Tuesday, August 26, 2014
ESSEX GIRL COMES OF AGE I rather like Denise van Outen. A trouper, a trained musical-theatre talent who had to make it (and she did, triumphing in CHICAGO here and on Broadway)…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:32PMSunday, August 24, 2014
A NEW BLONDE BOMBSHELL STORMS THE STAGE Summer seaside rep is not dead. Frinton Summer Theatre is marking its 75th year, and it’s worth celebrating , even though I caught the…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:14PMSaturday, August 23, 2014
ORWELL GOES GANGLAND Far out in DLR-land, in the wilderness of Urban Regeneration that is the new East-of-East End, Newham City Farm has been since 1977 a place where you can, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:17AMThursday, August 21, 2014
A WINNING ROLL OF THE DICE FOR CHICHESTER There is a sort of generosity, an overflowing vigour, when Chichester’s great three-sided arena does the classic musicals. They can�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:48PMWednesday, August 20, 2014
WARM, WONDERFUL, WISE..THE YEAR’S BEST NEW MUSICAL Strewth! What a wonderful show. In this trade we are cautious of superlatives, lest omething even better comes alon…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:42PMSaturday, August 16, 2014
OUT IN THE FOREST, SOMETHING STIRS… The slope beneath the great chestnut trees makes a perfect arena: on tiered seating or below it on chairs, the audience are held bre…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:02AMThursday, August 14, 2014
GUEST REVIEWER PHILIP FISHER ON RAVENHILL’S EXTENDED HIT It is amazing how quickly contemporary events become history, and recent history becomes the distant past. Mark R…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:34PMWednesday, August 13, 2014
BUCKSKINS, BURLESQUERS, BLISS Yee-ha! Calamity Jane strides in, beefy in buckskins, more beltingly, braggingly alive than any man in the room. Or, indeed, any room. She’s been ridin…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:58AMGUEST CRITIC PHILIP FISHER IS AWED BY GEORGIAN ORWELL.. Anyone expecting a children’s show from Guy Masterson’s adaptation of Orwell could be in for a shock. This deepl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:02AMSunday, August 10, 2014
WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF? I thought it was a children’s walk-through amusement, something to keep the little bleeders willing to accompany parents to the serious Traverse pla…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:32PMA CREEPY GENTLENESS I found this maverick pair, “Box Tale Soup” out in the boondocks last fringe: Antonia Christophers and noel Byrne, creating a wonderful Northanger Abbey …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:32PMSaturday, August 9, 2014
THE BONUS BOYS UNMASKED… Jamie Griffiths is not a quantitative analyst in the City. He’s an actor and playwright. Not a “quant”, a risk-taking star of the city bett…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:35AMTHE GRUMPY OLD ROMAN RETURNS… Terrible times we live in. A decadent civilization, a crumbling empire, hypocrites in power, toadies fawning on the rich, women strangers to chastity and …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:37AMFRANKIE GOES TO EXTREMES… Good to know (and I mean this seriously) that Edinburgh comedy is not cowed by squeamish PC seriousness. If you can’t laugh at everything, you probab…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:36AMFriday, August 8, 2014
WHO SAYS THE ROM-COM IS DEAD? IT JUST GOT WITTY.. Last year I purred over Richard Marsh’s “Dirty Great Love Story”, a blissfully clever, likeable, honest miniature rom-…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:48AMOH DEAR Sometimes you have to check out the Fringe regulars, especially when tagged with “sizzling” by the Scottish Express and “well worth getting out of bed for…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:47AMThursday, August 7, 2014
IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT AIDS… Kevin Elyot’s 1994 play is pretty much perfect: a twist on the traditional drawing-room, single-set comedy of sex, love, friendship and death. D…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:23AMFUTURE HORRORS OF A RISING BORIS? Here is a cheerful, dishevelled Alan Cox as Max Newman, London Mayor turned Tory MP. He’s a seemingly bumbling, teddybearish, pratfalling, polysyllabi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:18AMWednesday, August 6, 2014
COMRADES AND CANNIBALS “It’s not just seven naked men eating each other” must be the most startling aplogia yet for a play; but the author David Ian Lee and the director…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:53PMSTICK, BAGGY PANTS AND BOWLER: POLITICS AND EXILE My Granny met young Charlie Chaplin once: he was at her father’s Theatre Royal Nottingham with Fred Karno’s Mum…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:07AMTuesday, August 5, 2014
SEX , SEDUCTION AND STALE MARRIAGE… Middle-aged man in a hotel bar, having a drink after work; miniskirted girl hits on him, shameless, provocative – “do you want …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:25PMBEFORE THE REAL DEBATE…TRY THIS… Every afternoon at ten past five, a kilted 24-year-old woman in blue-and-white facepaint emerges from the leprous tenement of the Underbelly on a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:20PMMonday, August 4, 2014
THE COMMEMORATION Posted, 0100, 5/08/2014 “Terrible old uniforms, no proper webbing, even. Off to Destination Unknown” says the private soldier, remembering how he threw a …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:04PM1924 PREPPY KILLERS RIDE AGAIN Kevin Spacey thrilled us all right as the lawyer Clarence Darrow (at the Old Vic, reviewed here). One of his great triumphs was saving two youn…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:19AMSunday, August 3, 2014
THE BEAST WITHIN “Our enemies are not the Germans, nor the Russians or the French. The common enemy of us all is the beast within”. As Syria, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine burn an…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:49PMBRACING, BRILLIANT AND NECESSARY… Mark Thomas is the most intelligent of the modern leftist standups: impassioned, a practical activist emotionally driven but capable of rich mockery o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:38PMTuesday, July 29, 2014
DELUSION AND DESIRE IN THE DEEP SOUTH If you are on one of the high back-row benches there is a bar to rest your feet on. It can create for a moment the illusion of being on a …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:48PMMonday, July 28, 2014
GERSHWIN’S GRANDEUR: SPLENDOUR ON THE GRASS From the moment Nicola Hughes wanders onto the stage in the overture, pulls on a strident red dress, sniffs her “happy dust” an…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11PMFriday, July 25, 2014
A WORLD FOR THE WICKED It quotes a Roethke poem: “Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire..” Indeed it is. In a shiningly hyper-real world suspended …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:11PMThursday, July 24, 2014
CROSS , CRESCENT, CRUELTY, CONFUSION When this “fantasia on the third crusade” picks up momentum and reaches the summit of its oddity – a spectacular, if rather foggy peak – …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:55PMRUFF TRADE…. Young Shakespeare, a struggling player and playwright, falls for the upper-class Viola de Lesseps, not knowing that she has dressed as a boy to join his cast. She i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:18AM 
