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 07:56PMMcELHONE - 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 06:56PMPALM 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 07:28PMFJORDS, 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 06:34PMSPIRIT 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 08:30PMANGELA 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 07:28PMA 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 05:57PMAffluence has dented our buccaneering spirit, says Libby Purves
SOURCE: The Telegraph at 02:30PMPREJUDICE 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 08:09PMTHE 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 05:49PMMAKING 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 05:59PMCLASS, 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 06:21PMTWO 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 06:55PMPIES, 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 06:34PMLET THE BAND PLAY ON Billy Elliott, The Full Monty, now Brassed Off - thirty years on from the loss of pits and steelworks, we seem to need a national rite of mourning and expiation, a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:23AM1919: A GENERATION CAST ADRIFT BY WAR After the Armistice, in spring 1919 the Treaty of Versailles drew lines on the map and enforced reparations. Its decisions cast long shadows even toda…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:33PMFIGHTS, FLIGHTS, PANTALOONS AND PRENTICES: BUT THE GROCER’S WIFE IS THE STAR. Imagine three hours on a bench watching a cross between Spamalot and The Real Inspector Hound, perform…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:21AMMORE THAN A MOVIE: SOMETHING SPECIAL FROM SHEFFIELD The opening is dramatic: a small gap in the rusty corrugated curtain reveals showers of sparks, a glimpse of steelworks magnificence. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:25PMWALKING THE STREETS, A FAR FROM LOST SOUL Phyllis Pearsall became one of London’s great urban legends, through her own barnstorming memories and a fictionalized biography. A young wife, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11PMPASSIONATE, INTENSE AND WILD: JANE EYRE REBORN “I am no bird, and no net ensnares me!”. As if in answer to Jane’s cry of defiance Sally Cookson’s spare, th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:56PMOLD IRELAND: PLAYFUL, POWERFUL, INTENSE AND TRAGIC A hot summer at harvest’s end, 1836. Outside a stone barn in County Donegal old Jimmy-Jack is chortling naughtily over the Iliad.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:30AMSONYA AND ANDREY: A BRIEF ENCOUNTER BY FRIEL Two lonely middle-aged people meet in a cheap Moscow café in 1920: she frowning over accounts and mortgages, he in frayed evening clothes …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:51PMA BLAST OF FRESH AIR FROM THE FIFTIES “Cinema is as bad as the theatre these days” says Jo’s mother Helen disdainfully. “All mauling and muttering”. Written in 1958 by th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:47PMSINGING ALL THE WAY DOWNHILL “Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey and I ache in the places where I used to play..” Ah, Leonard Cohen! Nothing like it when you need it. Which…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:37AMQuite a few people have asked about the theatre cat logo for theatrecat. Even more are curious about the mice. They are all created by Roger Hardy. Who is really a painter and creator of…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:49AMO RAPTURE UNFORESEEN. A G & S REFUSENIK RECANTS Right. Shoot your cuffs, hammer that piano, rum-ti-tum and off we go: When I was young I must confess I’d run a mile from seei…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:48PMIN WHICH A GOOD PLAY MOVES TOWARDS SOMETHING GREATER Sometimes, memories need to be revisited. It was in autumn 2012 that I reviewed Lolita Chakrabarti’s play starring her husband Adri…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:40PMA TERRIFYING, TRIUMPHANT HEADLONG TAKE ON ORWELL I think George Orwell would be sourly pleased at the way Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan of Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse have trea…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:06PMGAUDEAMUS IGITUR! A FAVE FRAYN FARCE RETURNS Those who love a good farce – lost trousers, sock-suspenders, nifty door-work, ridiculous fights and punctured dignity - sometimes fe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:58PMA THEATRE LEGEND RECREATED: AND RIPE FOR RE-EVALUATION Sometime in the first hour, while far from unhappy, I realized that there are two things to keep in mind about Terry Johnson’…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:57PM
