Wednesday, December 3, 2014
GUEST 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 04:22AMTuesday, December 2, 2014
SURE START , SPEED HUMPS, SOLIDARITY AND SENTIMENT… Sharp timing, the night before the Autumn Budget Statement! It’s about a Labour council in a post-industrial, working-…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:12PMMonday, December 1, 2014
A CENTURY OF SADNESS, MADNESS, AND GUNS “Angry men don’t write the rules, and guns don’t right the wrongs”. The message is unheard in the nightmare fairground, where be…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:53PMSunday, November 30, 2014
BENEATH THE STREET, DARK PASSIONS BATTLE… What better place to muse on secretive 1930’s sexual angst than under Jermyn Street, once synonymous with sharp shirts and smart t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:02AMFriday, November 28, 2014
MORALITY, MELODRAMA, AND MANSERVANTS… “Suppose I drive down to some newspaper office” says the foxy blackmailerine Mrs Cheveley to the horrified MP Sir Robert Chilter…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:43AMThursday, November 27, 2014
A MODERN DATE, AN ANCIENT NEED… You could say it starts with a happy ending. Well, of a sort. Certainly the blackout is riven by an exuberant sexual racket, and as the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:35PMWednesday, November 26, 2014
…AND MISCHIEF THEATRE GETS IT TRIUMPHANTLY RIGHT My latE Dad hated the theatre, for the kindest and most dignified of reasons. He preferred cinema : in live performance he feared th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:33AMTuesday, November 25, 2014
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES AGAIN – BAFFLED BY MODERN BIRTHWAYS, SOLDIERS BRAVELY ON AND WISHES IT HAD WORKED Immediately this play had the whiff of a concept. This is a …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:49AMFriday, November 21, 2014
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES LURKS HAPPILY AT THE BACK OF THE CLASSROOM There is nothing funnier in the world than kids swearing. This play gets us as close to that as possible wi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:25AMWednesday, November 19, 2014
TWO LONELY LIARS IN A BIG SAD CITY… Here’s a curiosity worth catching: the only full play by Norris Church Mailer, widow of Norman Mailer (who greatly admired it). It was born…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:32PMTuesday, November 18, 2014
ALL HUMAN LIFE: A TERRIBLE BEAUTY ON A RUBBISH TIP In the interval of this headlong, crowded kaleidoscope of a play it was hard to know where the second part of David Hare’s s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMMonday, November 17, 2014
THE PRICE OF VICE… The accolade is a knighthood: services to literature for the debonair Will Trenting, already a Nobel for his novels on the seamy side of life. The play is set…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMSunday, November 16, 2014
BURLESQUE BLISS (AND BOON…) There’s a towering, assertive giant gay blue rabbit in skintight Spandex, a stripping trapeze artiste hurling garments at the front row, a sadfaced clown …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:01PMThursday, November 13, 2014
ALED AND TOM DO THE SHOW RIGHT HERE… Aled Jones is wonderful. Honestly. He is. Won’t ever hear a word against him. This contentedly hokey stage revival of Irving Berlin’s 1954 seas…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:55PMWednesday, November 12, 2014
A LONG WAY FROM DOCK GREEN… Gail Wilde earned her nickname at Hendon. A firecracker, an enthusiastic gym-bunny aglow with desire to be a good copper in the Met. She turns up early f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:43PMTuesday, November 11, 2014
THE POETRY AND THE PITY On this evening of Armistice day a hundred years on, no more fitting place to be than at this finely drawn revival of Stephen MacDonald’s two-hander about th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:15PMSunday, November 9, 2014
NO STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS: 600 YEAR OLD SEX CRIME COMES TO TRIAL It is the year 1399. In dim light, great John of Gaunt lies on his funeral bier awaiting burial in St Paul�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:46PMFriday, November 7, 2014
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SINKS INTO HER SEAT UNDER THE WEIGHT OF SCIENCE It so happened that, on my way to 2071, I had been listening (repeatedly) to Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene:…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:55AMThursday, November 6, 2014
IN WHICH GUEST CRITIC AND TOP THEATREKITTEN LUKE JONES IS SADLY UNDERWHELMED This – created by Lloyd Newson of DV8 physical company – wasn’t quite the piece o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:06AMWednesday, November 5, 2014
UP THE WOMEN, UP THE WORKERS…AND A JIG FROM HAROLD WILSON It was not until the second-act opener that I thought it might fulfil the hope. That hope has been considerable: …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35PMTuesday, November 4, 2014
BRAM AT THE BBC: A FRIVOLOUS FORTIES FRIGHTENER Ah, happy memories! As an unfledged BBC techie in the ‘70s, my favourite job was “Spot Effects” in radio drama studios: a …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:25PMFriday, October 31, 2014
THE WOMEN AND THE BOYS: YOUNG RATTIGAN BEGINS… There’s a rugby ball and a bottle of Oxford Ale, clothbound law books, pipes, a cricket bat, 1930’s clutter. There are …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:41PMThursday, October 30, 2014
DORAN CALLS UP DEMONS Devils! Not Hallowe’enily cosy at all. Obscenely beguiling, tenebrous creatures of evil, they lurk inside all human nature and they know it. Mother Sa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:40AMTuesday, October 28, 2014
DARKNESS VISIBLE: CANDLELIT HORRORS, ANCIENT SORROWS By the end of three hours the gilt-reflecting candlelight of this little jewel-box playhouse is flickering over a birthda…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:13PMMonday, October 27, 2014
RADIO FOUR THE MUSICAL? ABOUT TIME TOO Radio 4 announcers tend to have a dry, contained sense of humour, honed by years in their lonely hutches listening to that most literate of n…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11PMFriday, October 24, 2014
FLINTLOCK STRIKES A SPARK – IN A LIBRARY, TOO… Cervantes’ story gave us a word: quixotic. From politics to artistic enterprises, it defines all extravagantly roma…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:21PMThursday, October 23, 2014
“LIKE A SAD OLD MELODY, TEARS YOU UP AND SETS YOU FREE, THAT’S HOW MEMPHIS SEEMS TO ME’ “Ain’t no daytime on Beale Street, only nighttime!’ Delroy’s joint …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:50PMMonday, October 20, 2014
A STUNNING SIMPLICITY, A HUMAN HEART Only the dead see life clearly. In the last strange simple minutes of this undramatic drama, half of Thornton Wilder’s citizens bec…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:00PMFriday, October 17, 2014
A NEW EYE ON AN OLD SADNESS: THE WILDE TRIAL RECREATED This is fascinating: the playwright John O’Connor and Oscar Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland mark the centenary of the great …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:33AMCOMEDY, BRUTALITY, UNCERTAINTY IN A BYGONE SALFORD There is a telling moment at the end of Sam Yates’ production of Ayub Khan Din’s portrait of a Pakistani Muslim famil…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:26AMThursday, October 16, 2014
IN WHICH YOUR CRITIC FALLS IN LOVE WITH A BENEDICK AND A DOG-BOWL This is actually the one we know as Much Ado About Nothing – though some nifty Shakespeareology suggest…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:47AM 
