Saturday, 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 02:35PM[SHARE]Tuesday, 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 sashays …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:39PM[SHARE]Monday, December 15, 2014
THE MERCHANT OF VEGAS RIDES AGAINÂ Three years ago Rupert Goold reimagined Venice for the RSC, taking 'casino capitalism' literally, setting it amid decadent gilt arches and roulet…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PM[SHARE]SUPERBLY 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 04:08AM[SHARE]Sunday, 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 creatio…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:00PM[SHARE]Friday, December 12, 2014
ANIMATED, ANIMATING, ADMIRABLE, ADORABLE Â Â 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 05:42PM[SHARE]Thursday, 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 06:07PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 10, 2014
YO HO HO – Â 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 drama…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:17PM[SHARE]NOEL 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 is this,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:55PM[SHARE]CHRISTMAS 1914: Â 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 07:34AM[SHARE]Thursday, 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 11:11AM[SHARE]GUEST 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 07:27AM[SHARE]Wednesday, 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 07:12AM[SHARE]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 te…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:22AM[SHARE]Tuesday, 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, work…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:12PM[SHARE]Monday, 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 beneath ra…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:53PM[SHARE]Sunday, 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 tar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:02AM[SHARE]Friday, 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 Chiltern "A…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:43AM[SHARE]Thursday, November 27, 2014
A MODERN DATE, Â 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 th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:35PM[SHARE]Wednesday, 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 07:33AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 25, 2014
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES AGAIN – BAFFLED BY MODERN BIRTHWAYS, Â SOLDIERSÂ BRAVELY ONÂ AND WISHES IT HAD WORKED Immediately this play had the whiff of a concept. This…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:49AM[SHARE]Friday, 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 03:25AM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 19, 2014
TWO LONELY LIARS IN AÂ BIG SAD CITY… Â Â Here's a curiosity worth catching: the only full play by Norris Church Mailer, widow of Norman Mailer (who greatly admired it). It was …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:32PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 18, 2014
ALL HUMAN LIFE: Â 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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PM[SHARE]Monday, 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 06:52PM[SHARE]Sunday, 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 wh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:01PM[SHARE]Thursday, 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 seasonal…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:55PM[SHARE]Wednesday, 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 05:43PM[SHARE]Tuesday, 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 the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:15PM[SHARE]Sunday, November 9, 2014
NO STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS: Â 600 YEAR OLD SEX CRIMEÂ COMES TO TRIAL It is the year 1399. In dim light, great John of Gaunt lies on his funeral bier awaiting burial in St Pa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:46PM[SHARE]Friday, 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: W…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:55AM[SHARE] 
