Friday, August 30, 2019
GUEST 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 03:40AMThursday, June 27, 2019
GUEST CRITIC BEN DOWELL SHIVERS – ADMIRINGLY – AT A TROUBLED TALE In this hypersensitive age of MeToo accusations, anxieties about online pornography and even deeper-seated disquiet a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:58AMThursday, June 13, 2019
RANCID LILIES, GORGEOUS WORDS All the little Jermyn needs to complete this reimagination of Wildean epigrammatic decadence is to scent the auditorium overwhelmingly with lilies and …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:02AMTuesday, June 11, 2019
FLYING, FUNNY, FABULOUS This is a dream of a Dream. One expected fun from the combination of Nicholas Hytner, a roiling mass of promenaders in the pit and a Bunny Christie…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:38PMSunday, June 2, 2019
A NOTE ON A TREAT, MOUSELESS BUT MELLOW The film based on Scott Fitzgerald’s story of a life lived backwards, born old and ending in babyhood, was pretty awful. So I did not le…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:44AMWednesday, May 29, 2019
BULLYING, BOMBAST, BETRAYAL The rediscovery of Githa Sowerby in the 1990s is very satisfying. At its premiere in 1913 critics saw the quality of this one but were dismayed …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:46AMThursday, May 16, 2019
SULTRY, SINFUL, SHOCKING, SHINING Savagely observed absurdity, blinding flashes of insight, profound yearning, sudden poetry singing clear notes from the cruel swamp of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:31PMAN INTIMATE EPIC IN A FADING EMPIRE Hard to overstate what an absolute treat this is , and on how many levels. It is a terrific yarn, both romantic and tough, about history and Empi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:11PMFriday, May 10, 2019
There’s something special about fin-de-siecle anger in any century: this is from 1697, years later than Wycherley and the mellower Sheridan, and best described as a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:33AMTuesday, May 7, 2019
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL, SHORT CAN BE SHARP There is something stimulating about ultra-short plays: five to twenty minutes but directed and performed with all the care and concen…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:07AM 
