A 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 06:57PMA DREAM OF PLANKS AND PUPPETS, AND AN UPTURNED ASS… “Gentles, perhaps you wonder at this show. But wonder on…” says Peter Quince, lanky and earnest in a fairisle swea…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:08PMSEX, STRIFE, AND HOT THEOLOGY: ABELARD AND HELOISE RISE AGAIN “Theology in Paris these days” says tubby, jocose King Louis VI of France, “is more interesting than wrestling m…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:32PMPORN: THE NASTIEST COTTAGE INDUSTRY Julie is alone, reminiscing with a cup of tea, calling her cat. She’s a geriatric nursing auxiliary, gentle and cheerful, fond of a laug…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:17AMNEUROTIC OLD LOONS OR GENDER PIONEERS? There’s a central metaphor: staring through the glass walls of her elegant West California apartment a woman says “It’s a desert …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMTHE YELLOW BRICK ROAD TO THE WISDOM OF FANDOM “Sometimes” says the author-heroine of this extraordinary piece, “things can be richer if they don’t add up”. Take that on b…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:09PMMISCHIEF GOES ON THE ROAD Sometimes it pays to be a brave gang of friends, fresh out of LAMDA, putting on your own show rather than waiting for auditions. Early last year I sp…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:01AMTIM PIGOTT-SMITH SHOWS HOW IT’S DONE Few better fates can befall a new playwright than to have Tim Pigott-Smith cast – perfectly – at the heart of your premiere. One of t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:12PMBURIED BUT BRILLIANT: JULIET STEVENSON BRAVES BECKETT “One does not appear to be asking a great deal” says Winnie of her husband Willie, who is mostly invisible behind a rock, grun…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:46PMSMALL LIVES IN THE GREAT WAR: FORGOTTEN VOICES HEARD AND HONOURED Get seated ten minutes early. In Alex Marker’s humbly clever set, a bricky terraced house, the cast sing casua…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:20PMJust a note to say that I reviewed this when it first aired at the Tricycle in 2012, and was pleased to be one of those who voted its awards at the Critics’ Circle. My review (Times …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:46PMAN ERA RECREATED: THE REAL 1968 IN AN UNREAL WORLD The opening, in a student room correct down to the battered stack of albums, took me aback. Friends, I was there in 1968: …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:18AMA LEAR TO REMEMBER: SIMON RUSSELL BEALE We are in a crumbling modern gerontocracy: a conference chamber lined with soldiers, Lear white-bearded and gratingly impatient in dict…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:54PMFEMINISM? NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE IT! Eight women, on a great flight of pale stairs which light and flash, introduce themselves politely. “Single Mum, White” “Brittle First Wife�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:17PMWOMEN ARE REVOLTING! BUT AGAINST WHAT??? The world is changing. “Women are standing for President, men are exfoliating” Don, an amiable klutz who used to teach but fell back on a q…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15PMTHE PITY, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND FASCINATION OF WAR A howl of Arctic wind subdues the settling audience, facing one another from benches across a snowy floor. Screens informs us that all the…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:48PMSPOOKS, SECRETS , SEDUCTIONS If you are, like me, addicted to Spooks on television and to the deeper-rooted psychologies of John le Carré, Dawn King’s new play feeds the same hung…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:49AMHORROR , BEAUTY, CANDLELIGHT It is a tiny jewel-box, this new indoor playhouse: a reproduction of the Jacobean theatres which succeded the wooden O of the Globe. Clean pale wood benches li…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51PMA VIRTUOSO BECKETT TRIO It’s a weird hour, this, even for late Samuel Beckett. Three short solos, performed by Lisa Dwan in an impressive feat of memory and mood, meditate on…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:46PMAUSSIE DINOS RULE There is a good reason why frazzled British parents cherish Australian nannies: and every cheerful, firm, gung-ho, reliable quality we dream of is exemplified in Lindsey Ch…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:06PMECHOES OF ANGLO-IRISH ANGST: CRITIC STRUGGLES TO SYMPATHIZE Full personal disclosure: having a longstanding connection with Ireland I am not a natural empath for the Anglo-Irish Protest…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:45PMA TOE-TAPPING TOAD AND SLINKY STOATING With a caper and a thump and a hippety-hop, a flapping of laundry and a riverbank romp, the Royal Opera House has dipped a first (elegantly pointed) …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21PMAND SO IT GOES ON… “Intrigue feeds upon itself” says Thomas Cromwell, in the second part of this magnificent and terrifying chronicle. We find Anne Boleyn restless, fiercel…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMTHOMAS CROMWELL WALKS AGAIN. A NON-READER IS ENTRANCED. “Between Christmas Day and Epiphany God permits the dead to walk”. So says Henry VIII, sleepless in the dawn, summoning his …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:26PMLOWLIFE , HIGH DRAMA AND DRINK The candles on our tables gutter in their glass shades, hands tighten round drinks, spurts of relieved laughter meet dry jokes, stillness respects mome…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:34PMCANTERVILLE MEETS VAUDEVILLE - on the road Here’s a bit of fun to report, the last rich dregs of Christmas before theatrecat puts on a straight face and heads to Stratford.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:59PM…theatrecat.com will be back in the New Year with Wolf Hall and wartime and the new Wanamaker, and Beckett and Cleopatra and maybe even the odd panto. Thank you all, very much, for f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:42PMThis is not a theatre-news website, but it wishes to extend sympathy to the audience and cast of The Curious Affair of the Dog in the Night-Time, and to Nica Burns and her staff at Nimax The…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:58PMSLEAZE AND SCANDAL IN THE SIXTIES There is a painfully beautiful song in the second Act of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s new musical about the 1963 Profumo affair, a potential classic. “Hope…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:47PMNEVERLAND HAS ITS FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS RAISED You can tick off reasons why this is just what the RSC should do. A fresh commission from a rising playwright, Ella Hickson; an intellectual…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24PMPLEBS AND POLITICS, SAVAGE AND STARK The plebs are angry, scrawling demands for grain on the bare back wall, modern in hoodies and jeans. They reckon the senators get all the good st…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:32PM
