TA-RAN-TA-RA ! Mike Leigh, a veteran better known for films, Abigail’s Party and theatrical experiments with scriptless rehearsal, is also a dedicated devotee of the utterly scripte…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55AMTHE COOLEST CAT IN LONDON. AND SOME RATS. Here’s your traditional Christmas outing, proper panto. No rackety popstar hype or tedious suggestive jokes from worn-out comicS…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:27PMGALSWORTHY ? WELL WORTH SEEING With late Victorians, there’s plenty to bite on: a rising bourgeoisie aflame with parvenu ambition, piety , pannier skirts ,patriarchs, an empi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:05PMWISDOM IN A LIFE BACKWARDS Forget the awful fim made from Scott Fitzgerald’s story about a life lived backwards – a man born in old age, working towards youth and infancy in reve…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:44AMA JOURNEY OF JOURNEYS A map is a lovely thing, but sometimes practically speaking a diagram is better. And can also be lovely: especially when its useful elegance has become a fam…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:04PMTHE BIG RATHER UNFRIENDLY GIANT Tom Maschler, legendary publisher and once a Kindertransport child, summed up the appeal of Roald Dahl: his stories offer “A glorious p…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:55AM1648, Agra: marble and murder, a terrible beauty One of the worst photo-ops of Princess Diana’s collapsing marriage was that shot at the Taj Mahal, billed by romantics as “eternal …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:24AMLOOK BACK IN COMPASSION The Rattigan renaissance of the last few years is more than welcome: ever since Flare Path hit the West End fourteen years ago there seems to have bee…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:45PMTHE GRANDEST OF GRIEFS Not Renaissance Mantua but New York a century past: smart bars and low dives, gangsters in fedoras. Why not ? In any world might be a lonely jokester, missing his …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11AMA short catch-up on one of the season’s greats (was away..) Mark Strong is made to play great tragedy: a long powerful body, controlled bleak intelligent features.A figure from any age…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:37PM“…HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB” That was the subtitle, when exactly sixty years ago a shower of Oscars fell on Stanley Kubrick’s brilliantly tasteless,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:26PMA HARD AND ICY WORLD A 1970’s Hull folksong chorus: “Next time you see a trawlerman on Hessle Road half tight – remember, o remember, the perils of that night”. It was a trib…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:27AMBROTHER, CHRISTIAN, WITCHFINDER I reviewed this play about the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins last year, in Ipswich: I write only to add thoughts, now that it has deservedly…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:54PMLEHMANS REVISITED The first time I saw Sam Mendes’ production at the NT, I exclaimed that the evening had no right to be so much fun: three hours, three chaps in black frock coats, no so…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:10AMCHOSEN PEOPLE, CHOSEN LIVES The saying goes “two Jews, three opinions”, though some say that’s an underestimate. Here are five people and innumerable opinions: two couples, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:58PMSent from my iPad ZELDIN AGAIN I sometimes feel real sympathy (possibly unwanted) for actors who, trained and motivated to channel and express extreme and painful emotions, do their absolute…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:00AMPOETRY AND PITY Tremendous swagged, fringed, and roped retro curtains , the Gielgud looking much as it would 100 years ago when Sean O’Casey’s most famous play reached Londo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:46AMSHARP SCRATCH? Crossing the Edgware Rd yesterday a shouting vaccine denier with a loudspeaker informed us all, stomping past in some sort of hurry, that vaccines were lies, inoculat…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:02AMSTONED STONES IN WEST WITTERING, 1967 At the end the 1200-strong crowd explodes to join a final roar of “Satisfaction” with the cast – lawyers, police, fans, three generatons …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:33PMVICTORIAN MISCHIEF WELL IN TUNE FOR TODAY . Do you want to see a senior Government minister entangled with a socially climbing financier and a fashion-greedy wife, playing the flute t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:51AMLAURIE LEE, REMEMBERED AND REMEMBERING A nine-part orchestra, gilded harp and flute at its apex; behind, monochrome photos of a century past show rural Gloucestershire, then the…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:21AMPOLITICAL ECHOES, CLASS ARROGANCE, THRILLS The award for ExIt of the Year goes to the magnificent David Oyelowo, tearing up the central aisle of the Olivier in a fury as the f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:57AMFIRST CLASS FROM CHRISTIE, LUDWIG AND BAILEY This could have been a bit of a groan, like the overcomplex Rebus Game Called Malice , also on tour . But actually it’s a class act in ever…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:30AMFRIENDSHIP HITS THE ROCKS OF TASTE : MISCHIEVOUS, SAD AND FUNNY Not everything that tours the country is Agatha Christie or star-fed froth: sometimes a serious emotional and in…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:59AMREACH FOR THE STARS: IT TAKES HARD GRAFT AND VODKA Any week now at the Gielgud we shall hear the famous drunken cry in Juno and the Paycock “what is the stars?”. At the heart of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:49PMDATING FOR A CONFUSED AGE I have written before of the particular glee I feel when a brand-new and original show emerges , not from anxious corporate calculations but from young a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:57AMWORTH ANOTHER VISIT? O YES It’s a gig, it’s a party, it’s as glorious as ever. Down on the floor the promenaders surge between changing stages as they rise and fall to create old Man…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:18AMUPMARKET EDINBURGH ROCK, SORT OF Sir Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus accounts for a tenth of all crime bestsellers in the UK: the ancient mazes around Edinburgh Castle, set against…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:46AMA MOMENT FOR REMEMBERING A desk, leather chairs, a heap of file boxes, a single sunflower in a pot. The century has turned, and it’s the last day in the office for Simon Wiesenthal…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:53AMOn this day of the report, a reminder of those two excellent verbatim plays from two stages of the inquiry. How theatre, with Nicholas Kent, reacted . There have been other plays about the e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:25AMI IMPERSONATION, ILLUSION AND INTRIGUE Cottonwool clouds, a scatter of furniture and instruments, an ancient cine camera, a noble arch and some pillars and fake trees. On a 19…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:54PM
