Tuesday, October 1, 2019
A COLLIDING WORLD Couldn’t miss this: for two years as a teenager (Dad in the Jo’burg Embassy) I lived alongside the frightened, arrogant paranoia of white South Africa un…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:18PMMonday, September 30, 2019
15 CHARACTERS OBJECTING TO AN AUTHOR.. The Jane Austen industry never flags, in tribute or in parody. You can barely throw a bonnet without hitting an Austentatious improv, popcor…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:45PMFriday, September 27, 2019
KING JOHN WAS NOT A GOOD MAN… Maybe we should stick to AA Milne’s version? “King John was not a good man He had his little ways And sometimes no one spoke to him For days an…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:18AMWednesday, September 25, 2019
GLOBAL AND GENDER POLITICS IN PERFECT MINIATURE A glass conference-centre in the host nation France; a visiting US President avid for airstrikes after a terrorist outrage , deman…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:34PMWednesday, September 18, 2019
GUEST REVIEWER BEN DOWELL SAYS HANKS FOR THE MEMORY , AND BRAVELY FACES THE WEIRDNESS This is a lavish revival of the 1996 musical version of the 1988 Tom Hanks fantasy comedy, complete w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:02AMTuesday, September 10, 2019
THIRTY YEARS LATER AND STILL FURIOUS: HEDDA’S BACK Last night, while Parliament spiralled into disorderly, resentful confusion and Mr Bercow dramatically put an end to himself a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:41PMTuesday, September 3, 2019
OLD TIMES, OLD SORROWS: BEFORE THE RAINBOW With Parliament in uproar upriver , the NT hit a luckily apt moment to stage Simon Woods’ first play and promote it as a “witty and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:32PMSaturday, August 31, 2019
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SWOONS OVER SWASHBUCKLING AT GRIMEBORN Director Emma Jude Harris “couldn’t believe her luck” when she discovered Cabildo, the only opera by pioneering…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:10AMFriday, August 30, 2019
BITTERLY BRITISH It was a good mix of ages in the Curve audience, so perhaps a public service to remind the rising generation, awash in Brexindignation, that Utterly-Despairi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:05PMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS JOPLIN TROUBLINGLY FUN Scott Joplin was rightly proud of Treemonisha, an opera for which he wrote both libretto and score; it was never fully staged in …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:14AMThursday, August 29, 2019
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI MARVELS AT THE OPERATIC POTENTIAL OF SIGNDANCE The double bill of Gillian Whitehead’s Hotspur with Schoenberg’s great Modernist Pierrot Lunaire is the fir…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:23PMTuesday, August 27, 2019
A STRANGE RESURRECTION, BETWEEN WARS A red sun was setting beyond the trees as we gathered around a square, isolated house in the golden-hour splendour. Here the land rises abo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:42AMSunday, August 25, 2019
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS DIMNESS RATHER THAN DAWN AT GRIMEBORN If Aylin Bozok is directing anything at Grimeborn, I always try to go. I’ve been absolutely blown away by her pa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:05AMSaturday, August 24, 2019
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS NOT MUCH UNFOLDING AT GRIMEBORN I have to admit – I’m a sucker for a bit of rarefied Japanese elegance on stage in almost any context: the very ment…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:10AMThursday, August 22, 2019
GUEST REVIEWER BEN DOWELL SEES A GOOD SUBJECT NOT QUITE GETTING THERE… The trafficking of human beings – 7,000 identified in the UK in 2018 – is a disgusting blight on our country…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:05PMWednesday, August 21, 2019
A GRIPPING PIECE OF HISTORY In 1944 the adventurous British director Peggy Webster cast the first black Othello in the USA, where for a white woman even to walk with …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:34AMThursday, August 15, 2019
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GETS INTO THE BLITZ SPIRIT WITH OPERA ALEGRIA AT GRIMEBORN Rossini’s Le Comte Ory is a flirtatious farce in which a naughty young Count drives everyone de…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:37AMFriday, August 9, 2019
A YOUTHFUL HALLELUJAH ANother fascinating London premiere for Two’s Company and the Finborough, buried for nearly half a century after one brief 1970 tour . As Philip …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:52AMThursday, August 8, 2019
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GOES BATS FOR BASELESS FABRIC’S SOCIAL MEDIA TAKE ON STRAUSS “I’m not saying I’m Batman. I’m just saying nobody has ever seen me and Batman in a roo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:36AMSaturday, August 3, 2019
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF GRIMEBORN’S GLITTERING TREASURE The Ring Cycle is opera’s biggest box set: a sixteen-hour binge of dwarves, nymphs, dragons, gods, h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:18PM ROCK ’N ROLL N’ ROMEO Deep under the trees, beyond Jimmy’s meerkat and camel enclosures lies a 1960’s beach: shelter, deckchairs and lounging teens, Mods and Rocker…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:00AMFriday, August 2, 2019
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GOES MAD FOR AMERICAN MONODRAMA A pairing of two American music dramas promised plenty of angsty feminist fun for a Friday night at Grimeborn; and I admit, in…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:39PMThursday, August 1, 2019
HEROIC ENDURANCE In the background a lecture in the old Home Service style, decorous and passionless, finishes relating the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition: …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:03AMTuesday, July 23, 2019
COWBOYS WITHOUT INDIANS I suppose it’s perverse to start at the end, but of all the aspects of Jeremy Sams’ handsome production of the Rodgers & Hammerstein crowd-pleaser…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:34AMWednesday, July 17, 2019
FALLEN ANGELS ENDURING THE STORM You can feel the heat in Rae Smith’s design, Mexican sun on the rock overhead, and the corrugated iron roofs of the rundown hotel. Somewher…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:30AMFriday, July 12, 2019
IT’S BACK, YOUNGER THAN EVER… We love a starry debut, especially on opening night in a huge theatre: a 21-year-old not yet through drama school making a stonking, belting …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:31AMFriday, July 5, 2019
DEVOTION , DISGUISE, DECADENCE What a strange and stirring play this is! Set in convent, court and condemned-cell, it is spiked with moral ambiguities and fuelled equally by s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:03PMThursday, July 4, 2019
BLAIR TO BREXIT – A FAMILY TALE Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany, are the Harry Potter team. They know how not to bore. But they’ve been here before too in a R…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:29AMWednesday, July 3, 2019
FARCE AS LIFE, LIFE AS FARCE, FRAYN AGAIN TRIUMPHANS It felt like a pilgrimage, homage to pay. 37 years ago Michael Frayn’s greatest of comedies, a wicked love-song to the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:01AMSunday, June 30, 2019
COMEDY SHADING TO MELANCHOLY: WHAT’S TO COME IS STILL UNSURE… First of all let’s say that Andrew Scott is a marvel, a 21st century Ur-Coward hero, who manages to do it with…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:06PMSaturday, June 29, 2019
A SHILLING SHOCKER IS A JOY FOREVER To come clean: one reason I dashed to catch this fresh back from holiday is not only that the Finborough is always interesting, but that fa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:40AM 
