Monday, 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 03:10AMTuesday, August 11, 2015
ENJOY 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 07:29AMMonday, August 10, 2015
THE 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 04:41AMSunday, August 9, 2015
DINOSAUR-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 01:01PMSaturday, August 8, 2015
THE 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 08:42AMFriday, August 7, 2015
A 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 10:16AMThursday, August 6, 2015
A 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 12:44PMTuesday, August 4, 2015
BEHIND 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 05:19PMMonday, August 3, 2015
A 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 07:12PMSaturday, August 1, 2015
GUEST 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 08:11AMWednesday, July 29, 2015
GUEST 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 05:17AMThursday, July 23, 2015
GLORIOUS 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 08:32PMWednesday, July 22, 2015
This 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 05:36AMFriday, July 17, 2015
GUEST 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 04:58AMTuesday, July 14, 2015
GUEST 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 05:09AMWednesday, July 8, 2015
GUEST 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 07:49PMMonday, July 6, 2015
WHEN 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 06:12PMSaturday, July 4, 2015
THE 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 04:17PMThursday, July 2, 2015
DOWN 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 06:14PMWednesday, July 1, 2015
A 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 06:14PM 
