Thursday, September 30, 2021
THE LAST GREAT PLAGUE If you lived as an adult alongside the onset of AIDS forty years ago you don’t forget it: the lost friends and workmates , the rumours of ignorance which h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:13PMWednesday, September 22, 2021
A POCKET JEWEL We always knew that among the first sproutings of recovery would be a few Alan Ayckbourns, popping up as welcome as snowdrops. I am always fond of this early one, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:40AMTuesday, September 21, 2021
AN ARCATI MORE THAN MEDIUM I once took a student nephew to this Coward masterpiece, and the thrill for me was that he didn’t know there was a g—–. Until there was. Therefore for a risi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:34PMThursday, September 16, 2021
A SHAGGY-DOG TALE IN CRUMBLING SPLENDOUR Sometimes the building upstages the play. I had not explored the late-Victorian, half-restored glory of the Coronet before, and my fir…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:15AMWednesday, September 15, 2021
AN EPIC OF PASSION AND PERFORMANCE Here is life, history, theatrical passion, great migrations and lyrical romance in the rain. Here’s anger and humour and love and desp…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:22AMFriday, September 10, 2021
A HISTORIC HIT BACK, BETTER THAN EVER This portrait of three bickering sisters, trading memories and revelations in the days before a mother’s funeral in a snowy Yorkshire winter…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:34AMThursday, September 9, 2021
LOVE, GRIEF, AND A BRAD PITT ALBATROSS With loving detail, right down a glimpse of coat-racks beyond the far door, the downstairs studio serving Tom Wells’ new play has become a rem…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:28PMWednesday, September 8, 2021
ICE WORK IF YOU GET IT… Phew. The Broadway-rooted, Disneylicious, long-awaited red-carpet premiere night featured (of course) an ice -blue carpet. And the throng bursting …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:30PMMonday, August 30, 2021
ARTHUR SMITH CONJURES UP HIS DAD These days our Arfur comes complete with an overture! It takes the form of Kirsty Newton at the piano (artfully disguised as an upright 1940’s pub-…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:30PMThursday, August 26, 2021
THEATRE’S FAIRY GODFATHER DOES IT AGAIN We needed this. The return of the big classic shows to packed houses in the Barbican, Chichester and Sadlers Wells has been invigorating, but Lloy…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:52AMWednesday, August 25, 2021
Occupied France, 1944. Two teenagers newly in love meet in an empty house. Elodie is French, Otto a German soldier. They are both endearing and annoying, as befits their ag…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:00AMNOT A REVIEW BUT MIGHT SEND YOU THERE… Take this as a report not a review, because actual work commitments made me skip at the interval. But I was persuaded to the long 70 minute first h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:12AMTuesday, August 17, 2021
This is the Mercury rising, rebuilt over two years with a cool café and dance studio, modern eco-glazing and, to respect the town’s history, a solemn archaeological dis…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:29PMThursday, August 12, 2021
WONDERFUL OLD COBBLERS ON ABDICATION STREET (longer version of review done for Mail) You know you’re in safe hands when a stagestruck Prince Edward, diffident and excitable, �…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:04AMFriday, August 6, 2021
FLOODS OF RELIEF Ten years have passed since, in a Times Chief Theatre Critic hat, I last saw a former principal of the Royal Ballet leaping in puddles , singing his great heart out, and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:07AMThursday, August 5, 2021
A VOICE FROM THE 90’s PREFIGURES THE FUTURE… This is a grand intellectual teaser of a show, and under Lucy Bailey’s almost mischievous direction does a good job of shaking up fas…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:49PMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS MORE SMOKE THAN FIRE ON THE HACKNEY STAGE Grimeborn are following up their fantastic 2019 Das Rheingold (see my previous review) with Die Walküre this …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:57AMVICARIOUS TRAVEL, JUST WHAT WE NEED The big musicals are back: two dark-edged, South Pacific at Chichester and Carousel imminent at Regent’s Park, while halfway between them flowers…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55AMThursday, July 22, 2021
THE DARK SIDE OF THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. DON’T TELL JACOB REES-MOGG Hats off to James Dacre’s Royal & Derngate for bravely slapping on a brand new musical in the ver…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:41AMWednesday, July 14, 2021
ROARING BACK TO LIFE Almost the most magnificent part of Daniel Evans’ production is that it’s happening at all: despite the distanced glimmer of blue paper masks, Chichester …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:40AMSunday, July 11, 2021
t IF RANSOME MET ORWELL It’s 1939 in Southwold harbour (nicely resonant for me to see this in Southwold itself, on its second night). Arthur Ransome, famed already for his …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:23PMThursday, July 8, 2021
MIDLIFE, MIDNIGHT, MEMORY Fittingly, Deborah Bruce’s play is set over the night the clocks change back. It’s about Time, its reverses and attritions; and being about los…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:52AMWednesday, July 7, 2021
FORMAL. INTERVIEWS DON’T END JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE DEAD The afterlife is out of fashion, at least in traditional religious forms – harps and angels, heaven and hell, reincarnation …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:50PMSaturday, July 3, 2021
SHEEN SHINES AS THE WELSH WORD-WIZARD It might be helpful if critics admitted sometimes arriving bad-tempered, hot, out of tune, dreading the long masked late night train journey ho…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:03PMWednesday, June 30, 2021
FATHERS AND SONS, PASSION AND PIETY Last night saw one famous victory as England kicked through to the semis. Indeed the Bridge theatre press-night audience was a bit banjaxed by emerg…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:14AMTuesday, June 29, 2021
YESTERDAY’S MEN LOVING MEN The mission of Two’s Company is producing “new plays from the past”, and their talent is for treasure-hunting . Plays written now about past decad…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:04PMThursday, June 10, 2021
AMELIORATING PARISIAN LIVES ONE PUPPET AT A TIME It could hardly be calculated more finely to fulfil every post-lockdown need: a cast of sixteen nimble actor-musician-singers vis…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:14AMFriday, June 4, 2021
PINK SATIN AND A FAIRY PINATA FOR A PIMMS-Y NIGHT OUT Face it, this play’s a rom-com, a lark, a happy pretty way to blame the fickleness of young love on petulant fairies…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:04AMSunday, May 30, 2021
SPACE IS THE LIMIT AS THE WEST END RETURNS There was real excitement in a first west end moment since the November lockdown crushed the few brave shoots of returning theatre. The Sonia Fri…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:16PMWednesday, May 26, 2021
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds INSTEAD OF TRAVEL… So what do we need, to reopen a tiny Georgian playhouse in a time of continuing uncertainty, mas…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:22AMSaturday, December 12, 2020
O YES IT IS I had booked us in the very day Lloyd Webber and QDOS announced that with antiviral door handles, fogging, separating of bubbles and teeth-gritted determination,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:31PM 
