Thursday, January 23, 2025
A DARKER THOMAS CROMWELL     Edward Bennett as Thomas Cromwell is a proper thug: everyone's memory of the HR-outplacement weasel who starts the sacking meeting wi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:05AMSaturday, January 18, 2025
 SUBURBAN ANGST IN THE NEW SA There's nothing like a tight, awkward comedy of neighbourhood strife, where neighbourly differences reveal unexpected fissures within the couples, and tiny p…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:46AMFriday, January 17, 2025
AT THE SUMMIT OF RAGE AND HOPE     Fear not, this isn't a Greta-gloom lecture but a lively, imaginative, borderline wild reconstruction of the years culminatin…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:28AMFriday, January 10, 2025
NO SINKING FEELINGS HERE, GIRLFRIEND Call it a jukebox musical if you like, but only if the jukebox came alive, went rogue and started tottering around the stage on rubber feet hurling insul…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:15AMTuesday, December 17, 2024
SACRED MONSTERS IN THE UNDERWORLD Deep darkness within the U-shaped seating,: Â into it on wheels glides the dark gondola:Â Charon the ferryman, after millennia punting to and fro acro…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:32AMSaturday, December 14, 2024
A HIGH-KICKING WOODEN WONDER     Serious fun, this. Never liked the Disney Pinocchio, or even in childhood the over-preachy Carlo Collodi book about the defiant wooden…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:57AMThursday, December 12, 2024
PRESENT MIRTH HATH PRESENT LAUGHTER. AND MELANCHOLY. AND FALSE NOSES   In a play as familiar as this it is small touches that spring fresh life. Like the moment when the fool Fes…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:48PMWednesday, December 11, 2024
SPRINGTIME FOR…EVERYONE    Joyful, headlong and full-hearted, here comes sacred outrage. If director Patrick Marber and the Menier had been minded to issue wet 'trigger…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:23AMMAZELTOV! JEWISH PANTO STRIKES AGAIN    Goldie Frocks, rightful heiress to an East End schmutter workshop, has been enslaved by the evil Calvin Brine, whose behemoth of t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:45AMSunday, December 8, 2024
FEARED IT MIGHT BE TUTU MUCH, BUT NO…   I immediately fell for Frankie Bradshaw's set: a two- storey house lined with fossil skeletons in cases, and a spirited opening in whi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:05AMThursday, December 5, 2024
LOOK BEYOND THE LETTUCE    It is a tribute to Greg Wilkinson's monologue play that I had not previously seen the rise and fall of Liz Truss as having a gripping dramatic line.Â�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:31PMHIGH SPIRITS, HIGH COMEDY, EVEN HIGHER HEELS    Elton John, who jumped at the idea of writing the music, calls the 2006 film a favourite; many of us nod in blissful agreement…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:55PMWednesday, December 4, 2024
C'EST MAGNIFIQUE !     Napoleon, defeated at Trafalgar, vows revenge on Britain and its "bootlicking monoglot monarchists". Stalking around in breeches and bicorn h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:26AMTuesday, December 3, 2024
TA-RAN-TA-RA !  Mike Leigh, a veteran better known for films, Abigail's Party and theatrical experiments with scriptless rehearsal, is also a dedicated devotee of the utterly scr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55AMSunday, December 1, 2024
THE COOLEST CAT IN LONDON. AND SOME RATS.      Here's your traditional Christmas outing, proper panto. No rackety popstar hype or tedious suggestive jokes from wor…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:27PMFriday, November 15, 2024
GALSWORTHY ? WELL WORTH SEEING   With late Victorians, there's plenty to bite on: a rising bourgeoisie aflame with parvenu ambition, piety , pannier skirts ,patriarch…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:05PMThursday, November 14, 2024
WISDOM IN A LIFE BACKWARDS Â Â Â Forget the awful fim made from Scott Fitzgerald's story about a life lived backwards " a man born in old age, working towards youth and infancy in re…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:44AMTuesday, November 12, 2024
 A JOURNEY OF JOURNEYS    A map is a lovely thing, but sometimes practically speaking a diagram is better. And can also be lovely: especially when its useful elegance has beco…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:04PMSaturday, November 9, 2024
THE BIG RATHER UNFRIENDLY GIANT    Tom Maschler, legendary publisher and once a Kindertransport child, summed up the appeal of Roald Dahl: his stories offer…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:55AMFriday, November 1, 2024
1648, Agra: marble and murder, a terrible beauty   One of the worst photo-ops of Princess Diana's collapsing marriage was that shot at the Taj Mahal, billed by romantics as "eternal …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:24AMThursday, October 31, 2024
LOOK BACK IN COMPASSION Â Â Â Â Â The Rattigan renaissance of the last few years is more than welcome:Â ever since Flare Path hit the West End fourteen years ago there seems…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:45PMTHE GRANDEST OF GRIEFS Not Renaissance Mantua but New York a century past: smart bars and low dives, gangsters in fedoras. Why not ? In any world might be a lonely jokester, missing …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11AMWednesday, October 30, 2024
A short catch-up on one of the season's greats (was away..) Mark Strong is made to play great tragedy: a long powerful body,  controlled bleak intelligent  features.A figure from any a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:37PMTuesday, October 29, 2024
"…HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB" Â Â Â Â That was the subtitle, when exactly sixty years ago a shower of Oscars fell on Stanley Kubrick's brilliantly tasteles…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:26PMFriday, October 25, 2024
A HARD AND ICY WORLD   A 1970's Hull folksong chorus: "Next time you see a trawlerman on Hessle Road half tight " remember, o remember, the perils of that night". It was a tribut…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:27AMThursday, October 24, 2024
BROTHER, CHRISTIAN, WITCHFINDER  I reviewed this play about the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins last year, in Ipswich: I write only to add thoughts, now that it ha…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:54PMWednesday, October 16, 2024
LEHMANS REVISITED The first time I saw Sam Mendes' production at the NT, I exclaimed that the evening had no right to be so much fun: three hours, three chaps in black frock coats, no so…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:10AMTuesday, October 15, 2024
CHOSEN PEOPLE, CHOSEN LIVES   The saying goes "two Jews, three opinions", though some say that's an underestimate. Here are five people and innumerable opinions: two couples,�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:58PMWednesday, October 9, 2024
Sent from my iPad ZELDIN AGAIN I sometimes feel real sympathy (possibly unwanted) for actors who, trained and motivated to channel and express extreme and painful emotions, do their absolute…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:00AMFriday, October 4, 2024
POETRY AND PITY   Tremendous swagged, fringed, and roped retro curtains , the Gielgud looking much as it would 100 years ago when Sean O'Casey's most famous play reach…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:46AMWednesday, October 2, 2024
SHARP SCRATCH? Â Â Crossing the Edgware Rd yesterday a shouting vaccine denier with a loudspeaker informed us all, stomping past in some sort of hurry, Â that vaccines were lies, in…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:02AM 
