GENET 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 03:10AMENJOY BEING A GIRL? UM, NOT REALLY… Stef Smith’s new play – after her acclaimed debut with ROADKILL – is skilfully written, elegantly performed, and curiously annoying…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:29AMTHE COMPUTER COUNTESS It’s a topical, Tim-Hunt-tastic moment to celebrate one of the forgotten women of science, and the Edinburgh University Theatre companyhave hit on a cracking good s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:15PMGRIEF, ILLUSION, PLAY… You can’t label this extraordinary two-hander by Tim Crouch as “experimental” theatre, even though it uses a different – wholly unprepare…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:41AMDINOSAUR-TING OUT FAMILY LIFE.. A school backpack suddenly yawns like the jaws if a Tyrannosaurus Rex, devouring an actor’s head. A toy helicopter overflies three herding brontosauri. …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 01:01PMTHE RHINESTONE COWGIRL RIDES AGAIN I first saw this cabaret-theatre character here in 2002, drawn by curiosity because the theme was “Tina C’s Twin Towers Tribute”. Under a…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:49PMHOLMES AND HOKUM, FRIENDSHIP AND GRIEF Good to start the Fringe-blitz with a winner . (Not that it was the first one that hit me as I lurched off the Caledonian Sleeper, but more of that lat…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:42AMA LOST LADY RETURNS, SAD AND BEGUILING Theatre loves to eat its own history, and fair enough: if you want intensity, volatile emotion, hope and heartbreak and impossible yet irresistible cha…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:16AMA PIG TALE TROTS ITS STUFF Strike day in a hot pedestrian London, and a surreal opening matinee for Stiles and Drew’s new family musical (fresh from the…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:44PMBEHIND THE PALACE WALLS: A CHILLING MODERNITY Peter McKintosh designs cold, skilful dictator chic: above a shining marble floor, the majestic Mittel-Europa chandelier dims to a blood-r…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:19PMA FATHER AND A SON, WHEN THE TIMES WERE A-CHANGING… Old army jokes get readopted by every generation. I suspect that one of the most slyly placed laughs in this ultimately charming e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12PMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GOES HAPPILY DEMENTED AT THE ALMEIDA “Cleverness is not wisdom,” warn the Maenad chorus, as king Pentheus determinedly resists the rise of new god…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:11AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GLIMPSES A RUSSIAN SUMMER WITH PATRICK MARBER Patrick Marber has taken Turgenev’s A Month in the Country and strengthened it in all directions, rather like…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:17AMGLORIOUS BRIDES AND BROTHERS… LP NIPS BACK MID-HOL TO CATCH THEM ALL Innocent virgins abducted from their family hearth, carried off to wild territory by lawless bearded gunmen a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:32PMThis is a tale of romance and of the lure of cinema: tricky on the stage. Mack Sennet, a clownish film director, is losing his beloved star, Mabel Normand, to the dreaded, meatier features. …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:36AMGUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES FINDS AN EMPTY FAMILY DRAMA WITH GOOD GAGS TO KEEP IT AFLOAT After 17 years away, the grown-up daughter returns with the illegitimate child which got her thrown out…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:58AMGUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES FINDS THINGS GET MUCH BETTER AFTER THE INTERVAL The jokes bought this play some time. Richard Bean, a former standup, is hot property at the moment after a slew of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:09AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI LEARNS ABOUT LASPO*… “When I was growing up the poor were seen as unfortunates. Now they’re seen as manipulative. Grasping. Scroungers. It’s ver…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:49PMWHEN LARRY MET ORSON AND KEN AND IT DIDN’T GO WELL… Sir Larry spreads his arms wide in the rehearsal room and moans “I am a giant in chains!” His director rolls his e…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:12PMTHE BIG HAIRY ONE RIDES AGAIN… Stage Hero of the week is Owen Guerin, aka The Gruffalo in the larky children’s play based on Julia Donaldson’s immortal book. On the hottest…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:17PMDOWN THE RABBIT HOLE Fifty minutes in, we got a 30ft yodelling falsetto caterpillar with flashing saucer eyes, and I cheered up. It also, as it happens, sang the central message of Damon…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:14PMA HANDBAG? A WHOLE TRUNKFUL OF TREATS The heart sinks beforehand: Oscar Wilde’s sunny comedy melodrama is too familiar: skipping from one well-worn epigram to the next, from handbag to m…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:14PMCOMFORT YE! HANDEL AND THE FIRST MESSIAH Handel’s Messiah is a phenomenon: written in three weeks in the composer’s most disappointed phase, to this day it plays as sublimely as a chambe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:11AMGUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES IS CONVEYED BY A DYSTOPIAN INJUSTICE The auditorium is a coliseum, with a tremendous conveyor belt slicing it in half, flappy black curtains at either end. K w…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:09PMCHEKHOV UNDER THE TREES Fortune favours the brave, and the meteorological riskiness of outdoor theatre sometimes pays handsomely. A great heron flew over, squawking doom, just as Irina screa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:59AMBACK OF THE NET! Rejoice! In the midst of Fifa’s dismal doings musical theatre makes football beautiful again. Gurinder Chadha’s and Paul Mayeda Berges’ fable, of a …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:59PMLibby Purves: Open air theatre works brilliantly. In fact, it offers some of the most enjoyable drama of the summer
SOURCE: The Telegraph at 06:00AMNOW HERE’S THE ONE TO SEE. DON’T MIND THE LANGUAGE… If you worry about language, the clue’s in the title. More f’s and assholes than you can shake a reproving finger …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:01PMPORN AND PHYSICALITY We’re all on the same page here, right? Online pornography is increasingly violent, graphically displaying real, abusive sexual acts devoid of tenderness. Rapist s…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:54PMUNDER THE BRIDGE, MEN UNDER PRESSURE “You gonna have a revolution”: the last words of Arthur Miller’s angry “play for the screen”, echo here with an interrogati…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 02:36AM