YOUNG GENTLEMEN (AND LADIES) TO CELEBRATE Â Â Â This is very good fun indeed. Who does not want an onstage dog called Crab, benignly upstaging a rarely seen Shakespeare clown? A…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:20PM[SHARE]TWO YEARS AFTER THE NEXT ELECTION..    Here, a mere meringue's throw from Eton itself, is an imaginary Prime Minister of that ilk. Tidier in person and with a touch more inte…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:10AM[SHARE]NYPD FAMILY BLUES Â Â Â Â Â I fell for the solid, paternal, irascible Walter "Pops" Washington immediately over his whiskey breakfast, as he listens half-patiently to the unrel…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:38AM[SHARE]A LOST WEEKEND WORTH FINDING Â Â Â Â It helps if you fall in love with the set;Â even more if the set helps tell the story. For this tale of a louche, tender, disreputably memo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:38AM[SHARE]GANG LIFE, GRIEF AND GREATNESS    There is a very tense moment late on in the second half when Jacob Dunne, only just holding himself together, finally sits down in person…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24AM[SHARE]A RIOTOUS RUSSIAN SATIRE, FOR ALL TIMESÂ Â Â Â Â Â The local governor and councillors are posing for a photograph, more than satisfied with themselves and their genteelly co…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:05AM[SHARE]MODERN ECHOES OF A DYING FALL Â Â Â Â Â Years ago I came out of a dullish production in Yorkshire of Chekhov's last play, set very traditionally with samovar, parasols and big …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:48AM[SHARE]A BOY BETRAYED Connor was 18 when he drowned in the bath with an epileptic seizure. It needn't have happened. He was under slipshod care, away from the family who loved him, in an NHS "A…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:47AM[SHARE]A FEARFUL FUTUREÂ Â I am wary of futurist dystopias, but this is a real treat: intelligent sci-fi with serious thrills. Â As it opens, we are the 2050Â audience at the celebratio…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:35AM[SHARE]By Libby Purves Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves reviews Mike Poulton's The Other Boleyn Girl based on the novel by Philippa Gregory now playing at the Chichester Festival Theatre. This …
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 05:19AM[SHARE]THE COURT AND THE BEDCHAMBER    Theatre will never tire of the Tudors, nor should it. From every new angle they offer a dramatic gift which never stops giving. Here's 153…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:10AM[SHARE]MEN BEHAVING RIDICULOUSLY The lord of Navarre and three nobles have resolved to retreat and study for three years, eschewing female company: so even the princess suing for land has t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:47AM[SHARE]MUD, MARSH, MONEY Â Â Â Now here's a bracing new way to do Dickens:Â avoid sets full of Victoriana by keeping the stage pretty much empty beneath a set of uneasily moving lighting…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:20AM[SHARE]REFLECTIONS ON A FAT KNIGHT Due to train disruption " speak not of overhead wires and wind " I had to bail out at the interval, from Robert Icke's epic three and a half hour modern-d…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:47AM[SHARE]WHY HALESWORTH MATTERS TO THE NATIONAL DRAMATIC ECOSYSTEM Â Â The other day I did an overview-preview from some dress rehearsals at the INK short play festival in Suffolk (scroll below)…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51AM[SHARE]Â Â Â CROOKBACK DICK REIMAGINED Â Â Â Â Â Saving Richard III from Shakespeare's calumny seems to have a particular appeal to women: probably because around his accessi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:41AM[SHARE]DIVING ABOUT IN A UNIQUE SHORT-PLAY FESTIVAL      Join me on a parked Hoppa minibus where Henry VIII is chatting up a new Jane. She is not impressed by the Tudor-Tinde…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:27AM[SHARE]HOLINESS IN THE WHALE     It pretty much had me harpooned at the words "Call me Ishmael".  As Mark Arends' earnestly naive schoolteacher speaks the opening lines and …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:26AM[SHARE]WUTHERING SIBLINGS    Grace Smart the designer sets the scene as we settle in with a sweet miniature moor, all harebells and heather and cloddy bits of earth. But it rises in …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:55PM[SHARE]THE GAME'S AFOOT. EVENTUALLY. Nick Lane's adaptation of Conan Doyle's late, broodingly complicated novel has met many huzzahs from Sherlock Holmes fans, previously here, on tour and stre…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:56AM[SHARE]DOSTOYEVSKY IN DALTON    "These days" says the man on the empty stage, "people are precious to me, even when they insult me. I have woken up". His stark features d…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:17PM[SHARE]CAMPUS RITES AND WRONGS Sometimes, I do like a stage set you could cosily move right into. Paul Farnsworth's is a nice evocation of a Harvard professor's study: shelves and panelling…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:22PM[SHARE]HOMAGE TO THE FIRST CELEBRITY DIVA     Last time theatre's pre-Victorian glory days " silk breeches, rowdy audiences and Garrickian hamming " were celebrated on this s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:35AM[SHARE]HOW TO WASTE A STELLAR CAST    Sheridan Smith is not only a box-office draw but a rare and genuine talent: two decades a star on screen and stage, musicals and drama:…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:27AM[SHARE]MAGIC . ALWAYS BETTER WHEN DISASTROUS.      God bless Mischief Theatre. Eleven years ago this coming May I saw THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG in the tiny downstairs space at…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:01PM[SHARE]KIDS WITH A KICK IN THEM Â Â Â Â There's been an interlockof themes in theatre lately: DEAR ENGLAND at the NT displaying Gareth Southgate's work in fostering the openness and emot…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:31AM[SHARE]HOPE, HEART, HARDSHIP Â Â Brian Friel's 1979 remarkable play stands on its own, offering a kind of depressive beauty: beneath the story of one ramshackle troubled couple it is a meditat…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:44AM[SHARE]RO$$INI BONANZA! Guest reviewer Dean Thompson finds much in a small space… Opera lovers or new to opera will love this! So, get on your horse and gallop over to see Charles Court O…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:23AM[SHARE]A CELLULOID INVASION  This was at first a startling choice: Eastern Angles' tradition is generally, as it heroically tours night-by-night across the eastern counties,  to pro…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:52PM[SHARE]BOARDROOM BEASTS Â Â This may break all records for the smartest costumes ever at the Southwark's smallest space: six irreproachable business suits, including two sets of tweed-chic fe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:26AM[SHARE]A FRESH CAST, ONE YEAR ONÂ Can it really be a whole year since, with theatre still gallantly recovering from Covid, Nicholas Hytner rolled the dice and opted to offer us some razzle dazzl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:40AM[SHARE]
