Thursday, August 8, 2024
LAUNDRY, LECHERY, LADIES, LAUGHTER if anyone is ever so impertinent as to demand an audition piece from the RSC-seasoned John Hodgkinson, I suggest he delivers – with or witho…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:42PMWednesday, August 7, 2024
A TALL TALE, A SHIMMERING MAGIC Of all Shakespeare’s plays this is now the rarest staged, not without reason: some early scenes are co- written with a contemporary John Wilkins, its tale i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:06PMTuesday, August 6, 2024
L’CHAIM ! THE VERY STUFF OF LIFE Of course it helps to be under a real sky: a lone fiddler high above the cornfield scratches out the first lonely notes against the evening clou…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:13PMSaturday, July 27, 2024
Duke Theseus offers instructions, Act 1 Scene 1. “Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments, Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth!” You can tru…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:01AMThursday, July 25, 2024
AS LONG AS WE NEED IT… To do a timeworn musical, entangled in all- too -familiar earworms, you can either sharpen, challenge and update it or lovingly polish the old machine. If you s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:27PMFriday, July 19, 2024
UP WHERE SHE BELONGS Imelda Staunton is a marvel, from Mama Rose in Gypsy to HMQ in The Crown. There is no lady of the stage more worthy of being greeted at the top of a Grand Staircase b…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:23AMGRISLY GLEE If there is any aspect of 21c Western culture sorely in need of being laughed at, it s ithe morbid fascination with police-procedural telly,, especially true-crime and i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:38AMThursday, July 18, 2024
AN OVEN-READY MUSICAL, NEVER MUFFIN A MOMENT As summer heats the merciless city, good to know that five minutes’ south of London Bridge station is La France Profonde, a village …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:40AMWednesday, July 10, 2024
GEORGIANS IN THE PINK, AND SOMEWHAT PUNK Sheridan’s social satire from the 1770s hits the age of fake news, viral reputation-trashing and post-imperial embarrassment. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:30AMThursday, July 4, 2024
ON THE EVE OF THE ELECTION…. …I emerged onto the Cut in a grey afternoon blinking tears, unable to process having been made to cry by James Corden. He’s been for me a fig…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:53PMTEENAGE DREAMS, AND FAME AS NIGHTMARE Got to love the dedication of the Southwark: to mark its smaller-space production of Samantha Hurley’s New York play about a demented teenage fan, it …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:53AMWednesday, July 3, 2024
A THING OF WONDER People who saw Mnemonic at its origin 25 years ago still talk about it. A few say it changed them. It was a collaborative, at first wholly unscripted , creatio…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:05AMTuesday, July 2, 2024
A WARTIME SPRINGTIME It’s not the reptile but the turtledove, as in the Song of Solomon “The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our l…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:04PMFriday, June 28, 2024
AN ANGLO-INDIAN EDWARDIAN YORKSHIRE… Good to be back for another year, up on the high tiers in the last golden hour, waiting to watch the great trees darken against the sky. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:05AMWednesday, May 15, 2024
YOUNG GENTLEMEN (AND LADIES) TO CELEBRATE
This is very good fun indeed. Who does not want an onstage dog called Crab, benignly upstaging a rarely seen Shakespeare clown? And a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:20PMTWO YEARS AFTER THE NEXT ELECTION.. Here, a mere meringue’s throw from Eton itself, is an imaginary Prime Minister of that ilk. Tidier in person and with a touch more integrity …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:10AMTuesday, May 14, 2024
NYPD FAMILY BLUES I fell for the solid, paternal, irascible Walter “Pops” Washington immediately over his whiskey breakfast, as he listens half-patiently to the unreliably …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:38AMSaturday, May 11, 2024
A LOST WEEKEND WORTH FINDING It helps if you fall in love with the set; even more if the set helps tell the story. For this tale of a louche, tender, disreputably memorable week…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:38AMFriday, May 10, 2024
GANG LIFE, GRIEF AND GREATNESS There is a very tense moment late on in the second half when Jacob Dunne, only just holding himself together, finally sits down in person opposite …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24AMThursday, May 9, 2024
A RIOTOUS RUSSIAN SATIRE, FOR ALL TIMES The local governor and councillors are posing for a photograph, more than satisfied with themselves and their genteelly corrupt side-h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:05AMFriday, May 3, 2024
MODERN ECHOES OF A DYING FALL Years ago I came out of a dullish production in Yorkshire of Chekhov’s last play, set very traditionally with samovar, parasols and big hats. A …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:48AMWednesday, May 1, 2024
A BOY BETRAYED Connor was 18 when he drowned in the bath with an epileptic seizure. It needn’t have happened. He was under slipshod care, away from the family who loved him, in an NHS �…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:47AMTuesday, April 30, 2024
A FEARFUL FUTURE I am wary of futurist dystopias, but this is a real treat: intelligent sci-fi with serious thrills. As it opens, we are the 2050 audience at the celebration of ten…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:35AMSunday, April 28, 2024
THE COURT AND THE BEDCHAMBER Theatre will never tire of the Tudors, nor should it. From every new angle they offer a dramatic gift which never stops giving. Here’s 1534, and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:10AMFriday, April 19, 2024
MEN BEHAVING RIDICULOUSLY The lord of Navarre and three nobles have resolved to retreat and study for three years, eschewing female company: so even the princess suing for land has to be…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:47AMThursday, April 18, 2024
MUD, MARSH, MONEY Now here’s a bracing new way to do Dickens: avoid sets full of Victoriana by keeping the stage pretty much empty beneath a set of uneasily moving lighting-bars …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:20AMTuesday, April 16, 2024
REFLECTIONS ON A FAT KNIGHT Due to train disruption – speak not of overhead wires and wind – I had to bail out at the interval, from Robert Icke’s epic three and a half hour modern…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:47AMMonday, April 15, 2024
WHY HALESWORTH MATTERS TO THE NATIONAL DRAMATIC ECOSYSTEM The other day I did an overview-preview from some dress rehearsals at the INK short play festival in Suffolk (scroll below), …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51AMSunday, April 14, 2024
CROOKBACK DICK REIMAGINED Saving Richard III from Shakespeare’s calumny seems to have a particular appeal to women: probably because around his accession in the 1480…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:41AMSaturday, April 13, 2024
DIVING ABOUT IN A UNIQUE SHORT-PLAY FESTIVAL Join me on a parked Hoppa minibus where Henry VIII is chatting up a new Jane. She is not impressed by the Tudor-Tinder qualificat…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:27AMFriday, April 12, 2024
HOLINESS IN THE WHALE It pretty much had me harpooned at the words “Call me Ishmael”. As Mark Arends’ earnestly naive schoolteacher speaks the opening lines and begins…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:26AM 
