Sunday, May 7, 2023
By Libby Purves
Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves reviews Cymbeline at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford Upon Avon. Until 27 May 2023
This post REVIEW: Cymbeline, Royal Shakespeare…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 09:51PMSaturday, May 6, 2023
By Libby Purves
Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves reviews Noel Coward's The Vortex now playing at Chichester Festival Theatre. Until 20 May
This post REVIEW: The Vortex, Chichester Festiv…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 10:13PMThursday, May 4, 2023
THE ROARING TWENTIES, ROLLING OVER THE EDGE When Noel Coward shocked and enthralled the 1920s with this most bitter and intense of his plays, he was meanwhile hastily finishing the farcical …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:15PMGATHER ROUND AND HEAR AN OLD, OLD STORY… Deep breath, concentrate at the back: there’s this Ancient Briton King, who once banished a chap who vengefully stole his baby sons, leaving…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:22AMTuesday, May 2, 2023
A THEATRICAL ECHO, SEVENTY YEARS AGO A theatrical tease opens both halves: the voice of Noel Coward singing “There’s a right way and a wrong way, an old way and a new way” for the…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:34PMSunday, April 30, 2023
HARRY HILL TAKES ON TONY BLAIR. FIIIIIIIGHHHT!!!! I couldn’t be more delighted that it’s touring, this splendidly rude show. We need this kind of merrily offensive burlesque, in t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:15PMThursday, April 27, 2023
THE POWER OF NO, IN 1950S AMERICA If we think we suffer from a paranoid cancel-culture , we should note this reminder of mid-1950s America – notably Hollywood – in the McCarth…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:09AMWednesday, April 26, 2023
BLACK, BOYISH, BEAUTIFUL It’s not all musicals and movie-spinoffs that put bill-paying bums on seats. The best producers trust their nerve and instinct ,rake through the fringe …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:30AM REDEFINING FEELINGS IN AN AGE OF ANGRY ANGST “We are three people trying to redefine feeling” they say. They do this between Paris, Munich, Salzburg and Greek islands, and either…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:58AMThursday, April 20, 2023
BLAZING MUSIC HOLDS THE HOUSE TOGETHER After 1930’s Donegal at the NT the day before, Dancing at Lughnasa portraying a group of women meeting stress and poverty with danci…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:26AMWednesday, April 19, 2023
A SAD LOST WORLD . A HUMAN BEAUTY There is particular genius in creating a play which doesn’t build to a showy debacle but grips you with the possibility of an unnamed crisis, and so f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:11AMTuesday, April 18, 2023
ABBASOLUTELY A DELIGHT If there is a formula for a cheerful touring play in our frazzled and disputatious times, it would go like this: warm but a bit rude…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:09AMFriday, April 14, 2023
NEVER FLAT, COWARD There ’s always a slight frisson when Noel Coward’s rueful, dark-streaked romantic comedy is revived in our censorious age. We are nine decades on from the night i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:06AMThursday, April 13, 2023
LOVE, DEATH, GRIEF It’s a joy to have the intimate Swan auditorium open again, refurbished after going dark in the first sudden Covid closure, and to see once again a strong, ni…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:32AMWednesday, April 5, 2023
SEA FRET I’ll give it one thing: over an hour into this infuriating two- hour play there’s a brief but wonderful part for the veteran June Watson. She stumps in with octogenar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:57AMTuesday, April 4, 2023
BEAUTIFUL SCIENCE. UGLY WORLD Unexpectedly enthralled, I spent an hour and a half eavesdropping on six nuclear physicists, and couldn’t be more glad to have caught up on thi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:04AMSunday, March 26, 2023
By Libby Purves
Our very own TheatreCat Libby Purves reviews Noel Coward's Hay Fever currently playing at The Mill at Sonning. Playing until 13 May.
This post REVIEW: Hay Fever, The Mill at …
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 12:31PMBLISS WITH THE BLISSES I don’t always make it through the Oxfordshire lanes to the gorgeous, eccentric, water-wheeled Mill, but the thought of Issy van Randwyck as Judith Bliss lured me . …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:30AMSunday, March 19, 2023
FUTURE IMPERFECT Artificial intelligence and robotics have long been a boon to us ethical-scifi buffs, films like AI and I, Robot mercifully saving us from rocket ships and aliens …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:58PMWednesday, March 15, 2023
HYTNER ROLLS ANOTHER WINNING DICE Daniel Mays has played a lot of tough-guy roles but has by nature a rather innocent and worried-looking face. It is this quality that Nick Hytner sp…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:23AMTuesday, March 14, 2023
RIDE A WILD APP In a week when tech firms shuddered at the shock demise of their favourite bank, how better to spend 90 minutes withJoseph Charlton’s exhilarating, fast moving 3…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:28PMSunday, March 12, 2023
A RADIATING RESPONSIBILITY Since I watched Sizewell A going up as a child, live close to Sizewell B and dwell amid a forest of local posters furiously condemning Sizewell C, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:17PMTuesday, March 7, 2023
SUGAR RUSH I can never resist scribbling down rhymes in new musicals, whether in a spirit appalled or admiring. Take a bow Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary – writers of this extreme ca…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:00AMSunday, March 5, 2023
AN UN-SOLEMN WARNING FROM THE FUTURE H.G.Wells is the inspiration, with a larkily extrovert Dave Hearn from Mischief Theatre pretending to be his great-grandson, heir, and owner of th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:59PMFriday, March 3, 2023
MORE DETAILS, MORE DEVILRY An Afghan army officer flees the Taleban and finds safety on the 23rd floor of Grenfell Tower. His local nickhame is “Sabar”, meaning “pa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:48AMTuesday, February 14, 2023
HIGH ABOVE THE BRUTAL AND BELOVED CITY It’s an architectural moment. Within the stark brutalist NT is a set in homage to a brutalist landmark: the early 1960’s Park Hill Fl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15AMFriday, February 10, 2023
COUGAR CHAOS The Greeks just go on giving. Writer-director Simon Stone’s play, set today amid the upper-middle classes of Holland Park and second-home Suffolk, credits itself m…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:53AMThursday, February 9, 2023
A MONETARY MORALITY PLAY Three hour-long plays, two intervals, three men in black frock-coats explain some financial history in a revolving glass box in front of a projected , m…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:05AMMonday, February 6, 2023
A TALE FOR TODAY FROM A PRUSSIAN PAST Here’s a love story, an idyll of 18c Prussia: Corporal Anastasius Linck, a Hanoverian musketeer in dashing white breeches and shiny buttons …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:25PMWednesday, February 1, 2023
SITCOMS MADE US, BUT CAN WE MAKE THEM? It’s a very good idea, bang on the money: David Cantor and Michael Kingsbury (TV sitcom writers with a pedigree) set their play in a bland pr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:51AMMonday, January 30, 2023
A BLAST OF DAFT JOY Zip-a-dee-doo-dah! Here’s a treat. Disney music, blasting out before this vigorous 65-minute one-man spree, sets the mood. It is carnivalesque, fantastical,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:52PM 
