Tuesday, January 12, 2016
A CENTURY ON, THEY WALK BEFORE US It was gruesome, politically problematic, tragic and heroic and wasteful; it was a turning-point in history. I have written before about how l…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:43PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 7, 2016
THE BOHO BOUVIERS: Â REBELLIOUS RECLUSES Hot on the heels of THE DAZZLE (about the New York Collyer brothers living in hoarderly squalid isolation) this is about Edith Bouvier Beale…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:34PM[SHARE]Sunday, December 27, 2015
A HALF-FORGOTTEN QUEEN RISES… School history was terrible. Terrible! We got the Tudors, and a bore-in about the Thirty Years War, but a fog of confusion and a sense of 1066 And …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:48AM[SHARE]Saturday, December 19, 2015
DARK DOINGS IN THE BURROW I hope that the great Beatrix Potter, out of copyright just last year, would be pleased at the pointing, bouncing, giggling and gasping in Red Rose Ch…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:35PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 17, 2015
A WHIFF OF SULPHUR UNDER THE BROCADE… There are certainly crinolines, but Quality Street it ain't. How smart of Josie Rourke to offer adults, worn down by fairylights and panto …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:49PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 16, 2015
THNEEDS MUST WHEN CONSUMERISM DRIVES… It's a heartfelt welcome. The Old Vic, for a long while fiercely grownup, throws its arms open to children under Matthew Warchus' leadershi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:20PM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 15, 2015
SUICIDE BY THINGS... We are up 71 concrete steps in the old St Martin's School of Art, eccentric creativity soaked into its grimy plaster and echoing down its grim old Hitchcock-ish iron lif…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:32PM[SHARE]SUICIDE BY THINGS… We are up 71 concrete steps in the old St Martin's School of Art, eccentric creativity soaked into its grimy plaster and echoing down its grim old Hitchcock-i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:06PM[SHARE]Monday, December 14, 2015
A LORDLY FOGGÂ Â WITHÂ Â UNDERSTAGE COGS AND A Â FAITHFULÂ FROG… If you can't face another panto (oh no you can't) but want to share a treat with the young, this is …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:54AM[SHARE]Friday, December 11, 2015
BROADBENT & BARLOW BRING BACKÂ THE BIG BAD BANKER…Â Tom Pye's design of Victorian découpage creates a toy paper-theatre within the stark stage area: the scenes revolve…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:00AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 9, 2015
UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLES AND UNPRINCIPLED CERTAINTIES It is a mildly shaming reflection that  Tom Stoppard plays generally dismissed by his cadre of scholarly admirers as "not…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:01PM[SHARE]ALL IS FORGIVEN Â (UNLESS YOU’RE DEAD, AND DON’TÂ DESERVE IT)Â This is part of Dominic Dromgoole's candlelit farewell to his tenure at the Globe: a set of late Sha…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:48PM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 8, 2015
SOMEDAY MY PRINCE WILL…GET OUT OF BED AND PULL HIMSELF TOGETHER… It is almost comically calculated to stir up timid traditionalists. The enchanted sleeper is a bloke – David Emming…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:05PM[SHARE]Sunday, December 6, 2015
WHO NEEDS CHARLTON HESTON? I have a weakness for schlock-historical movie epics, due to a regular childhood treat when I was at school in France and my Dad and I would sneak down …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:04AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 2, 2015
THE HAPPIEST PEOPLEÂ Â OF ALL… For half a generation there has been a truism in the musical theatre world that nobody can do Jule Style and Bob Merrill's FUNNY GIRL, because…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:58PM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 1, 2015
 YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL! SURE YOU WANT IT? Revolving sleek as a spaceship is Es Devlin's multi-layered set: the office and neon slogans of Swan cosmetics: bottles and jars, sed…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:44PM[SHARE]Saturday, November 28, 2015
THE BELLS! Â THE BELLS! Â THE BOOMING! "Where else" says an exasperated Sir Henry Irving , asked at the gates of Heaven to justify the profession which estranged him from his religious m…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:32AM[SHARE]Thursday, November 26, 2015
SUNRISE TO STARLIGHT, A NORTHERN TRAGEDY Under a bleak black mountain panorama, this is a shattering play about selfishness, mismatched love, and how grief and guilt can make you mons…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:41PM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 25, 2015
SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE… Another flickering evening in the candlelight of the Globe's Jacobean theatre: engrossing, melodramatic, comic, epic. Ben Jonson was disparaging about Pe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51PM[SHARE]The last American import Rufus Norris brought to the National " The Motherf"-er with the Hat " was a five-mouse delight, a bold choice which rightly just won a Best Play award. Less welcome …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 01:53AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 24, 2015
STILL SHOCKING, Â STILL SEXISTÂ ! Â Â GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES SMACKS HIS LIPS OVER A VINTAGE PINTER… I get the itching feeling that if anyone else had written th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:23AM[SHARE]Friday, November 20, 2015
Mid-life, an insurance salesman who will never be a big enough man to fulfil his big dream. Better to pretend- plan, to deny daily reality in the glow of an imaginary future and sanctified c…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:23AM[SHARE]Thursday, November 19, 2015
OH YES IT IS! Â Â CHIPPY , HOME OF PANTO, STRIKES AGAIN It is, famously, the local panto for the Cameron family, though the paterfamilias PM himself might want to avoid swivelling head…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:06AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 17, 2015
DOWN WITHÂ PAN AND CINDERELLA! After the high-priced saccharine vapidity of ELF , it felt like time to check out something both classier, and more affordable. Always perilous for th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:53PM[SHARE]Thursday, November 12, 2015
OPERA’S THE THING!  YOUR LIFE IS BUT A SIDESHOW!  HURRAH! A play about the foundation of Glyndebourne Opera – "Snobs on the grass" as some cruel postwar journali…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:19AM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 11, 2015
POLITICS AND SCANDAL; IT WAS EVER THUS.. You're an MP, a clever lawyer with cross-party popularity, newly invited into Cabinet to steer through a Bill to disestablish the Anglican Church and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:10AM[SHARE]Sunday, November 8, 2015
A DOUBLE BILL: RATTIGAN AT PLAY AND IN GRIEF There may be voices which jibe at Kenneth Branagh for being producer, deviser and co-director of a year-long season, finding starry casting like …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:58AM[SHARE]Saturday, November 7, 2015
Kenneth Branagh's Garrick year as actor-manager opens in unquestionable triumph. One of Shakespeare's greatest, most redemptive plays is richly served without flaw or gimmick, traditional in…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:23PM[SHARE]ROLL UP, ROLL UP, ROLL OVER… It's back for Christmas: pure entertainment, faux-decadent but full of heart, skilful and cheerful and elegant and daft. In the great glittering tent by th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:11AM[SHARE]Thursday, November 5, 2015
CURLY HAT AND STRIPY STOCKINGS TIME Play critic-cliché bingo once they’re out! One point each for “Elf ’n Safety”, “National Elf” , kids with phones …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:05PM[SHARE]FLOUNCES AND FLIRTS, Â INSULTS AND INNUENDOES…A RESTORATION ROUTÂ There's a bustle of backstage larking before the curtain, cast dashing around in shirtsleeves, manoeuvring a hamp…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:48AM[SHARE] 
