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 …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:14AM[SHARE]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 r…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:18AM[SHARE]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.  …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:55PM[SHARE]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 tott…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:49AM[SHARE]A SHARP , SERPENTINE, SUPERB PERFORMANCE Â Â Â Â Â Lounging in the small hours on her office couch, under a wall of posters for her many clients' shows " both famous and forgo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:57AM[SHARE]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. I…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:31AM[SHARE]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,Â�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35PM[SHARE]PULLING OUT THE STOPS FOR PULLMAN Â Â First things first: this is the most wonderfully evocative, romantic and dramatic bit of set-projection you will see all year. Bob Crowley, video …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:07PM[SHARE]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 stamp…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:36PM[SHARE]ISLAND OF WONDER AND UNEASE Â Â Â Â One of the interesting, rewarding quirks in Tom Littler's small-but-perfectly-formed Tempest is that Tam Williams doubles as Ferdinand, the ul…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:31AM[SHARE]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.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:19AM[SHARE]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 11:34AM[SHARE]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 …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:16AM[SHARE]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 10:19AM[SHARE]A CHEKHQUERED RESPONSEÂ Â Â Â Â 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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:23AM[SHARE]Â Â Â Â Â Â ROLL UP! IT'S BACK! Ah, Christmastime! Â Â There's nothing like a buff chap in spike-heeled patent thigh-boots somersaulting in the air to make you feel festive.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:56PM[SHARE]A 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 05:37AM[SHARE]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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:07PM[SHARE]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 p…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:55AM[SHARE]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 w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:01AM[SHARE]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 fro…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:15AM[SHARE] THE MYTH AND TERROR THAT CHILDREN KNOW      Sometimes a violent rip occurs in the thin veil of materialism ,commonsense, morality and law.  Children kn…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:28AM[SHARE]COULD YOU? WOULD YOU? FOR A MILLION BUCKS? Here's a struggling young couple (well, not that young, Â both on second marriages and he has a daughter going to college). Along comes a billion…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:18AM[SHARE]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, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:43PM[SHARE]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-o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:49AM[SHARE] 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!  …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:08PM[SHARE]THE 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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:42AM[SHARE] THE RACE WHERE NOBODY WINS    This feels like a howl of baffled frustration, from a millennial generation ( writer and director, and all four characters) unable to deal wi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:59AM[SHARE]THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH.    Almeida, N1 THE SCOTTISH PLAY WE NEEDED  Say what you like about star-casting and auteur-ish directors messing with Shakespeare, but sometimes …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:59PM[SHARE]AN OLD STORY OF YOUNG MEN Â Â Balliol College Oxford, 1910. Confident young Etonians are hurling crockery downstairs, yelling "I'm a bastard, I'm a bastard, rather be a bastard than a …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:30AM[SHARE]EAST IS EAST, IN EAST ANGLIAÂ Â Â Â Shamser Sinha " who is on the National Theatre Connections project " relished the idea of writing a play about a South-Asian working-class fami…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:32PM[SHARE]
