Friday, August 18, 2023
HAVING THE BEST OF TIMES IN THE PARK Even in familiar classics you can never predict which anthem will set you dabbing your eye. You might expect it at Albin’s anguished ‘I …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:11PMThursday, August 17, 2023
DOPAMINE , DRUGS, DANGER, DOCTORS This intriguing play by Lucy Prebble aired in 2012 in the intimate Cottesloe space , with Billie Piper and Jonjo o’Neill as paid subjects in an antid…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:55AMWednesday, August 16, 2023
FORTY YEARS ON, FROM TWO PERSPECTIVES This is a properly interesting RSC commission: a history play about the Falklands invasion by Argentina in 1982 and the British task force which e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:35AMWednesday, August 9, 2023
SORROW AND SUSPICION This one had me from the first few minutes: another Jermyn find. A new play, whose young actor- writer Abigail Hood and director Kevin Tomlinson both perform in…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:57AMFriday, August 4, 2023
A CORONATION YEAR ROMP ANYWAY A neighbour in the stalls confided that she sees a lot of West End theatre but avoids “the more highbrow sort”. She was in the right place, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:41PMTHREE GENERATIONS UNDER SMARTPHONE RULE Bit late to this one, and it had mixed reviews – largely I suspect because Michael Wynne’s play, a two hour four-hander all-woman slice of life …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:38PMTuesday, August 1, 2023
NEVER MIND THE MOUNTAIN, OVER THE ROAD CHICHESTER ROCKS Now here’s a perfect gig for us 1970’s leftovers, though I suspect today’s young rockers will also love the shiny leat…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:45PMSunday, July 30, 2023
OLD SOHO SPEAKS AGAIN, AND WISELY Of all the places you’d expect to see Quentin Crisp – even as a ghost or tribute – one of the least likely is a wooded amphitheatre in Suffolk at…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:26PMSaturday, July 29, 2023
TRAGEDY, JOKES, ORACLES, SINGING SHEEP AND A BEAR After last year’s storming Macbeth, Red Rose Chain returns to the wooded site at Sutton Hoo for its second big outdoor …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:54AMWednesday, July 19, 2023
THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN? Tanika Gupta’s play is a sprawling, angrily intimate epic about Indians in Britain during the height of empire, thirteen years running up to old Queen V…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:49AMMonday, July 17, 2023
A FEW OF OUR FAVOURITE THINGS… Let it be said first of all that Gina Beck is a glorious gamine Maria: sings like a bird and is satisfyingly able to convey in her voice her gr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:43PMSunday, July 16, 2023
THE WAY IT WAS Ah, the forgotten plays of the 30s and 40s, how they lure me to basements and pub rooms and tunnels: Jermyn and Finborough and Southwark in particular! Like co…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:15PMWednesday, July 12, 2023
BIRTH, DEATH, SCIENCE , ANGER “The smell – the smell – the sheets…” Curtain up, he is gripped by urgency, past or present. . Now a successful doctor home in Hungary…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24AMTuesday, June 20, 2023
COME ON MY SONS… At the end of the first half of this exhilarating play, England is through to the World Cup quarter-finals in Russia after several bracing straight wins and an ago…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:56PMTuesday, June 13, 2023
1926 AND ALL THAT, ON THE AIR Fresh from doing cartwheels in the Bake Off musical up the road, Haydn Gwynne is now a strangely convincing Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin , in pinstripe. Oh,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:58PMQUIET DESPERATION, NOISY GUNSHOTS “Everybody tell the story Everybody sing the song, Every now and then a country Goes a little wrong…” Hard for it not to feel topical, S…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:47AMSunday, June 11, 2023
HIGH NOTES AND KNOBBLY KNEES I am a relative newcomer to Gilbert & Sullivan, having long thought I hated them (heard too many gammony fans in my childhood wrecking the songs…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:43PMSaturday, June 10, 2023
By Libby Purves
Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves reviews the return season of Groundhog Day at the Old Vic Theatre, London.
This post REVIEW: Groundhog Day, Old Vic Theatre London 2023 �…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 02:17AMFriday, June 9, 2023
WELCOME BACK TO PUNXATAWNEY Seven years after its premiere at the Old Vic earned a flurry of Oliviers, by way of a pandemic and a disappointingly short Broadway run , here it…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:42AMWednesday, June 7, 2023
A TIME CAPSULE OF OPEN MARRIAGE I am pleased to find out about Miles Malleson: an Edwardian student joker, WW1 conscientious objector, Bolshevist, founder of Left drama groups and the…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:53PMMOTHER RUSSIA’s WARRING SONS At the Almeida this shook and delighted us last year: a fresh history play: confrontational , shocking, classic in its focus on vast flawed cha…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:38AMFriday, June 2, 2023
BIG SHOW, BIG HEART, SMALL SPACE This, I urgently must tell you, is rather wonderful: an example of the way that sometimes a big show in a small theatre can be a revelation…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:39AMWednesday, May 17, 2023
By Libby Purves
Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves reviews How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying now playing at Southwark Playhouse.
This post REVIEW: How To Succeed In Business…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 05:47AM BACK TO THE OFFICE, EVERYONE! There is, by chance a bit of a Thing going on in theatre right now: women playing a particularly alpha type of men, with glee and an unnerving s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:04AMThursday, May 11, 2023
WHEN DIVORCE WAS DISASTER It’s 1921. Thirty years ago Lady Kitty ran out on her MP husband Clive and small son with his friend and colleague Hughie, exploding a public scandal…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:08AMWednesday, May 10, 2023
BORN TO LEAD.. This is a joy, quirky and full-hearted, musically adroit and fast-moving and witty. Moreover, I suspect its self-mocking variety-show humour would be more to t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:43AMSunday, 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 07:34PM 
