AMERICAN DREAMS IN FADING BLACKPOOL Suddenly within a fortnight come two very classy new plays, funny and thoughtful and moving beyond the ordinary. Moreover, in a tiny revolution …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11PMTHAT OL’TIME WESTERN DREAM OF 1979 I have a weakness for this little theatre under the arches and its Players’ Bar. Honouring a music-hall history, and with some of the cheapest stal…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:10AMSMALL PEOPLE, BIG PLAY A hot summer wedding-day. The bride Sylvia is a bag of nerves, big sister Hazel competently combing and marshalling her teenage and smaller daught…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:07AMUNFROGGETTABLE MOMENTS IN THE UNDERWORLD Aitor Basauri does not need to be framed in a 20ft-high giant puppet frog in order to be funny, but blissful overkill is part of the pleasure …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:54AMA DANCE AROUND AUSTEN’S LEGACY The book is known and loved enough: Jane Austen’s first full novel, written with satirical youthful wit but long laid aside unpublished. It gleefully sho…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PMLEST ANYONE FORGET.. Storytime! Before a tangled treescape Samantha Spiro sits with a book on her lap. Across the simple stage a few notes from Gemma Rosefield’s ‘cello settl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31PMBORDERS AND BRUTALITIES, Maybe I shouldnt review what is essentially physical-theatre. I have no dance-cred, and I was pleased to be warned years ago by the great Benedict Nightingale, when …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:15PMWAR’S LONG SHADOW I have a taste for “Forgotten” plays of well-made realism, illustrating how it actually felt to live in Britain through now-distant decades. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:24AMBEFORE THE SALEM TERROR This week, to little acclaim, the Ambassadors opened Tbe Enfield Haunting, a play centred on the spooky hysteria of troubled teenage girls.. The followi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:48AMGRIEF, CLASS, AND THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT Press night having moved about and gone incommunicado, this is from when I bought a preview ticket at Richmond..same cast an…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:03PMJAPAN MEETS THE NOISY WEST This is exquisite, and not only in Paul Farnsworth’s dreamy set and Ayako Maeda’s costumes, from peasant fishermen to Shogun magnificence. The Men…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:56AMBRAINS AND HOW TO MAKE THEM USEFUL Clearly it is the mission of Hampstead Downstairs to broaden our education, no bad ambition. Not long ago I learned a lot about the life and em…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PMA BLAST FROM THE PAST TO INSPIRE OR IRRITATE By the interval I was mournfully unconvinced that there was any point at all in reviving Tom Stoppard’s 17-year-old play , about Commu…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35AMCHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SPIRIT Can this really be the first Jewish pantomime? Oy vay, surely this culture with its musical genius, ironic jokes , family warmth, tall tales and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:29PMANOTHER KIND OF INQUIRY I suppose we will have to wait a few years for the dust to settle and James Graham to write a nuanced play about the Boris-Covid-Tory-pocalypse. Meanwhile this 8…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:08AMDICKENS IN RIOTOUS RHYME AND BAGPIPES – ON TOUR Wouldn’t be right to get through December without Dickens, would it? But I have seen the magnificent Old Vic adaptation by Jack…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:43AMI don’t usually record anything that’s two-nights-only, but this one I think will flower and fly, so watch out for it. It’s already looking like turning up in March at TR Haymar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:32AMBEWARE OF GREEKS BRINGING GAGS Where does Kylie get her kebabs? From Jason’s doner van! If that makes you scuttle away in fright, you have not yet achieved the correct seasonal a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:02PMDARK BEFORE THE DAWN To emerge with any redemptive sense from Joe Hill-Gibbins’ spare, scorching rather brilliant production, it helps to remember that Henrik Ibsen, after…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:21AMANY TOIL AND TROUBLE WAS WELL WORTH IT Everything a child could want is here: the dark thrill of imagined orphanhood, a quest, baddies , jeopardy and jokes, bouncy musical spectacle, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:30AMGOLDSMITH BEATEN LIGHT AS AIR Nice symmetry in Tom Littler’s decision to set Oliver Goldsmith’s 1773 comedy in the Wodehousian Jazz Age: the Georgians, with their boozy monarch…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:43PMFLAT WHITE AND WOEFUL If you’re going to splash out on a visually arresting finale of assassination, a vivId fire destroying a Norman tower and a lyrical monologue about Lenin,�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:10AMECHOES OF DARKNESS Jews gather, laughing and chattering, offering a toast as they run down the aisles to settle downstage for a Passover meal with candles, prayers and the ancient ques…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55AMFAR MORE THAN A SNACK Caught this late, and it’s much reviewed and almost sold out. But it’s worth saying in a brief word here that if you buy a return as I did, you are in luck.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:58PMA QUEEN WHO NEEDED QUEENS The curtain rises on the Clarence House garden room in 1979, where the Queen Mother held her eccentric little court. Much gilding, unreasonably many oil …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:58PMWHEN WE THAT ARE LEFT GROW OLD…. Sometimes you have to rely on a team with multiple comedy awards to hold a mirror to society and move your heart. This is by Richard …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:13AMDIANA AND THE DECEIVER Jonathan Maitland did a superb play for this theatre about Thatcher and Howe, “Dead Sheep”, and one on Jimmy Savile which was far more telling and cathartic than t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:42PMSCIENCE FANTASY AND HONEST EMOTION I don’t normally indulge in first-night anecdotes, but feel I should mention that in the big wedding scene Joanna Woodward tossed her bouque…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:23PMAGATHA STRIKES AGAIN This is Extreme Agatha Christie, her most preposterous (and bestselling) plot and one of the most murderously morbid (NB the final moments of the staging are no…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:59PMMEMORIES OF A MAVERICK It’s an immersive show, in that you buy a drink in the cramped saloon of the old pub on Greek Street, find a corner, and ideally fall into conversation with anoth…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:20PMWHILE THE REAL ONE RUNS…. With the Covid Inquiry surging along in a froth of accusations and curses and scandalous Whatsappery, it was hard to resist a hasty day-return to Harry Davies’ …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:12PM
