Friday, May 29, 2015
AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE We're in a World War I field hospital with iron beds and the corrugated-iron, battered detritus of trench warfare below. But young men will always leap and lark like…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:38AM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 27, 2015
ALL FIVE MICE REJOICE (CHURCH MICE, CLEARLY) FOR A MODERN HISTORY-PLAY Above the table cluttered with last-night’s paper cups, high windows show St Paul’s dome; …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:58PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 26, 2015
SONGS, SCUFFLES, VILLAINS AND VIRTUE IN 1707 Towering staircases and sliding panels transform the big stage from tavern to genteel house, with a pleasingly inexplicable intermittent folk-ban…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:42PM[SHARE]Monday, May 25, 2015
DARK, STARK AND DANGEROUS: Â A MERCHANT FOR TODAY What an odd, stark, angry, intelligent Merchant this is! Wholly unlike the last RSC production, Rupert Goold's spectacular Merchant-of-Veg…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:19PM[SHARE]Friday, May 22, 2015
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES IS STIRRED BY REMEMBRANCE In quiet England we stand in silence. In Australia, at least in this play, they shout it from the rooftops and down it from the…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:11AM[SHARE]Thursday, May 21, 2015
A DESIGNER, A DREAM, A DANCE, A DREADÂ "What is it about men with watching eyes…?" asks the ghost of Isabella Blow, she of the troubled soul and hilariously witty hats. One such man was…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:43PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 19, 2015
BOYS IN BUSTLES: Â SWAGS AND SWAGGER IN VICTORIAN LONDON "The Unnatural History and Petticoat Mystery of Boulton and Park" cries the Victorian poster. "Men in Women's Clothes – with…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:20PM[SHARE]A DESIGNER, A DREAM, A DANCE “What is it about men with watching eyes…?” asks the ghost of Isabella Blow, she of the troubled soul and hilariously witty hats. One such man …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:49PM[SHARE]Friday, May 15, 2015
AN OLD ANGER, SPEAKING TO TODAY We are short of good political playwrights: they tend to hail from the left and be either depressingly prosey or brainlessly 'bouffon' (ISLANDS at this very t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:04PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 14, 2015
A SWELL PARTY… Joe Stilgoe the piano man holds the stage as we settle, receiving a fusillade of unhelpful audience requests (“Bolero! Summertime! Pink Panther! Prokoffiev’s…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:48PM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 13, 2015
IN WHICH THE OLD LION OF SCARBOROUGH TACKLES A TIMELESS PHILOSOPHICAL CONUNDRUM… …Which is to say, the question of whether time-travel would enable you to change the past, hence …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:03PM[SHARE]A WILD AND WOLFISH WALK IN THE WOODS Last time I went a Norfolk and Norwich Festival outdoor event, I had to spend the night suspended in a nylon flower-petal up a tree and get hugged by tre…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:10AM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 12, 2015
THE DARKNESS OF DEMENTIA Devastating. No other word for it. Without sentimentality, in Christopher Hampton’s powerfully simple translation, the French playwright Florian Zeller l…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:14PM[SHARE]Monday, May 11, 2015
THE BLISS OF JUDITH BLISS: Â FELICITY INDEED Whenever I see this beloved play again I wish it was my first time. It should be seen in youth – when the dread of embarrassing parents g…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:38PM[SHARE]IN WHICH THE QUEEN REGENERATES AS KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS A playwright’s work is never done. Not if politics are involved: Peter Morgan relates that once it became clear that David Camero…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:51AM[SHARE]Thursday, May 7, 2015
STRIKE A LIGHT! FIZZLING OR FAILING, FRAYN ISÂ FUN This two-hour entertainment consists of squibs and sketches, five-finger exercises and amused imaginings by Michael Frayn. Who never real…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:46AM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 6, 2015
AND NOW THE REAL ELECTION…AT LAST… Election day, Tony Benn used to say, is the only time we are all equal. One citizen, one secret vote. And despite the short-sighted, corrupting…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:34PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 5, 2015
LORD, WHAT FOOLS THESE MORTALS BE… "Doors! Sardines! Getting them on, getting them off. Getting the doors open. And shut. That's farce. That's theatre. That's life!" Ah, how bitterly t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:48PM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 29, 2015
THIS VERY NIGHT SHALL THY SOUL BE REQUIRED OF THEE… God is sweeping the big blank stage. We won’t know for a minute or two that Kate Duchene IS God, given she’s a weary gre…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:07PM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 28, 2015
SHIP OF FOOLS GOES AGAINST THE FLOW… This is the play which flooded the Olivier stage and the National Theatre electrics in 1982. Of all Alan Ayckbourn's massive oeuvre it is one of the ra…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:59PM[SHARE]Monday, April 27, 2015
MEN UP A DEAD END… The marvellous junk-shop set by Paul Wills comes into its own most gratifyingly when Damian Lewis finally loses control and trashes it. For most of the play it simpl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:35PM[SHARE]Sunday, April 26, 2015
FROM BOMBER CREW TO ZIMMER DAYS: A TRIBUTE FAIRLY PAID As the aged heroes of World War II slip gradually away, the urge to bear witness feels ever stronger. In Rattigan's recently revived FL…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:16PM[SHARE]Friday, April 24, 2015
GUEST REVIEWER CHRIS PALING SEES AN ORTON OEUVRE IN ITS TRUE HOME.. Joe Orton would have liked The Emporium. This deconsecrated Methodist church has been a theatre and café for a couple of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:49PM[SHARE]Thursday, April 23, 2015
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION AND ITS END What do you do after a revolution? Tyrant toppled, lives sacrificed, people feeling entitled to reward, reformers aflame with rapidly diversifying ideas. M…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:54PM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 22, 2015
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE. WITH TONGS. The Clarion is a newspaper which hates immigrants. And liberals, especially those on the hated rival Sentinel, a barely-disguised Guardian. Britain, it s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:06PM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 21, 2015
THE SANDS OF TIME YIELD UP THEIR DREAMS This is Eugene O'Neill's only comedy: the moment when from his vortex of family addiction, illness, loneliness, romantic seaward longings and deep hum…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:24PM[SHARE]Monday, April 20, 2015
THREE OF THEM IN THAT MARRIAGE… You get plenty of cautionary tales in John Ford's little-remembered 1633 play. For one thing, if you get three women pregnant at once with promises of marri…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:16PM[SHARE]Saturday, April 18, 2015
FIFTY GRADES OF A? Â ( 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 05:40AM[SHARE]Friday, April 17, 2015
WILLÂ GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES TORE-ADORE IT? Â 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 a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:38PM[SHARE]Thursday, April 16, 2015
ADMIRABLE ELEANORÂ 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 i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:08AM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 15, 2015
IT 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 tangle o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24PM[SHARE] 
