Thursday, March 24, 2016
REASONS TO BE UNREASONABLE… I had almost forgotten seeing the first in this Neil laBute trilogy – Reasons to be Pretty – until the looming, hapless figure of Tom Bur…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:16PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 17, 2016
BRANAGH AND BRYDON GO BANG Well, you’ll never see our Kenneth Branagh more exuberantly violent, nor tumbling into more compromising positions; nor so crazedly drugged, veering f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:50PM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 16, 2016
THE TRUTH GAME. OR NOT. Its' a while since so many shrieks, barks and snorts of laughter shook the seats around me: don't take your drink in, you’ll risk doing the nose trick in th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:21PM[SHARE]NOTAHIT On the banks of the Nile, the princess of Egypt lifts a Jewish baby from the Nile waters, but changes her mind, chucks him back and chooses a prettier one. The reject survives…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:42AM[SHARE]GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI WATCHES MOZART WIPE THE FLOOR WITH THE COMPETITION – AS USUAL Pairing a copper-bottomed opera classic (Mozart's Così fan tutte) with an imported A…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:19AM[SHARE]Monday, March 14, 2016
PLENTY OF ACTIVITY, NOT QUITE ENOUGH RADIANCE This theatre is certainly fearless about potentially tasteless names – Bad Jews, Urinetown, now Miss Atomic Bomb: the first two of those, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:10PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 13, 2016
“OVERPAID, OVERSEXED, OVER HERE”…AND NOT AT EASE... In 1942 the Americans came to rural Britain: the US Eighth Air Force, its members often outnumbering local villagers 50 …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:33PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 10, 2016
THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN RANTS AGAIN, Â THEN CHANGES SEX This is a sharp bit of work by Derby, marking 60 years since John Osborne's splenetic debut blew the lid – so theatre legen…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:55PM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 9, 2016
A TWO-WHEELED CHARIOT OF FIRE I suppose there must be some lazy, vacillating, unfocused Yorkshirewomen, but I’ve not met one yet. Â And of that tribe of gritty, unselfpitying,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:42PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 8, 2016
IT GLITTERS! Â IT SINGS! IT MAKES SENSE. EVEN INÂ MAD TROUSERS! Â I expected a big splashy jukebox musical, a-glitter with tearful Broadway sentiment and popster pizzazz. And i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:39PM[SHARE]Friday, March 4, 2016
THE DAWN OF WAR, Â 1914 World War I and its aftermath are being well served by theatre (my last year's reflections, http://tinyurl.com/q53tp5p). But Jeremy James' play is the first …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:11PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 1, 2016
LONG ISLAND, THE WIGS AND THE WARDROBE… The Jean Anouilh plays I devoured as a neurotic sixth-former always had Antigone, Joan of Arc or Thomas a Becket heroically refusing comp…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:43PM[SHARE]Monday, February 29, 2016
GETTING THEM OFF FOR VICTORY, UP WEST I loved this show at the Theatre Royal, Bath, and – especially given a couple of rather snotty lukewarm reviews – thought I should ch…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:07PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 28, 2016
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GETS UNEXPECTEDLY CASUAL ABOUT HIGH CULTURE Some people get terribly, passionately serious about Wagner. This shouldn't be a problem: truly great music…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:16PM[SHARE]Friday, February 26, 2016
BANG THE DRUM FOR THIS ONE: Â AN INTIMATE EPIC OF WAR AND FRIENDSHIP This premiere for the Park is a cracker: a serious, grownup, constantly entertaining light on history with fine-…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:17PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 24, 2016
A FAREWELL TEMPEST, RICH AND STRANGE For a departing artistic director, especially here, Shakespeare's last plays are a natural choice: great poetic anthems of reconciliation and renu…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:34PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 18, 2016
A RESTORATION OF HIGH SPIRITS.. Looking back at this play's first outing – in the outdoor, summery, rackety pleasure that is Shakespeare's Globe – I remember actually liking it f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:33PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 17, 2016
THEY CAME, THEY CONQUERED Call me a patsy and a soft touch, but you won't find me sneezing at anything which – within twenty minutes of a deafening, blinding opening – off…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:53PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 16, 2016
McBURNEY ON, AND IN, THE BRAIN If there is any theatre artist reliably able to draw you into a world of disorientation, time-slip, near-death and a sense of licking hallucinogenic frogs in a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21PM[SHARE]GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI DISCOVERS SOMETHING GREEN AND FRESH BEHIND A LOT OF DEAD WOOD Robert Icke's new adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya is best summarised as an update " and an A…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:30AM[SHARE]Monday, February 15, 2016
AND THEY CALL IT PUPPET LOVE…. "Avenue Q meets The Exorcist" claim posters for Robert Askins' Broadway hit, directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel. Or "The Muppets play The Omen". B…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:11PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 11, 2016
IN THE END, AN HONOURABLE PLAY Its fame rolls before it: a debut play, premiered in London by Matthew Perry. To a generation of young adults (and to many far younger, thanks to ceasel…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:48PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 10, 2016
SHAKESPEARE’S TOWN LAID BEFORE US The year 1613: somewhere offstage old Shakespeare is dying, and in her husband's physic-garden, competent and dignified, his daughter Susanna a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:11AM[SHARE]Saturday, February 6, 2016
THE DEEPEST GRIEF OBSERVED Pretty much everyone agreed – here and on its West End transfer- that the American David Lindsay-Abaire's GOOD PEOPLE was a masterpiece, with its defi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:39AM[SHARE]Thursday, February 4, 2016
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS OLD IDEAS COMING BACK TO HAUNT THEIR CREATOR The Master Builder, Halvard Solness, is universally acknowledged by his townsfolk as a lucky man: self-made…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:21AM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 2, 2016
RED VELVET:Â Â DEEP AND RICH AS EVER This (I sneaked in to an early preview , because I am on holiday) was my third visit to Lolita Chakrabarti's play, starring her husband the matchles…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:17PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 28, 2016
MARTY FELDMAN: Â A GREAT COMIC’S ENDGAME Next week at the Jermyn there opens a play which is a memorial to a late-life friendship with Lucille Ball; already on the far side of the Ch…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:53PM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 26, 2016
THE EMPTY NEST, THE TROUBLED MIND Hold tight. It's the French genius litterateur Florian Zeller messing with our heads again. We are confused, wary, deceived and unsettled by the tric…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:56PM[SHARE]Saturday, January 23, 2016
A MEMORIAL IN MUSIC This is a solo show, a memorial to a mother and to a generation. It is performed not by an actor but by the American concert pianist, Mona Golabek.  Yet as a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:23AM[SHARE]Friday, January 22, 2016
ANOTHER CHICHESTER SMASH COMES WEST This is a revisit, to a partly recast Chichester show: and I must admit I had qualms about losing that generosity, that overflowing vigour you get with th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:01PM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 20, 2016
MORE POIGNANT THAN POISONOUS: A 125TH ANNIVERSARY MARKED One wit called it 'the first French novel in English', with its seductive evocation of exotic decadence and corrupting wickedn…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
