Sunday, 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 11:30AMFriday, June 20, 2014
IN WHICH OUR GUEST REVIEWER JOHN PETER DOES NOT HAVE A HAPPY NIGHT OUT Tim Crouch has given us a play which is not a play. It has no narrative: it does not give you a story; it do…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:49AMWednesday, June 18, 2014
BILL NIGHY BACK ONSTAGE: MORE THAN WELCOME Few actors are more instantly recognizable than Bill Nighy, yet his gift is to deploy in faithful service of each distinct part his i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12PMTuesday, June 17, 2014
BY ‘ECK, IT’S BRIGHOUSE ROCKING INTO THE ‘SIXTIES… Never underestimate a young woman in a neat blue dress from anywhere North of Watford. Especially one called…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:55PMSunday, June 15, 2014
BRAVO BRAVISSIMO! OPERA-ROM-COM FROM THE HEART I knew I was going to like this operatico-jukebox backstage rom-com (a whole new genre) when Jenny Stafford – as trembling, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:40PMFriday, June 13, 2014
BEAUTIFUL BODIES, JOY IN ACTION In circus tradition feats of acrobatic daring and balance are hyped up by a ringmaster – drumrolls, pleas to keep totally quiet lest you distract…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:21PMThursday, June 12, 2014
BART SIMPSON’S LEGEND SURVIVES THE APOCALYPSE: DO WE CARE? A child of the Cold War, I have read post-apocalyptic fiction all my life: from John Wyndham and Kuttner to Nevil S…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:51PMWednesday, June 11, 2014
A KNIGHTSBRIDGE REDEMPTION…. Quotes from critics are always helpful. This one has “Drop dead funny and informative” on its flyer: not from a Spencer or Billington but signed…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:28PMTuesday, June 10, 2014
NUMRICH AS A NIHILIST HOUSEGUEST… It is a universally recognizable moment: an idealistic student home for summer with revolutionary theories and an adored, even more revolutionary, fla…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:59PMMonday, June 9, 2014
THE PIG TAKES ON THE PROVINCES, AND WINS I reviewed the West End premiere of this new Stiles-and-Drew musical, directed by Richard Eyre and passionately backed by Cameron Mac…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55PMSaturday, June 7, 2014
POKER AND PATERNITY: A WOMAN QUIETLY DESPAIRS… Poker, like good drama, requires an ability to transmit or conceal “tells”: moments of facial or body language revealing or hi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:38AMGuest reviewer LUKE JONES appreciates our Dawnie… At the very beginning, with a large clock face ticking behind her, Dawn French describes what we are about to see as a slice of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:38AMFriday, June 6, 2014
A HIGH PRESSURE TRIUMPH , AND A TRIBUTE It happened seventy years ago so we know the outcome. D-Day was the biggest amphibious invasion in history – 156,000 men, 6939 vessels, 11590 pl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51AMThursday, June 5, 2014
GORDON CONTRA MUNDUM…A BLEAK IMAGINING The focus groups, mourns this briefest of Prime Ministers, always come up with the same words about him. “Strong” and “Solid” are …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:11AMWednesday, June 4, 2014
ONE GREAT PERFORMER’S TRIBUTE TO ANOTHER The main causes of crime, said the famous American defence lawyer Darrow, are “Poverty, ignorance, hard luck and, generally, youth”. A century …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:14PMTuesday, June 3, 2014
A WICKED WIT, WITH HEART ON SLEEVE : LIPPA TAKES LONDON Here is Summer Strallen as Cinderella, ripping off her rags and scorning the ballgown for a dominatrix PVC corset and whip. Her…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMMonday, June 2, 2014
DEATH , TRUTH, TORMENT : THE REBIRTH OF A NATION “What” asks the calm academic , “should our attitude be to people who have committed atrocities?”. From Belfast to the Balka…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PMFriday, May 30, 2014
FRESHER THAN EVER, AN ANCIENT LOVE UNDER THE SKY Eve Best is an irresistible Cleopatra for today: no slinky seductive exoticism but a fresh, joyful, larky sensuality as well-expressed in w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:27AMWednesday, May 28, 2014
KATHLEEN TURNER BLOWS INTO TOWN, AN AUTHENTIC HURRICANE Under a tangle of brushwood and a ratty telegraph pole, Maude’s trailer-park home is full of junk from dumpsters and charity …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:04PMTuesday, May 27, 2014
REDEMPTION OF A HOLLYWOOD HUNK… The tiny am-dram theatre is threatened with redevelopment: only celebrity casting can save it. Jefferson Steel – fading star of Ultimate Finality …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:01AMThursday, May 22, 2014
POWERFUL, EMOTIONAL, CHALLENGING - GUEST REVIEWER JOHN PETER WRITES: Do you remember Vietnam? How, in the sixties and seventies, we wondered whether the communist North would …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:00PMTuesday, May 20, 2014
WELL, SWIPE ME DOWN THE OLD KENT ROAD, ME OLD CHINA… Would you Adam and Eve it: the Joan Littlewood centenary restores to her sacred stage not only Oh What A Lovely War but this celebr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:53PMMonday, May 19, 2014
AN EXTRAORDINARY ALICE IN THE DARK HEART OF WAR In a cellar, sheltering from bombs in 1915, a wispily grey, middle-aged Alice Liddell roams through an Edwardian clutter of old chests,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:01AMThursday, May 15, 2014
INTIMATE, HUMBLE: THE BEST COMMEMORATION The title comes from Philip Larkin’s poem MCMXIV, evoking the rural England of 1914 as young men queued, as if at a football match, to enlis…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:45PMWednesday, May 14, 2014
POSTWAR, COLD-WAR, ANGRY AND RESTLESS Ever since our manufacturing and metal-bashing trades eroded, we have seen a sentimentality about old industrial Britain: the glory days when a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:58AMTuesday, May 13, 2014
SEW, STRUT, SWIRL AND SHAKE IT ! When this production ran at Chichester, I found myself forced to invent new words to describe Stephen Mear’s marvellously varied choreography as the SleepT…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:04PMSunday, May 11, 2014
IMBRUGLIA IN A FINE IMBROGLIO When two old schoolfriends meet after eleven years, naturally they sing the old school song. “Girls of St Gert’s! Pure in your body, healthy in mind..” Wh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:30PMSaturday, May 10, 2014
AN HOUR OF SHOCKING BRILLIANCE AND ARTISAN OBSCENITY Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s extraordinary self-written monologue performance won awards in Edinburgh, the Offies, The Stage and the C…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:34AMThursday, May 8, 2014
SKITTERBANG ISLAND Little Angel, N1 Is three-to-five years old too young for opera? Not really. Small children sing their world all the time, chant their feelings freely. As for puppe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:17AMTuesday, May 6, 2014
MINXY MURDEROUSNESS AMID THE WAVING CATS.. Polly Findlay, who gave us the National Theatre’s tough Antigone and Derren Brown’s Svengali, has great fun with RSC directorial debut: …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:30PMIT’S TRUE! A FISH DOES NEED A BICYCLE! We’re in a cavernous Victorian swimming-pool, a dreamworld where the waterfall is made of bath-plug chains. Then we’re in a sea-green underwa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:18PM 
