE HEART STILL FEELS THE BEAT Everything Bob Marley sings lifts the heart, instructing it to rise and triumph and unite in joy: lively-up yourself! Let’s get toget…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:08PMTHE DEVIL IN THE DETAIL: scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry There was a spate of criticism when Richard Norton Taylor’s dramatisation of the Grenfell Inquiry was announced, despite it b…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:42AM 
