Tuesday, June 12, 2018
MICHAEL ADAIRÂ SHUDDERS AT THE HARD OLD PATRIARCHY… 'These modern neurotic women, doctor. What are we going to do with them?' says one exasperated male character to another. H…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:02AM[SHARE]Thursday, June 7, 2018
STRINDBERG MEETS STENHAM, BIRD MEETS BLENDER We're in a Hampstead mansion. The daughter of the house is whooping it up at her birthday party, a deafening, purple-lit rave where tight-…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:28PM[SHARE]THE RUMBUSTIOUS AFFAIR OF THE CLOGS IN THE NIGHT TIME Barrie Rutter and the Globe are made for each other:. Fresh out of his storming leadership (and frequent personal performa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:38PM[SHARE]A WRITER, A MOTHER, A LIFE The elegant new Bridge continues to demonstrate – firmly " that it is uniquely versatile. After one traditional tragicomedy (Young Marx) we had a swir…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:32AM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 5, 2018
LUKE JONES REVELS Â IN VIOLENCE, CHILL, NIGHTMARE..AND GREAT DIALOGUE Orlando Bloom – denim, cowboy hat, slicked back hair, twinkling grimace – is as chilled out as a ma…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:59AM[SHARE]Saturday, June 2, 2018
A TAPESTRY OF HOPE Â Â Â Â Â Lady Anne Tree was the Duke of Devonshire's daughter, sister in law of Kathleen Kennedy and Debo Mitford: Â grand as they come. Â…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:28PM[SHARE]Friday, June 1, 2018
THE EDUCATION JUNGLE    A late catch-up for this short tour from Theatre Royal York: but blimey, well worth it. sA drawing-room drama of manners with deep, tangled …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:53AM[SHARE]Thursday, May 31, 2018
SORROW AND SPLENDOUR IN WORDS THAT SING The first act of Brian Friel's great play ends with a shout of "bloody, bloody, bloody marvellous!". And so it bloody well is, this comi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:03AM[SHARE]Friday, May 25, 2018
LUKE JONES FALLS FOR TINKERBELL… Peter Pan has now flown into every medium possible. He is a play, novel, pantomime, musical, television programme, cartoon and a Kate Bush single. This…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:21AM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 22, 2018
MULTINATIONAL MENACE It is always a dilemma, for those of us who despise star-ratings as a measuring device, when a 90 minute play seems set fair to earn three, or three-and-a-bit, tr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:50PM[SHARE]Friday, May 18, 2018
THE NEW ERA BEGINS…   Here's a vulnerable Hamlet: a lonely lad in proper tearful grief and disappointment at his mother's remarriage.  A Hamlet who, in feigning …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:01AM[SHARE]Thursday, May 17, 2018
BOW, BOW! THEY'RE ON THE ROAD AGAIN.. It must be nearly five years since Sasha Regan's all-male Iolanthe at Wiltons' caused me to break a lifelong resistance and enjoy …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:28AM[SHARE]SCHLOCK-HORRORWITZ  AND HURRAH FOR THE SKELETON   Gotta love the buccaneering quality of west end theatres: the Small Faces musical at the little Ambassadors off Cam…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:42AM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 15, 2018
THE SHINE AND THE TERROR It is no bad thing to have your stage hero effectively co-designing the set. Christopher Oram's recreation of Mark Rothko's 1950's studio is a bleak bo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:18PM[SHARE]Friday, May 11, 2018
CLEAR YOUNG VOICES FROM A DISTANT PAST   Three children in the 1540's play in a hay-barn, built fragrant and real in the tiny theatre.  One has found a pilgr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:55AM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 8, 2018
ROUGH, RURAL, A NEGLECTED ALBION An immense intrusive pipe bisects the stage, a rusty oil tank below it with part of a tractor one side and a cheerless Victorian brick farmhous…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:39PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 3, 2018
OSCAR AT HIS MOST EARNEST Worth going to Jonathan Church's latest Wilde "Classic Spring"revival if only for a feast of Foxes: patriarch Edward as old Lord Caversham and his re…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:58PM[SHARE]CREATIVES, C***TS AND CONTRACTS  The theatrical repertoire has a new monster:  Bernard, created by Joe Penhall and brought to scorchingly memorable, sociopathicall…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:09AM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 2, 2018
FAST, FINE  STREETWISE SHAKESPEARE     Running and scuffling, a crowd of kids in black scatter across the stark stage under an open-sided, distressedly concr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:55AM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 1, 2018
GUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR  FINDS  KINSHIP IN  A FAMILY SORROW Well, this is timely. In the shadow of Windrush, a play  immerses us in the colourful traditions …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12AM[SHARE]Friday, April 27, 2018
COWARD GOES FARCEO-FORTISSIMO      In the final outburst from our hero Gary Essendine – silk-dressing-gowned philanderer, arrogantly insecure d…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:08AM[SHARE]Thursday, April 26, 2018
A WAR OVER, A WORLD ADRIFT It's a great tapestry of a play: Rodney Ackland's portrait of a Soho nightclub as WW2 ended. Socialites and slobs, black-marketeers and failing artists, una…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:06AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 24, 2018
REBEL WITHOUT AN ARGUMENT It is a curiosity of the age that young British women seem to be far angrier about The Patriarchy than their mothers , even though law, language, women's acc…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:04PM[SHARE]GOLDEN SANDS AND GRIEVANCES Nicola Werenowska has certainly found fertile ground for the setting of her play: the decline of English seaside towns (in this case Clacton) from t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:50PM[SHARE]Monday, April 23, 2018
Part 1: SECRET HEARTS (and an explanation) This is a fabulously quixotic enterprise directed by Tom Littler: a revival of all nine of Noel Coward's one-act plays, written in 1935 as a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:56AM[SHARE]Saturday, April 21, 2018
MORE THAN A PICNIC Â I could tell you that it is worth going up West for the transfer of Hampstead's fine play just to see Roger Allam (his fine quiff sadly suppressed under…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:37PM[SHARE]Friday, April 20, 2018
BAT'S BACK…    In a remarkably quick return after its Coliseum outing , Jim Steinman's barmy musical is storming onto the Tottenham Court Road, rocking on. Few cast c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:17AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 17, 2018
A LATE NIGHT TO REMEMBER      At twenty to midnight, 106 years to the day after the collision, an audience gathered in this big theatre to mark and remember…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:15AM[SHARE]Monday, April 16, 2018
SCI-FI AND SORROW We begin with a tiny proscenium box, an almost Punch-and-Judy window, framing Harry and his wife Max: nice middle-aged people, evoked to sitcom perfection by a beard…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:35AM[SHARE]Thursday, April 12, 2018
  THE JOINT IS JUMPING! AGAIN…   Openings are running in themed  sets – three Restoration comedies coming along like No.11 buses, and now two …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:35AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 10, 2018
SWOTS OR SWINDLERS, VILLAINS OR VICTIMS? Sometimes a West End transfer serves a play royally. At Chichester last year I enjoyed James Graham's playful, thoughtfully mischievous…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:39PM[SHARE] 
