IT’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 06:18PMHOW SWEET THE BIRDS OF AVONDALE… The room where the poet Stevie Smith lived for over half a century lies before us: chintz, potted geranium, sherry-decanter and stained-glass do…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:41PMOUR FIRST GUEST REVIEWER! GALLANT LUKE JONES BRAVES THE BLOOD, SPIT AND RAIN. Oh how it poured. With the large strips of black, makeshift roofing not covering but neatly chann…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:15AMWHERE HAVE ALL THE GOOD TIMES GONE? OH, THEY’RE BACK.. It is not every week the Hampstead audience gets to leap up and down with 1966 World Cup confetti in its hair, chanting “L-L…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMA MOTHER AND A MODERN MILE-HIGH NIGHTMARE Crop-haired, upright, an Aryan Alpha-female, she stands proud in flying-suit and straps. She’s a USAF fighter pilot, in love with her F16…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:16PMA FABULOUS LITTLE FRIGHTENER… What’s going on? you quaver, as four characters move and weave at impossible angles around a bare scaffolding of wall and door shapes. Are they gripped …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:10PMMIKE BARTLETT’S OTHER NEW PLAY… It’s played by a man – John Hollingworth – and a woman, Rachael Stirling. But it is not a love story, not that kind of love a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:09PMWORLD WAR I: THE PITY, THE POETRY A tin whistle, a distant seagull, a ship hooting beyond grimy tenement windows. Indoors Sylvester and Simon bicker and cringe as a tight-lipped vir…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:59PMIT KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE. IT TELLS A LOT OF PEOPLE. An artful cloud of insecurity surrounds James Graham’s new, mainly verbatim, play about the reckless modern surrender of privacy…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:28PMTOP QUALITY NONSENSE Light as a feather, puffy and sweet as a puffed meringue, this is where complete nonsense meets consummate skill. Not surprising: it is an adaptation of an 1892 Feydeau …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:12PMTHE BUTLER, THE FETE, AND THE HOLLYWOOD HORROR I saw this Coward revival last summer in Bath (Times review, £, http://tinyurl.com/qyxqbw2 ) with its gorgeous Palladian country-house drawing…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:16AMDANCING UP A STORM ON THE OLD NORWICH ROAD In a brief opening, Shakespeare quarrels with his favourite clown Will Kemp: creator of Faltaff, Feste and the rest. He resents the ad-libbing. “…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:52PMWHO NEEDS JURASSIC PARK? RE-LIVE THE 80s WHEN THATCHER ROAMED THE EARTH She’s back, the Iron Lady, with a war-cry of “No!” and a warmly patronizing memory of “The men!…I can pi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:32PMAND SO IT GOES ON… (review of part I just below) Such is the traditional, ungimmicky nature of Greg Doran’s productions that it is quite a shock when “Rumour”…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:18AMBOOZE 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 03:40AMRADICAL 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 06:29PMDARK 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 09:16AMHIGHTIDE 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 05:53AMSTARK, 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 07:01PMCHARLES, 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 06:41PMA 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 06:22PMTHEY 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 06:33PMNIGHTCLUBS 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 04:34AMPITY 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 10:17AMPOLEMIC, 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 11:15AMHOWL, 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 07:56PM
