FIFTY GRADES OF A? ( EDUCATIONAL SADISM TODAY) During the first half, parents of teenagers will cringingly hope that Jonathan Lewis’ play is fanciful: a comically exaggerated libel on a …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:40AMWILL GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES TORE-ADORE IT? READ ON The best way to describe this play is as a sideshow. There is a performance of Bizet’s opera Carmen somewhere, and playing out aro…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:38PMADMIRABLE ELEANOR An old woman, cadaverous under harsh light, wakes fretful, remembering a war and shuddering at the Cuba missile crisis : it is 1962. We know that it will resolve, but it …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:08AMIT DON’T GET BETTER THAN THIS… Is there any odder opening line to a big musical number than “Have an egg-roll, Mr Goldstone”? Is there any dryer account of the emotional tang…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24PMGUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES TAKES HIS INNER CHILD FOR A HAPPY SPIN… As Mrs.Twit wisely points out – children are horrible. Too many “family shows” forget that. Instead of sweet…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:04AMThe list of winners is now widespread, but for theatrecat tolerators and friends, some review notes on how it was to be in the actual ROH seeing it happen: – definitely the best produc…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:31PMA RUGBY REDEMPTION “I’ve known since you were seventeen” says Gareth Thomas’ exasperated team-mate. “When you said you wanted me to be your best man, why do you think we spent a wh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:41AMA BOHO CLYTEMNESTRA No sooner do we get over Kristin Scott Thomas going murderously nuts as the original Electra at the Old Vic, than along comes April de Angelis with a sly, hilarious, biti…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:50PMALL OUR YESTERDAYS: HOW IT WAS, AND HOW IT WASN’T David Hare’s 1994 play reimagining the 1992 election – elegantly staged by Headlong and director Jeremy Herrin – has tou…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:16AMRHETORICAL ROMANCE… Ah, Cyrano! Fighter, scholar, poet, maverick: ever since Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play, set in an imagined musketeer-y 17c, he has been an archetype of reckless gen…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:43AMTHE GENTLEMANLY ASSASSIN RIDES AGAIN. AND HOWE… Klaxon alert! Outrage merchants , boots on, scramble! In an election season here are theatre types in North London doing a play about To…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:56AMGREATER THAN GREEK: ATTENTION MUST BE PAID The greatest plays keep their truth but strike you differently every time. I saw Arthur Miller’s masterpiece at twenty, then ten years ago was …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:40AMA SNORTER? OR A SMOKED POSSUM? It was in 1865, on the stage line “You sockdolagizing old mantrap!” that John Wilkes Booth took advantage of a guaranteed laugh to shoot dead President A…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:01PMThe National Theatre paid tribute to the phenomenally successful artistic director. Libby Purves was there
SOURCE: The Telegraph at 01:00AMTHE BOUQUET! IT WAS POISONED! We are supposed to be thinking about the history of European antisemitism, tracking back to the 16th century when Christopher Marlowe wrote this play ,and the 1…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:33AMTHREE MEN IN A (PROBABLY RIGGED) VOTE… In 2010, three men came to a Zurich hotel to present (to a scandal-ridden FIFA) Britain’s case for hosting the 2018 World Cup. David Cameron the ch…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:19PMSITCOM DOESN’T QUITE STAND UP First the good news. If there is an award for best-choreographed food-fight, it’s just been won (take a bow, fight director Kate Waters). Stephen Mang…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:05PMSUBTERRANEAN STREISAND: SILLY AND SUBLIME It’s a heady cocktail, the Hollywood Heartbreaker: tartness and syrup, firewater and froth ,l served in the campest crystal with diamond spa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:03PMA GRAVE GRANDEUR, AN UNFORGOTTEN HORROR Hard to overstate the impact, the sense of event, commemoration and bleak grandeur in this extraordinary evening. There is, in this 70th anniversary o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:14PMMANDERLEY AGAIN, AND VERY WELCOME TOO “Last night, I dreamed I went to Manderley again…” The famous opening is spoken from the sea-bed: a dim otherworld where a jointed lifeless bo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:33AMPOST COALITION TRISTIS… The best line in this rather overstuffed play comes from Keith Parry as Bob, a magnificently slow-thinking lummox. In the corner of a scruffy Norfolk kitchen Bo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:48AMMEMORIES OF A MADHOUSE Hard on the heels of her admirable PROGRESS, Joanna Carrick of Red Rose Chain revives (in this elegant new studio theatre) an earlier piece devised as site-specific th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:01AMA BESPOKE PREMIERE, TRIBUTE TO A TRADE 1953, a tailors’ basement workshop under Dover Street. Five people work eighty hours a week or longer. Out front, unseen, the smooth cutters and meas…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:14PMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI IS CHARMED TWICE OVER Miss Dee arrives. She’s from the newly-created DSRCDH: “Department for Social Regeneration through the Creation of Dream Homes.” S…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:01AMANCIENT GRIEF, A TERRIBLE BEAUTY There are some trademarks here: shaven heads, bare feet, bleak staging, immense and timeless dooms and subtle, insistent soundscape. Ivo van Hove, the Belgia…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:21PMONE HOTEL, 150 YEARS, THREE PLAYS Plays in hotel rooms are in vogue: there’s a voyeuristic intimacy and a pleasing sense of dislocation about them. And a grand hotel – the Langham wa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:50AMGAMES WE NEARLY PLAY It’s the Almeida, Jim, but not as we know it. Hunched on benches in four uneasily intimate soundproofed zones padded with camouflage-print, summoned by a robotic voice…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:03PMMOTHERHOOD, SECRETS AND LIES Neatly in time for International Women’s Day and the celebratory WOW-ings on the South Bank, John Terry has had Chipping Norton’s gorgeous galleried interior…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:33AMBRAVADO, BRIGANDS, FABIANS, LIFE-FORCES….. It is a truth universally acknowledged that George Bernard Shaw was a bit of a windbag. At no point did the words “Less is more”, or “S…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:23PMGRIMLY COMIC, NOBLY TOUGH For a young actor to play a severely disabled, facially twisted, speech-impaired young man in an electric wheelchair cannot – in this week of Eddie Redmayne�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:43PMKI YIP I YAY It’s back. Again. But worth the buggy-ride: brightly directed by Rachel Kavanaugh and choreographed by Drew McOnie with athleticism, wit and inventiveness: ballet, ragtime and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:29AM
