Friday, March 22, 2019
NOT AT ALL FLAT, SUFFOLK…     Exuberantly funny, elegant as a Deauville hotel balcony and sharp as the crack of a 78rpm record over a lover's head, Joanna C…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:39AMThursday, March 21, 2019
POISONED LOVE  I sometimes wish Harold Pinter had written more plays like this: decadent, agonized, helplessly sensitive to the nuances of friendship and treachery. More prai…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:00AMWednesday, March 20, 2019
 MARTYRS OF THE MCCARTHY YEARS      Ideological hostilities across the world,  fake news and paranoia, a resurgent deep left, uneasy relations with Russia, anti…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:58AMThursday, December 27, 2018
NOT YET DEAD CAT BUT…  Since I stopped being The Times Chief Theatre Critic  it has been five years:  on this site there have been  930 posts, over half a million words…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:22PMFriday, December 21, 2018
A HOLLOW CROWN IN MUD AND BLOOD The clue is in the paper hat, worn by a dour-faced Simon Russell Beale on the programme cover.  This is not stately, sacred, shockingly regicid…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:32AMJAMAICA BREEZES UP WEST, WITH GRIEF AND GUSTO Â Â Â Â Jamaican mourning tradition, longer than the Irish wake and noisier than the Jewish shiva, involves –Â we lea…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:43AMFriday, December 14, 2018
PSYCHOPATHIC LIBERAL MEETS DINOSAUR PARENTS    Can we, I wonder, ever learn to deplore past attitudes without being vengeful about it? Hot on the heels of Mike Bartlett's…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:22AMThursday, December 13, 2018
ONE MORE TIME, WITH FEELING . Â After two other full cast renderings in a fortnight -David Edgar's socially angry take at the RSC and Jack Thorne's warm spectacular at the O…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:46PMWednesday, December 12, 2018
A GOTHIC EYEFUL In this troublous nation, 2018 seems to be the Christmas of Aaargh! and Eughhh! and hahahahaaa! , as a gross-out gigglefest sweeps London theatre. There's …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:40PMENERGY, ANGER, HOPE      It is 1842: young Charles Dickens, thirty years old and with five novels under his belt, is ranting.  The Industrial Revolution is re…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:37AMMonday, December 10, 2018
 CHRISTMAS,  BREXIT,  GRIEF, HOPE   A few hours after Theresa May postponed the parliamentary vote and spun us down into another layer of Brexi-hell , the little O…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:52PM I WENT TO THE PANTO. O YES I DID.    The great thing about the proud tradition of Oxford Playhouse panto is that while cannily aware of the audience's likely cultural…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:42PMSunday, December 9, 2018
A WONDERLAND WINNER      "Posh pantoâ€, for wincing parents fleeing the rackety showbiz 'n smut of the season, can be a bit chilly – neither one thi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:18AMFriday, December 7, 2018
, Â GEESE CACKLE, LIFE GOES ONÂ Â Â Â I have a friend of Russian heritage who boycotts any Chekhov production which lacks scabby birch-trees, a samovar and some parasols. Â …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:17AMThursday, December 6, 2018
L'CHAIM – TO LIFE!   A SPECIAL NIGHT      We are there, over a century ago, beyond the Caucasus.  Designer Robert Jones has wrapped us around in …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:33AMGUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR EMPATHISES WITH DEADLINE FEVER.. Here is a tale of two brothers. First, Kit Harrington's serious, intelligent and moustachioed Austin, Ivy League educated and with…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:42AMWednesday, December 5, 2018
DARK MAGIC, Â REAL THEATRE Â Â Long, long before Harry Potter there was a gallant orphan, a boy dreamer sucked into a world of murderous magic, facing grief and responsibility alike.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:32PMDICKENS UNCHAINED: A SCROOGE FOR OUR TIMESÂ Â Â Â It is , if possible, even finer and more heartfelt and gripping, tuneable and serious and moving than last year. Â My�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31PMFriday, November 30, 2018
DARK DOINGS AND DISSECTION   Oyez, Oyez.  Let it be known that this suspenseful yet dreary political season has become officially the Year Of Dark Panto. Down at The Bridge w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:25PMFriday, November 23, 2018
BREAKING THE MOULD….   Our politics is partisan, quarrelsome, dated in its pattern of two-parties-plus-minnows.  A nest of weary careerists, pointless betrayals and illo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:28PMMonday, November 19, 2018
DEATH AND THE DIFFICULT WOMAN Those who call Theresa May a 'bloody difficult woman' should pop in to the Ambassadors and realise that in the ranks of  of BDWs she is the merest dab…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:22PMThursday, November 15, 2018
THE EMPTY DARKNESS OF THE HEART   Third time lucky: after two glumly disappointing 2018 productions steeped in directorial gimmicks  – RSC and NT – the ca…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:53AMWednesday, November 14, 2018
THE KNIGHT WINS HIS SPURS AGAIN:Â A NOBLE DELUSION Â Â Â Need a Christmas outing? Quailing at panto, feel you and the kids need some Euro-culture to counteract Brexidepression? Tr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:37PMA SWING AND SWIRL THROUGH HELL Â Â It's certainly not family-panto time along the glittering Thames riverbank:Â what with Martin McDonagh' grossout-silly Dark Matter downstream at t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:16AMTuesday, November 13, 2018
LIKE A BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED DECADES….  If you're my age, it's a time machine. Songs like The Sound Of Silence and Bridge Over Troubled Water (bestselling album 1970,71 and 72…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11AMWednesday, November 7, 2018
THE SAVAGE BEAUTY OF THE FIRST AIR WAR   Britain did not stand alone in WW1.  As our hero sings in John MacLachlan Gray's 1982 play: "South Africa and Canada and Austr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:51AMSunday, November 4, 2018
GUEST CRITIC MICHAELÂ ADAIRÂ LISTENS, AS WE SHOULD A glass box filled with smoke encapsulates the Royal Court stage. Shadowy figures patrol its perimeter, sometimes staring out a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:04AMWednesday, October 31, 2018
LOVE’S PRECEDENCE AND CRUELTY    George is a journalist-intellectual, award-winner, amiably vain and sixtyish.. He twinkles for England, with much black-…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:51AMWednesday, October 24, 2018
NOT SO VERY   A wooden box swings, pendulum-regular, in a peerlessly spooky attic of Halloween horror, designed with glee by Anna Fleischle .  It is inhabited. Difficult, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMLOVE,  LIES AND THE PAIN OF TRUTH   Is it better to live in a lie, a happy story, or to admit the messy sinful truth? Should you assume that every person you…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45AMSunday, October 21, 2018
ALONE ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA      The Rime of the Ancient Mariner may be studded with overfamiliar quotations, but taken in its entirely, has power to disturb .…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:12PM 
