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 05:43PMTHE 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 05:15PMNO 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 01:46PMGUEST 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 08:55AMIN 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 04:06AMUP 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 06:35PMBRAM 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 06:25PMTHE 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 05:41PMDORAN 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 05:40AMDARKNESS 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 08:13PMRADIO 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 07:11PMFLINTLOCK 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 05:21PM“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 07:50PMA 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 07:00PMA 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 04:26AMIN 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 08:47AMBEFORE THE DAWN OF WAR…THE LAST LARKS This is the young Shakespeare: making his way, dazzling with wordplay, confecting improbable japes and charades, laughing at absurd elder…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:44PMEVERYTHING COMES UP ROSES FOR THIS ONE. OH YES. It is not often in a big musical that you remember the silences: the pin-drop, tense waits. But then, Gypsy was no run-of-the-mill musi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:18PMDORFMAN DOES DISCO, HURRAH Oh, fabulous! Nicholas Hytner could have done lots of traditional things to launch the recreated third auditorium, the jewel of “NT Future” with …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:45PMBACK TO PRISON: WOMEN WIN THE HOLLOW CROWN This is epic and intimate, mischievous and macho, truthful and painful and bleak. A two-hour condensation of the Henry IV plays, set in th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:39PMTHE INTERIORITY OF EXTERIORITY EXAMINED..ER.. Theresa Rebeck’s play about a creative-writing seminar in New York, directed with pace and flair by Terry Johnson, has met some sniffy …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:58PMDORIAN GRAY IS BACK. AND THIS TIME SHE’S A GIRL. I am usually too humble about my exiguous visual gift to dare remonstrate with designers, but in this case would plead, t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:33PMSWEET SEDUCTION, OLD CORRUPTION In 1978 as a Today reporter the day editor hustled me off to the Prince Edward theatre where this chap Lloyd-Webber (“He did that Joseph thi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12PMLINDSAY, LINDSAY AND LINDSAY. TWO OUT OF THREE DO FINE. David Mamet’s angostura sharpness is not everyone’s taste , but few playwrights have such rat-a-tat rhythm and economic…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:16PMPITY AND TERROR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST There’s a great tall door, portal of the ancient house of Atreus; a blighted tree, a votive lantern, a dusty arena. Like Greeks two tho…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:12PMTHE SADNESS OF THE SINGLE SPY…BENNETTIAN COMIC MELANCHOLY These two short plays are vintage, premier-cru Alan Bennett: funny, melancholic, sparking with ideas about Bri…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:02PMGUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES ENJOYS THE GRANS AND GANGSTERS The heyday, the heyday. Everyone’s Gran loves to chew over the heyday with anyone they can pin in a chair. But wh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:46AMWell, what a day that was. There is still in October one chance to see, in one day, all three of Rona Munro’s immense trilogy about the first three King Jameses of Scotland in the wild 15t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:02PMTHE JAMES PLAYS GET OFF TO A TERRIFIC START… This one’s a stormer: thrilling, funny, vigorous, beguiling, accessible, a gripping and entertaining blend of the epic and …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:01PM…AND IT GROWS DARKER James I is dead. His small son, defaced by a birthmark, puny and afraid, in surreal nightmare sequences constantly relives the bloodshed and concealm…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:01PM
