Friday, January 30, 2015
REMEMBERING REG…A REVIEW WORTH A REMIX Thought I should see how it feels in a bigger theatre, after writing at the Donmar that Kevin Elyot’s 1994 play is “pretty mu…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:04AMThursday, January 29, 2015
OH FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE… Sometimes in the reviewing business there’s an almost irresoluble conflict between detached appreciation and wincing personal indifference: a tempt…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:16AMWednesday, January 28, 2015
SIR TOM STOPPARD’S NEW PLAY. WOW. Is there more to human beings than organic goo? Can brain imaging explain why we judge, reason, imagine, generate metaphor and language? That is th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:02PMTuesday, January 27, 2015
THE MUGHAL EMPIRE: MURDER, FAITH AND FAMILY OK, I admit it, I feared “Important and Worthy”. Or, possibly, important-worthy-yet-picturesque. A reasonable, if ungenerous fear,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:25PMMonday, January 26, 2015
A TERROR AND A TRIBUTE “May the Master of Mercy shelter them in the shadow of his wings”. A Holocaust prayer is on a slip in the programme for this eve of the Auschwitz liberati…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:46PMSaturday, January 24, 2015
Damon Albarn's musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's story, Wonder.land, will remind us that its fantasy is genuinely timeless, writes Libby Purves
SOURCE: The Telegraph at 05:00PMFriday, January 23, 2015
BRAVE, BARNSTORMING AND CERTAINLY NOT BAD With Holocaust Memorial day imminent, the Paris murders fresh in mind and anti-Semitism rising across Europe, can you really put on a …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:42PMThursday, January 22, 2015
THE BIRTH OF THE BOMB This is what the RSC is for. Not mere Bardolatry, but to bring new work illuminated by the craft, humanity and wisdom which comes to those steeped in Shak…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:55PMBLAST OFF INTO THE PAST… Repolarize the rockanthemizer! Shakespearianize the iamb-ometer, fasten your retrocamp ironido-nebulized harness and prepare to be utterly weight…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:02AMTuesday, January 20, 2015
MURDER IN THE DARK The gorgeous giltwood brooding atmosphere of the new Wanamaker playhouse has seen comedy in its candlelight – the bonkers Knight of the Burning Pestl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:04PMMonday, January 19, 2015
A CULPABLE, CLOWNISH WASTE OF DAVOS WEEK This week sees the World Economic Forum in Davos. Today Oxfam said that 1% of the world’s people own nearly half its wealth. Tax havens – man…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:10PMFriday, January 16, 2015
IN WHICH YOUR REVIEWER CRACKS UP ENTIRELY Tears are strange. They can fill the eye when witnessing not horror or sadness, but a sudden kindness. It is a kind of happy sorrow: m…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:08AMWednesday, January 14, 2015
AND YOU THOUGHT SPIDERMAN WAS CREEPY… Imagine a rock-opera mashup of Frankenstein, Pygmalion and Dracula, hijacked by Marvel Comics and dressed up with cartoonish 1950s small…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:22PMTuesday, January 13, 2015
TEENAGE KICKS AND SORROWS In the most genuinely engaging sequences of this odd improv-based show, two of the ten-strong cast get a mat out and wrestle, struggling to rip off one ano…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:06PMMonday, January 12, 2015
A FABULOUS FANDANGO OF FEMALE FURY… Sing to the lunatic moon: Hispanic hysteria, hilarity, tangled lives, 48 hours of Madrid madness. I had my doubts about this one, as did many…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:56PMFriday, January 9, 2015
SCARS OF THE SOVIET IN A MOSCOW HOME There’s a lovely, very Russian moment in Moses Raine’s play (in from the Old Red Lion and directed by his sister Nina, author of Tig…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:56PMThursday, January 8, 2015
DROWNING NOT WAVING – TWO WOMEN ADRIFT Lancashire Ivy is waiting for a bus to Manchester, refined Joan for a taxi to a psychiatric clinic. Neither is happy, and nor are t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:44PMSaturday, December 27, 2014
The First World War centenary has been a fine year for the stage, which breathed life into a shattered generation, writes Libby Purves
SOURCE: The Telegraph at 02:35PMTuesday, December 16, 2014
Shabba-dabba-doo-wop! What a glorious evening. Grownup, dryly hilarious, sublimely jazzy. Josie Rourke’s Donmar walks away with the palm for the season’s top show. Or perhaps sash…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:39PMMonday, December 15, 2014
THE MERCHANT OF VEGAS RIDES AGAIN Three years ago Rupert Goold reimagined Venice for the RSC, taking ‘casino capitalism’ literally, setting it amid decadent gilt arches and roul…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMSUPERBLY SILLY BUT FAR FROM ELEMENTARY In a beguiling 221b Baker Street set, referencing clockwork and tyrannized over by a brassbound Victorian video-countdown, Watson is talk…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:08AMSunday, December 14, 2014
MINCE PIES AND MIDLANDS MERRIMENT I caught this in its heartland, at the MAC in Birmingham. Half of the audience were clearly experienced followers of Janice Connolly’s creat…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:00PMFriday, December 12, 2014
ANIMATED, ANIMATING, ADMIRABLE, ADORABLE Let’s be honest. It’s nearly Christmas. You could flinch at the thought of staggering in after a day of guilty shopping to fac…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:42PMThursday, December 11, 2014
This is not a review, because the show is not offered for review until its transfer to Birmingham in January. I went because I had heard about its development. And hell, Rula Lenska is a sec…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:07PMWednesday, December 10, 2014
YO HO HO – PIRATES AND PARROTS ON A DEAD MAN’S CHEST The first thing to say is that the sets are extraordinary: magnificent, nightmarish, romantic. Lizzie Clachan makes dramati…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:17PMNOEL COWARD’S CHRISTMAS SPIRITS St James Theatre SE1 “I’ll sing of home and love and work, Of Magna Carta and Dunkirk And Christmas bells and charity and pride…” Who …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:55PMCHRISTMAS 1914: A TRIBUTE, A MEMORY, MANY QUESTIONS That supermarket ad gives a potted version of the 1914 Christmas ceasefire in no-man’s-land: British soldier gets parcel with c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:34AMThursday, December 4, 2014
SO LIFE GOES BY, WITH MELANCHOLY BEAUTY… Is there anything more healing, more reassuring of human kinship than the sound of an audience sighing together, murmurously anxious, fo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:11AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SPENDS THREE MOVING WINTERS IN WAR-TORN CROATIA 3 Winters takes us to the beautiful old Kos family house in Zagreb, Croatia, in three different years: 1945, 1…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:27AMWednesday, December 3, 2014
PETITE BUT PERFECT PANTO. Oh yes it is. To start with, he’s a real kid: a young goat. Matthew Kellett, a cheery figure with furry chaps, horns and ears poking through his cowboy h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI CAN’T RESIST A BIT OF THE OLD RAZZLE DAZZLE Gilbert and Sullivan is true Marmite music: some love it, some don’t. It is also, without doubt, a litmus …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:22AM 
