Friday, 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 02:18AMTuesday, July 22, 2014
DIVINITY AND DEADLY HATRED One day someone will put Milton’s Paradise Lost on stage and cast Rupert Everett as Satan, the bitter archangel. For now he is Peter Shaffer’s Salieri: c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:24AMMonday, July 21, 2014
IN WHICH GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS MUCH TO ENJOY, AND ONLY A LITTLE TO MOAN ABOUT It is always exciting to have a new Medea, possibly the most controversial of all Euripides’ t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:35PMThursday, July 10, 2014
LOCK, STOCK, AND NO BARRELS OF MALMSEY A credit in the programme for “fish care and health” answers one distracting question about Jamie Lloyd’s rackety p…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:56AMMonday, July 7, 2014
FOLLOW THE HERRING, SALUTE THE PAST That early morning cry that woke the herring lassies: women who, through the great days of the Victorian herring fisheries, met the flee…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:13PMFriday, July 4, 2014
BLOOD, POLITICS, RUFFS, AND TOGAS: MUCH TO DELIGHT GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI The Globe audience are still filing in as the Roman rabble break into a raucous, drunken football chant …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:21PMThursday, July 3, 2014
THE GATES OF HELL CREAK OPEN… It will haunt the memory for months, this profound, dark-lit, smoke-scented deep-booming production of Arthur Miller’s play. In the round arena it cr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:27PMWednesday, July 2, 2014
CAN YOU FEEL THE PAIN TONIGHT? NOT A BIT. Miss Saigon rhymes with One Big Yawn, a tiny helicopter wobbles over the stage and the “Viet-numb” cast. A huge-breasted “Matthew Warch…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:10PMAN AMBULANCE RIDE: A CITY’S HEARTBEAT Some theatre enterprises are quixotic, site-specific, small-scale immersive and probably economically ruinous. Gotta love them: e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:53PMTHIRTY YEARS ON: A TRIBUTE TO THE MEN OF THE MINES Down the dark pit, Bible-bred men quote the Book of Job. “He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the mount…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:59AMMonday, June 30, 2014
ONE PLAY MANY TARGETS – CAN BEAN & HYTNER HACK IT….? The headlines flash up, perfect front pages on the glass walls which morph from newsroom to police sta…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:02PMThursday, June 26, 2014
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES ENDURES GLOSSY EMPTINESS AT THE HANDS OF NEW YORK SOCIALITES Ever wondered what happens to Disney princesses when they grow up boring? Adam Bock has. His new play, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:39AMTuesday, June 24, 2014
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES GOES ROUND AND ROUND THIS RICKETY BUT FUN CAROUSEL If you have never been to the Arcola, imagine the Donmar’s hip cousin; a small and intimate theatre, but wi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:24AMMonday, June 23, 2014
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SEES THE SECOND TWO PLAYS IN THE RSC’S “MIDSUMMER MISCHIEF” SERIES: PROGRAMME B Continuing the exploration of the challenge phrase “Well-behaved wome…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:21PMSunday, June 22, 2014
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SEES THE FIRST TWO PLAYS IN THE RSC’S “MIDSUMMER MISCHIEF” SERIES: PROGRAMME A THE ANT AND THE CICADA – Timberlake Wertenbaker Zoe is an artist, l…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:30AM 
