Thursday, October 1, 2015
JOLLY HOCKEYSTICKS! “Put on your navy knicks, pick up your hockey sticks – and bully-up, bully-up..” Jeepers. I had completely forgotten that ritual “bul…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:40PMWednesday, September 30, 2015
UNIMPROVABLE IMPROV… You won’t see this show again, nor the other Showstoppers’ evenings I have loved in Edinburgh. If you weren’t there tonight you’ve missed a…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:19PMMonday, September 28, 2015
A SMILE, A SONG, AND SAPPHIC SOCIALISM At last. The question tormenting many a fretful middle-aged man – what do lesbians actually DO? – is answered. Aerialism! When the giddy mo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:56PMSaturday, September 26, 2015
THE PROTESTANT WHORE RETURNS IN TRIUMPH Charles II came to the throne (in a fabulous wig, surrounded by fabulous spaniels), with England in a mood to throw aside Puritanism and party. The th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:25PMFriday, September 25, 2015
A KIND OF HORRIFIC GRACE.. We are having a spate of grisly classicana at the moment, brutal old tales of curses and murders and doom spinning down the unforgiving generations. A brace of sta…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:08AMThursday, September 24, 2015
THE HOLLOW CROWN : A CIRCLE COMPLETED This is the crown, the final flourish of Gregory Doran’s magnificently rendered history cycle. We have seen preening emotional Richard…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:55PMTuesday, September 22, 2015
THE WORST GUEST EVER…FARCE AND FEAR It’s the least likely setting imaginable for a farce, even a black one. We are in Baghdad, in the Alawai family’s kitchen and dinin…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:58PMMonday, September 21, 2015
A FINE PLUM-PUDDING OF ACTS AND IDEAS “Sex and the 18th century” said Brigid Brophy, quoted by the playwright Sam Kelly, “are the two most interesting things in the world”. The fiery…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:47PMFriday, September 18, 2015
EXECUTION STREET… Grotesque. Morbid. Hilarious. Dark, absurd, evocative. Start with the last one. This is a period-conscious piece, even more than Martin McDonagh’s Irish-set wor…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:55PMYOUTHFUL YEARNINGS A CONTAINER PORT CAN’T CONTAIN… You grow up with your mates in a dead-end town, and you’re a solid gang – five a side footie team, in and out of each o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:43AMThursday, September 17, 2015
A WINNER AND A LOSER Human beings sometimes – disastrously – get erotically fixated on one phase of their sexual history. In the case of Patrick (Nick Sidi) it is a teenage momen…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:33AMWednesday, September 16, 2015
SMALL BUDGET, BIG HEART, WELCOME UP WEST I had been wanting for a while to catch up on this fringe squib about the lives of front-of-house theatre workers, and with devilish cunning Max Reyn…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:55AMTuesday, September 15, 2015
THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR DANCING. IF YOU DARE. Sequins, feathers, glitter, two and a half hours of hurtling from one noisy shining set-piece to another, this is more of a gig than a dram…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:49PMMonday, September 14, 2015
SCIENTISTS, SEXISM, THE SCR AND THE SECRET OF LIFE Nicole Kidman, an Oscars star descending again on the West End, is the “story” here; so begin by saying that as the half-forgotten 1950…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:35PMSaturday, September 12, 2015
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES (genuine 21st century school leaver..) ENJOYS THE MENTAL MUMS RATING THREE With the news we’ve been having this week, a play about educat…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 02:59PMHuxley and Orwell tapped into an enduring theme - the innate, unconquerable desire to be left alone
SOURCE: The Telegraph at 11:00AMWednesday, September 9, 2015
VISIONS FROM 1931 OF A TEST TUBE FUTURE… Hot on the heels of Headlong’s obliquely brilliant treatment of 1984 comes a rival dystopia: Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, eig…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:58AMTuesday, September 8, 2015
79 NOT OUT – AYCKBOURN, AT IT AGAIN Suns decline, new stars rise. This is Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s 79th play – not among his best, but when did genius ever run leve…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:20PMSaturday, September 5, 2015
LOAD UP THE TWO-SEATER, JEEVES, WE’RE ON TOUR It always seems unfair when particular delights, best-comedy Olivier winners like this, are reserved for the West End, even if they …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 01:14PMWednesday, September 2, 2015
In 1941 young Terence Rattigan was creatively blocked, gloomy after an early success then a relative failure. He joined the wartime RAF as a tail-gunner in a Wellington bomber, and in a crip…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:56PMTuesday, September 1, 2015
PRIORY PEOPLE… Acting is a useful metaphor (one man in his life plays many parts, etc), and in this portrait of addiction, therapy and recovery author Duncan Macmillan squarely –…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMMonday, August 31, 2015
GETTING ‘EM OFF FOR VICTORY Never in the field of TR Bath’s excellent endeavours has so much flesh been displayed with such nerve to so many. Some were, in the interval queue for…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:54PMFriday, August 28, 2015
DRAMA AS REDEMPTION From the first moments Nadia Fall’s production sets brutal, bullying humanity against a hot, strange, majestic Australian dawn. A lone aborigine watches, sile…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 03:15AMFriday, August 21, 2015
I’m late on the curve with this one – but it runs into September and for me, In n these WW1 anniversary years, fascinatedly collecting plays which reflect – better than any prosier or …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:13AMMonday, August 17, 2015
IN WHICH I AM EASILY AMUSED BY QUITE OLD JOKES. AND CLIVE MANTLE. We are all urged by manically cheerful Bajan waitresses to sing “`We’re all going on a Summer Holiday” before the show…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:48PMSunday, August 16, 2015
THE MAN WITH THE TAN When Simon Cartwright came onstage, what with the bright orange tan and smooth hair and that nervy little mannerism of smiling at the punchline, I briefly panicked. Be…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:37PMSaturday, August 15, 2015
A VICIOUS AND GLEEFUL PLEASURE… There is a particular kind of modern feminist who fixates on the Mexican painter and free-loving socialist and her endless self-portraits: two other pla…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:06AMFriday, August 14, 2015
A TAINTED HALLELUJAH Hail a bracingly, triumphantly, intelligently unfashionable play, and Christopher Haydon of the Gate Theatre for directing and premiering it here. Lucas Hnath’…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:18AMThursday, August 13, 2015
It breaks your heart, an epic tragedy in miniature: two men, a couple of sacks and a crate, but their plight and their dreams rise before us in pathetic grandeur. Drilling into the heart of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:22AMWednesday, August 12, 2015
DARK COMEDY FROM A FRACTURED EUROPE. BUT WHERE’S THE BEAR? Only in Edinburgh’s August are you likely to find an immense, patient queue snaking round the block for half an hour, unabl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:28AMGENET GENIUS? Hmmmm From time to time, the seeker for cultural enlightenment must deliberately book in to the works of some author he or she can’t see the point of. For some its B…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 03:10AM 
