Thursday, May 9, 2024
A RIOTOUS RUSSIAN SATIRE, FOR ALL TIMES The local governor and councillors are posing for a photograph, more than satisfied with themselves and their genteelly corrupt side-h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:05AMFriday, May 3, 2024
MODERN ECHOES OF A DYING FALL Years ago I came out of a dullish production in Yorkshire of Chekhov’s last play, set very traditionally with samovar, parasols and big hats. A …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:48AMWednesday, May 1, 2024
A BOY BETRAYED Connor was 18 when he drowned in the bath with an epileptic seizure. It needn’t have happened. He was under slipshod care, away from the family who loved him, in an NHS �…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:47AMTuesday, April 30, 2024
A FEARFUL FUTURE I am wary of futurist dystopias, but this is a real treat: intelligent sci-fi with serious thrills. As it opens, we are the 2050 audience at the celebration of ten…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:35AMSunday, April 28, 2024
THE COURT AND THE BEDCHAMBER Theatre will never tire of the Tudors, nor should it. From every new angle they offer a dramatic gift which never stops giving. Here’s 1534, and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:10AMFriday, April 19, 2024
MEN BEHAVING RIDICULOUSLY The lord of Navarre and three nobles have resolved to retreat and study for three years, eschewing female company: so even the princess suing for land has to be…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:47AMThursday, April 18, 2024
MUD, MARSH, MONEY Now here’s a bracing new way to do Dickens: avoid sets full of Victoriana by keeping the stage pretty much empty beneath a set of uneasily moving lighting-bars …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:20AMTuesday, April 16, 2024
REFLECTIONS ON A FAT KNIGHT Due to train disruption – speak not of overhead wires and wind – I had to bail out at the interval, from Robert Icke’s epic three and a half hour modern…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:47AMMonday, April 15, 2024
WHY HALESWORTH MATTERS TO THE NATIONAL DRAMATIC ECOSYSTEM The other day I did an overview-preview from some dress rehearsals at the INK short play festival in Suffolk (scroll below), …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51AMSunday, April 14, 2024
CROOKBACK DICK REIMAGINED Saving Richard III from Shakespeare’s calumny seems to have a particular appeal to women: probably because around his accession in the 1480…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:41AMSaturday, April 13, 2024
DIVING ABOUT IN A UNIQUE SHORT-PLAY FESTIVAL Join me on a parked Hoppa minibus where Henry VIII is chatting up a new Jane. She is not impressed by the Tudor-Tinder qualificat…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:27AMFriday, April 12, 2024
HOLINESS IN THE WHALE It pretty much had me harpooned at the words “Call me Ishmael”. As Mark Arends’ earnestly naive schoolteacher speaks the opening lines and begins…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:26AMThursday, April 4, 2024
WUTHERING SIBLINGS Grace Smart the designer sets the scene as we settle in with a sweet miniature moor, all harebells and heather and cloddy bits of earth. But it rises in the air …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:55PMTHE GAME’S AFOOT. EVENTUALLY. Nick Lane’s adaptation of Conan Doyle’s late, broodingly complicated novel has met many huzzahs from Sherlock Holmes fans, previously here, on tour and …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:56AMWednesday, April 3, 2024
DOSTOYEVSKY IN DALTON
“These days” says the man on the empty stage, “people are precious to me, even when they insult me. I have woken up”. His stark features do no…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:17PMSaturday, March 30, 2024
CAMPUS RITES AND WRONGS Sometimes, I do like a stage set you could cosily move right into. Paul Farnsworth’s is a nice evocation of a Harvard professor’s study: shelves and panelling…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:22PMFriday, March 29, 2024
HOMAGE TO THE FIRST CELEBRITY DIVA Last time theatre’s pre-Victorian glory days – silk breeches, rowdy audiences and Garrickian hamming – were celebrated on this stage w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:35AMWednesday, March 27, 2024
HOW TO WASTE A STELLAR CAST Sheridan Smith is not only a box-office draw but a rare and genuine talent: two decades a star on screen and stage, musicals and drama: phenomena…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:27AMSunday, March 24, 2024
MAGIC . ALWAYS BETTER WHEN DISASTROUS. God bless Mischief Theatre. Eleven years ago this coming May I saw THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG in the tiny downstairs space at Trafalgar S…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:01PMFriday, March 22, 2024
KIDS WITH A KICK IN THEM There’s been an interlockof themes in theatre lately: DEAR ENGLAND at the NT displaying Gareth Southgate’s work in fostering the openness and emotiona…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:31AMThursday, March 21, 2024
HOPE, HEART, HARDSHIP Brian Friel’s 1979 remarkable play stands on its own, offering a kind of depressive beauty: beneath the story of one ramshackle troubled couple it is a meditatio…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:44AMRO$$INI BONANZA! Guest reviewer Dean Thompson finds much in a small space… Opera lovers or new to opera will love this! So, get on your horse and gallop over to see Charles Court Opera…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:23AMMonday, March 18, 2024
A CELLULOID INVASION This was at first a startling choice: Eastern Angles’ tradition is generally, as it heroically tours night-by-night across the eastern counties, to programme…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:52PMWednesday, March 13, 2024
BOARDROOM BEASTS This may break all records for the smartest costumes ever at the Southwark’s smallest space: six irreproachable business suits, including two sets of tweed-chic fema…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:26AMTuesday, March 12, 2024
A FRESH CAST, ONE YEAR ON Can it really be a whole year since, with theatre still gallantly recovering from Covid, Nicholas Hytner rolled the dice and opted to offer us some razzle dazzle?…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:40AMFriday, March 8, 2024
PLANT FOOD PEOPLE FROM THE PAST I missed this first time round, due to the babysitting years, so it was grand to catch up. It’s a 1980’s revival, a spoof on 1960’s sci…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15AMThursday, March 7, 2024
A MAVERICK MINISTER There’s another play to be written about Aneurin Bevan, stubborn founder of the National Health Service: perhaps a more contentious one, or a fantasy in w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:44AMWednesday, March 6, 2024
ONCE BRITTEN TWICE SHY? The late David Hemmings, one of Britten’s mentored, worshipped boy sopranos, was unforgettable aged 12 as the original MIles in the composer’s terrifying…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PMTHE WINDRUSH WARRIORS Moses’ crowded bedsit is where the new ones turn up off the boat train, wanting to know how to do London; he can tell them names like Clapham -“not C…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:49AMMonday, March 4, 2024
GUEST REVIEWER AND OPERABUFF DEAN THOMPSON LOVES ENO’S LATEST Ingenious – Dazzling – Hilarious! If you haven’t seen The Magic Flute before, then this is the one to see; if you have…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:46AMFriday, March 1, 2024
CORONATION, COMMISSION, COLLABORATION You need not be a selfish pig to be an artist of genius, but there’s no question that it often helps. Occurs, anyway. In Mark R…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:10AM 
