Thursday, April 17, 2014
BOOZE AND BATTLE, GRACE AND HUMANITY The tale of troubled Henry, threatened by rebellion, haunted by guilt at Richard’s murder and exasperated by the follies of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:40AMTuesday, April 15, 2014
RADICAL FEMINISM – IT’S NOTHING NEW… Now here’s politics! The mistress of the runaway Tory MP is a revolutionary preacher, previously known as Mad Agnes. She berates her love…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:29PMMonday, April 14, 2014
DARK BITTER JOY: A PERFECT CONFECTION This play is vintage Alan Ayckbourn: elegant, polished dramatic machinery serving a darkly comic and rueful human heart. Perfectly suited to a renewed a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:29PMA MUGGLE DOES SOME MAGIC This has to be the most explosively determined statement ever that “I am not just the one in those damn Harry Potter films!”. Harry Melling, who from the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:46AMOH GROW UP, GIRLS! Maybe this play about “friendship, feminism and what it means to be successful” would be less annoying if the characters – Bella, Jane, and Jane’s boyfriend To…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:16AMSunday, April 13, 2014
HIGHTIDE WINS A DAZZLING PAYNE PREMIERE O happy conversion! It is awkward and gloomy for a critic to admire and acknowledge a play’s clever originality, yet privately feel nothing. Nick Pa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:53AMFriday, April 11, 2014
STARK, PURE AND PERVERSE: A TRAGEDY FOR THEN AND NOW This is the toughest of tragedies: it may be a domestic affair, set among poor Italian immigrants under the Brooklyn Bridge in the ‘40�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:01PMThursday, April 10, 2014
CHARLES, CAMILLA, WILLIAM, KATE…THEIR FUTURE? AND OURS? Billed as “a future history”, Mike Bartlett’s new play begins with a chanted Lux Aeterna for the Queen’s fu…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:41PMThursday, April 3, 2014
A SUMMONS FROM THE PAST TO MAKE THE PRESENT BEARABLE.. The horn is the most primitive of instruments: a column of air, blown through a cone. Even in the most sophisticated forms, it…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:56PMLOVE AND THE TRAITORS: A 1930 WORLD There will be voices which hail this revival of Julian Mitchell’s magnificent imagining of the 1930‘s schooldays which bred the Cambridge spies R…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:22PMWednesday, April 2, 2014
THEY MAY BE DIRTY BUT THEY’RE EVER SO DIOR… The best moment of proper musical-theatre comedy in this slick hard-hearted show comes not from its principals (though they do …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:42PMYEARNING, FUMBLING, PHILOSOPHIZING: BEING FOURTEEN In 1891 Franz Wedekind rattled the cages of German propriety with this – subtitled “A children’s tragedy”. Its themes …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:33PMMonday, March 31, 2014
NIGHTCLUBS AND NIGHTINGALES - BLACKMAIL IN THE BLITZ It is endearing that this musical’s tour should coincide with the first same-sex marriages: it is built round a gay love affai…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:34AMFriday, March 28, 2014
PITY AND TERROR: A PUB PREMIERE OF RARE QUALITY The Finborough has done it again: produced the most remarkable new musical of the year, shudderingly emotional, harsh and passionate, f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:29PMNO SQUASHED CABBAGE LEAVES: A FAIR TRIUMPH Rarely have I seen George Bernard Shaw’s tumbling torrent of ideas and indignations delivered with such joyful, entertaining panache, or…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:17AMThursday, March 27, 2014
POLEMIC, COMIC, FURIOUS (note: theatrecat saw this a fortnight ago in the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, where it premiered, but respects tonight’s embargo) You might do well, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:15AMWednesday, March 26, 2014
HOWL, HOWL, HOWL! IT’S COWELL MOST FOUL… Only gossip-writers should review the audience, but seeing this was the gala premiere of Harry Hill’s X-factor musical , and that mo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:56PMTuesday, March 25, 2014
McELHONE - BUTTERFLY OR BUNNY-BOILER? It is 27 years since James Dearden saw his film script explode into public consciousness, deify Michael Douglas as a hapless adulterer and Glenn…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:56PMMonday, March 24, 2014
PALM TREES ,POLITICS, LITERATURE , LOYALTIES.. With a fine dramatic flourish the Old Vic is again a theatre-in-the-round, as it was six years ago for the Norman Conquests. The refit (…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:28PMThursday, March 20, 2014
FJORDS, FATALITY, FRAGMENTATION The young man lies on the settle thinking about his dog. It’s run off. His mother, stiffly repetitive between pauses, tells him he’s a grown man and sho…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:34PMWednesday, March 19, 2014
SPIRIT OF ’84 IN A BUDGET-DAY FARCE “Why is a civil servant from the Home Office posing as a Dr Christmas from Norwich auditioning an actor from Kingston?”. Why is a hotel corridor…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:30PMTuesday, March 18, 2014
ANGELA LANSBURY BACK ON THE BOARDS, IN VERY GOOD COMPANY It is Angela Lansbury’s hour and ovation, back on the West End stage at 88 after forty years away. We’d be on our feet out of m…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:28PMMonday, March 17, 2014
A TERRIBLE BEAUTY: INSPIRING, INTIMIDATING, INVALUABLE The lad in the Army Recruiting Office listens enthusiastically to the Para behind the desk speaking of comradeship and adventure. But…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:53PMDEVILISHLY SILLY, BUT NOT STUPID Satan (Adam Long in plastic horns) came up to earth in human form in 1964 because he was “excited with what was going on in musical theatre”, notably…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:57PMSaturday, March 15, 2014
Affluence has dented our buccaneering spirit, says Libby Purves
SOURCE: The Telegraph at 02:30PMThursday, March 13, 2014
PREJUDICE AND THE PREMIERSHIP: A GAY FOOTBALL STORY As gay shame and secrecy gradually fade from British life, one of the last frontiers is professional football. We know from traged…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:09PMWednesday, March 12, 2014
THE MAKING OF A MILITANT SUFFRAGETTE Emily Wilding Davison died 101 years ago at the Derby, under the thundering hooves of the King’s horse. Nobody knows for sure whether she intended ma…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:49PMTuesday, March 11, 2014
MAKING A SPLASH: URINE SHOWBIZ NOW! Are they taking the piss? This extraordinary 2001 American musical by Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis ran three years on Broadway after a fringe debut…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:59PMWednesday, March 5, 2014
CLASS, RACE, LUCK AND LIES: AMERICAN AND UNIVERSAL In tough South Boston they approvingly say someone is “Good People”. It carries a sense not only of individual value but neighbourh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21PMTuesday, March 4, 2014
TWO CITIES, FIVE STARS, ONE THRILLING EVENING With an elegance which bodes well for James Dacre’s captaincy of this lovely theatre, its filmhouse programmed The Invisible Woman j…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:55PMMonday, March 3, 2014
PIES, PRATFALLS AND POLE-DANCING: SATURDAYS AND THE SEVENTIES (NOT A CHILDREN’S SHOW…BEWARE..) Oh, the wicked 1970’s! Sexist, racist, rapist: gropey DJs in the Bee…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:34PM 
