Tuesday, September 9, 2025
EMPYREAN ENTERTAINMENT; CLUTCH IT TO YOUR FAINTING BOSOM NOW!   It should be on prescription,  so healing of life's frustrations is this Charles Court Opera revival of Gilbert…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:02PM[SHARE]Friday, September 5, 2025
AMBRIDGE OVER SLIGHTLY TROUBLED WATER  Tim Stimpson is a long-serving modern writer on Radio 4's The Archers, and loves it:  so his play is about the dawning, 75 years ago,  …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:29AM[SHARE]Wednesday, September 3, 2025
POETIC PASSIONS IN A TUDOR POLICE STATE Â Â Here's a lively aquib from the RSC, a bravura 85 minute two-hander about Christopher Marlowe "Â dead at 29 in a Deptford tavern brawl " a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:59AM[SHARE]Friday, August 29, 2025
A MODERN CHEKHOVIAN PLAY, BEAUTIFUL Â Â The first thoughts that steuck me on leaving Andrew Keatley's well-made, slightly old fashioned family drama were that a lesser playwright would…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:39AM[SHARE]BACK TO THE LAND Â Â Â Â Birdsong, a grassy bank. At a rough rustic table sits a rough rustic:Â bearded, silent, rolling fags and contemplating a broken tractor part. Â Int…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:52AM[SHARE]Friday, August 8, 2025
A FAMILY BUSINESS AT SIXES AND 007s This little theatre has given us some strong meat lately " themes of Nazi crimes, Jewishness, Russianness " but this time it hosts the Barn theatre's spar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:26AM[SHARE]Wednesday, August 6, 2025
A TRUE-CRIME RICARDIAN ROMCOM Here's a wonderfully 1950s retro play, not just in style and simplicity but in the willowy vintage-Harrods outfits of Rachel Pickup as the willowy Marta…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:26PM[SHARE]Wednesday, July 30, 2025
LA COMMEDIA E FINITA! (oh no it's not)    The title is the first line, delivered by a furious Leoncavallo in 1893 Milan. It is a time of wild flowering in opera , old Verd…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:28AM[SHARE]Saturday, July 26, 2025
A WILD YOUNG PRINCE OF DENMARK IN THE DUSK     Easy to forget, after decades of prestige-casting and its torrent of ringing, over-quoted lines, how much HAMLET is a play …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:41AM[SHARE]Thursday, July 24, 2025
MUM-POLE OF THE BAILEY….?    I paused overnight before writing this, to see if a bout of two-star irritation might fade.  After all, lawyer-playwright  Suzie Miller g…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:28PM[SHARE]Wednesday, July 23, 2025
FAITH LOST, AND WAKENED Â Â Â This is a moody, cloudy production shot through with streaks of mad rage, deliberately unsettling. Â Autolycus, spirit of Time the thief and occasio…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:06AM[SHARE]Friday, July 18, 2025
WESTMINSTER , A WILL, A WICKED WRANGLE Â Â Â Â This excellent play is the first by Shaan Sahota, a doctor by profession:Â but goodness, she (and the NT Studio, and director Dan…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:06AM[SHARE]Thursday, July 17, 2025
MEDIEVAL MODERNITY There's a nice irony in opening, this week, a tale of an aristocratically  bred heiress, seized first by evangelical Christian faith and then by a charismatic man,  …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:06PM[SHARE]Thursday, July 10, 2025
SMOOTH AS VELVET, SHOT WITH GILT AND GUILT Ahhh I do love a well-made play from the 1920s (remember The Deep Blue Sea , just lately!). This one too deals with adultery and hidd…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:27AM[SHARE]Wednesday, July 9, 2025
GRACE PERVADES    Theatre Royal Bath   Theatre is fond of sending itself love letters, albeit " from Sheridan's The Critic to Frayn's Noises Off " often prudently…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:43AM[SHARE]Saturday, June 14, 2025
A WILD NIGHT WITH COUNT TOLSTOY    Even those who haven't read Tolstoy's great novel know about the train under which the despairing Anna will die.  So it dominates f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:37AM[SHARE]Friday, June 13, 2025
PHYSICAL, PIRATICAL, PLAYFUL    All aboard the Jolly Todger, where Long John Silver's parrot Alexa (she comes from the Amazon, get it?) keeps accidentally ordering unwanted C…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:46AM[SHARE]Monday, June 9, 2025
DREAM ON! Â Â Â Five years on, Â beyond Covid lockdowns and its magnificent Guys and Dolls, here again is the Bridge's irresistible multi-mouse take on Shakespeare's sunniest comed…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:44AM[SHARE]Wednesday, June 4, 2025
WHY RATTIGAN COUNTS Quite a rare outing for this very late Terence Rattigan play, written after his star had fallen under the assault of mouthy Osborne, Amis and the "angry young men" wh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:26AM[SHARE]Saturday, May 31, 2025
BROWN BRITISH LIVES, FROM ENOCH TO SUNAK  Sathnam Sanghera's novel drew on his own life, partly homage to Arnold Bennett and with some echoes of Priestley too, joined the fine chronic…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:23AM[SHARE]Thursday, May 29, 2025
It is indeed PLUTO not Apollo who rules the Underworld. Was tired. Apologies to all classicists.
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:53AM[SHARE]SONDHEIM AND THE STYX  I last saw this 405BC Greek classic in Spymonkey's version and found it " sorry " unfroggettable. Giant puppetry, a community chorus tap-dancing as frogs w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:19AM[SHARE]Thursday, May 15, 2025
DROWNING PASSION,  TIMELESS RESCUE Marvellous play, this: wrenches the heart out of you , patches it up and sets it back on the hard road of life and love. It wrenched Terence Rattig…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:13AM[SHARE]I said it all at the Royal Court " https://theatrecat.com/2024/11/09/giant-royal-court-theatre/ " and it is an event not to miss, especially the way the world is in 2025.   Ev…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:19AM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 14, 2025
WELL WORTH THE MONEYPENNY Â Â Â Â This is glorious: just what we all needed. Â In the company's spirit of never wasting a terrible joke, I absolutely Bond-ed to it. Â Follow…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:36AM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 13, 2025
HOME AND FAMILY, BEAUTY AND SADNESS Â Few days late to the party with this , poor old theatrecat having seemed to fall off the press list;Â but very well worth the ticket (Old Vic prici…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:59AM[SHARE]Friday, May 9, 2025
AFFLUENZA APOCALYPSE    As Aubrey de Mandeville puts it in the great Antrobus books, "God, here's a strange lozenge-shaped affair!"  Buñuel meets Monty Python,  cour…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:57AM[SHARE]Thursday, May 8, 2025
 A MODERN CLASSIC DONE WITH VIGOUR  Michael Frayn's play-about-actors is always welcome: a comic masterpiece and loving study in theatre's own absurdity. The first act shows a final l…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:03AM[SHARE]Friday, May 2, 2025
   A SATIRICAL WARNING FROM OLD UKRAINE    Not long ago a rompingly funny version of Gogol's satire on official incompetence ran at Marylebone ( https://theatrecat.co…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:23AM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 30, 2025
MATHILDE AND THE BUILDER (can he fix it? Probably not)      The set is glassand towering, city-chic backed by reeds and seashore; the figures before us NYC glamorous, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:53AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 22, 2025
WINNERS, WAGS AND WRONGS Well, here's a summer romp.  Hot on the heels of Tom Hiddleston in a disco version up Drury Lane, here's the RSC take on one of the sunniest Shakespe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:17PM[SHARE] 
