Friday, February 7, 2014
PORN:  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, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:17AM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 5, 2014
NEUROTIC OLD LOONS OR GENDER PIONEERS? Â Â Â Â Â There's a central metaphor:Â staring through the glass walls of her elegant West California apartment a woman says "It's a d…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 4, 2014
THE 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 07:09PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 2, 2014
MISCHIEF 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 …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:01AM[SHARE]Friday, January 31, 2014
TIM 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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:12PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 30, 2014
BURIED BUT BRILLIANT:Â JULIET STEVENSON BRAVESÂ BECKETT "One does not appear to be asking a great deal"Â says Winnie of her husband Willie, who is mostly invisible behind a rock, gr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:46PM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 28, 2014
SMALL 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 …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:20PM[SHARE]Monday, January 27, 2014
Just 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 (Ti…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:46PM[SHARE]Saturday, January 25, 2014
AN 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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:18AM[SHARE]Thursday, January 23, 2014
A LEAR TO REMEMBER: SIMON RUSSELL BEALE Â Â Â Â Â Â We are in a crumbling modern gerontocracy:Â a conference chamber lined with soldiers, Lear white-bearded and gratingly imp…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:54PM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 22, 2014
FEMINISM? 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 Wif…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:17PM[SHARE]WOMEN 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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15PM[SHARE]Monday, January 20, 2014
 THE 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 a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:48PM[SHARE]Saturday, January 18, 2014
SPOOKS, 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 sam…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:49AM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 15, 2014
HORROR , 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 …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51PM[SHARE]Monday, January 13, 2014
A 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, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:46PM[SHARE]Sunday, January 12, 2014
AUSSIE 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 05:06PM[SHARE]Friday, January 10, 2014
ECHOES 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 Pro…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:45PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 9, 2014
A 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 06:21PM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 8, 2014
AND 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, fie…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PM[SHARE]THOMAS 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 hi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:26PM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 7, 2014
LOWLIFE , 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�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:34PM[SHARE]Saturday, January 4, 2014
CANTERVILLE 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 t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:59PM[SHARE]Saturday, December 21, 2013
…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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:42PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 19, 2013
This 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 07:58PM[SHARE]SLEAZE 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 07:47PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 18, 2013
NEVERLAND 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 intellectu…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24PM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 17, 2013
PLEBS 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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:32PM[SHARE]Monday, December 16, 2013
LONELINESS, LONGING, A LINEN CUPBOARD: A HEARTSHAKING REVIVAL 1848 in rural Russia: early morning in the great house, maids opening up. High in the great linen-cupboa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:25PM[SHARE]Sunday, December 15, 2013
JOYFUL DISASTERS FROM COMEDY MASTERS The director is grandiose as only a student thesp can be; his assistant ("Co-director" he snaps) surly. The actors playing Pan and Wendy are an i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:03PM[SHARE]Friday, December 13, 2013
TWERKING INFLATABLE ELEPHANTS! THAT’S MORE LIKE IT! For all my pleading I was unable to borrow a child for this 4+ production (school hours, bah humbug!) . But I sat next to one wh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:54AM[SHARE] 
