
THE SAVAGE BEAUTY OF THE FIRST AIR WAR   Britain did not stand alone in WW1.  As our hero sings in John MacLachlan Gray's 1982 play: "South Africa and Canada and Austr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:51AM[SHARE]GUEST CRITIC MICHAELÂ ADAIRÂ LISTENS, AS WE SHOULD A glass box filled with smoke encapsulates the Royal Court stage. Shadowy figures patrol its perimeter, sometimes staring out a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:04AM[SHARE]LOVE’S PRECEDENCE AND CRUELTY    George is a journalist-intellectual, award-winner, amiably vain and sixtyish.. He twinkles for England, with much black-…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:51AM[SHARE]NOT SO VERY   A wooden box swings, pendulum-regular, in a peerlessly spooky attic of Halloween horror, designed with glee by Anna Fleischle .  It is inhabited. Difficult, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PM[SHARE]LOVE,  LIES AND THE PAIN OF TRUTH   Is it better to live in a lie, a happy story, or to admit the messy sinful truth? Should you assume that every person you…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45AM[SHARE]ALONE ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA      The Rime of the Ancient Mariner may be studded with overfamiliar quotations, but taken in its entirely, has power to disturb .…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:12PM[SHARE]LECHERY AND TREACHERY, MACHISMO AND METAL…  'I had forgotten" said a companion as we staggered out, deafened by the final outbreak of crazed metallic drumming, "how syph…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:25AM[SHARE]ROMPING FABLE OF A GREASEPAINT CENTURY        Twins, three sets of them, in a dynasty of performers from the 1880s onward: a theatrical boarding-house with a h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:59PM[SHARE]FOR BETTER FOR WORSE? FOR FIVE MICE ANYWAY    If you're going to mess about with a classic but slightly dated Sondheim musical, be sure to do it brilliantly. Do it …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24PM[SHARE]CONCEPTION AND THE CREATIVES   It's a sign of the sparky credibility of Nina Raine's play about a woman desperate for a sperm donor – having broken with her younger, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:48PM[SHARE]THE HEIGHTS OF LIFE    Theatre sometimes gives films – and books – a remarkable translation, making stories deeper ,stranger , more tense.  …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:05AM[SHARE]THE YOUNG DARWIN RISES AGAIN     The Jerwood Gallery is for the first time a theatre: in the small excitement of a new space dark shapes loom ahead of us, angular, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:06AM[SHARE]LUKE JONES TAKES THE MEASURE.. This is a made for measure Measure-For-Measure. Its greatest achievement is hacking the flabby old Jacobian down to the right side of 90 minutes. It rol…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:44AM[SHARE]A MASTERPIECE OF LOVE AND LOSS   I saw this on tour in Cambridge, and heroically held of telling you until the West End embargo lifted. It's wonderful: puzzling, moving, c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15AM[SHARE]A DOSE HARD TO SWALLOW David Hare has chronicled Labour politics – and the state of the nation -for nearly half a century,  brilliantly catching truths and tensions. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:01PM[SHARE]THE EXTINCTION OF ENGLAND'S EASTERNMOST VILLAGE         There is no Grit fishing-village now on the Lowestoft shore, but in 1900 there were homes, shops,Â�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:01AM[SHARE]DIVORCED BEHEADED DIED – REVIVED! Took me a shameful while to catch up on this clever little riot of a feminist musical, down from an Edinburgh triumph and packing the Ar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:54PM[SHARE]TALES OF A CITY    "I see a beautiful city" says a spotlit actor, and the rest take it up in styles from Radio 4 to rap, then group and regroup, changing with the shrug o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:48AM[SHARE]WARM HEARTS,  COLD WAR After the Salisbury-Novichok affair there is a sour laugh when Stewart, the MI5 official, reassures the nervous Jackson family that the coming arres…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:22AM[SHARE]GUEST CRITIC BEN BLACKMORE MUSES ON CHEESE-KNIVES AND TELETUBBY HOUSES PINTER 2 announces itself in bold, Sex And The City-type projections, in the Sex And The City font as though it …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:58PM[SHARE]STEEL CELLS AND SADISM Â Â Â Settling in, you'd think you were at the Cenotaph or the Tattoo. Â A military soundtrack booms out Imperial Echoes and Jupiter (I Vow To Thee M…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:56AM[SHARE]A GLORIOUS SERPENT OF OLD NILE    This can be a beast of a play: epic, three and a half hours, scenes spread across the Mediterranean from Rome to Cairo by land and sea.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12PM[SHARE]MOLIERE IN THE MODERN MIDLANDS     It says something good about our arts establishment that this sharp caper comes from the Royal Shakespeare Company, not some …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:00PM[SHARE]PARENTHOOD, PRAYER , PROSECCO The renamed Tricycle (no, I am not taking sides) Â Is open:Â its leader Indhu Rubasingham launches her sprauncy new theatre with Alexis Zegerman's …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:29AM[SHARE]DOING JUSTICE TO AGATHA Â (She'd have loved it!) Â Â Â Â Â Â The courtroom is the marbled council chamber of the old County Hall:the story by Agatha Christie even hoarier…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55AM[SHARE]LOOKING OUT TO SEA, AT PAST AND FUTURE    With the feral teenage violence of HEATHERS (scroll to it below) all snarling and murdering in the West End, and the manic cheer…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:45PM[SHARE]OUT OF AUSTERITY, A DREAM OF BEAUTY       A gulf yawns between this musical's two halves: a gulf of wealth, sophistication, hope and colour.  Ida Harr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:23PM[SHARE]DARK LARKS AND HIGH SCHOOL HOMICIDE You thought there were enough school-themed musicals? What with Bring it On, School of Rock and our own dear cross-dressing Jamie…?Â…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:56PM[SHARE]A RARE OLD TIME IN DUBLIN , IN IPSWICH The miniature of Libby Watson's gorgeous Dublin pub set in the foyer raises your spirits straight away. Sometimes only an Irish pub w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:52AM[SHARE]HUMANITY RISING FROM HORROR Â Â Â It is one of the oldest notions in the world: the unquiet grave. Â From Sophocles to modern campaigns we are haunted by the idea that the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:35AM[SHARE]Â GUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR IS TRANSPORTED TO NEW YORK, AND FAMILY TRUTH The joy of a play like The Humans is that it can take a subject that feels as if it might have been …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:05PM[SHARE]

