A TALE FOR TODAY FROM A PRUSSIAN PAST Here’s a love story, an idyll of 18c Prussia: Corporal Anastasius Linck, a Hanoverian musketeer in dashing white breeches and shiny buttons …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:25PMSITCOMS MADE US, BUT CAN WE MAKE THEM? It’s a very good idea, bang on the money: David Cantor and Michael Kingsbury (TV sitcom writers with a pedigree) set their play in a bland pr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:51AMA BLAST OF DAFT JOY Zip-a-dee-doo-dah! Here’s a treat. Disney music, blasting out before this vigorous 65-minute one-man spree, sets the mood. It is carnivalesque, fantastical,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:52PMA PATIENT TO TRY PATIENCE It must be challenging to play a psychiatrist at work , maybe especially in Finsbury Park where there are bound to be a few in the audience. Yo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:11PMJust a few new notes on this , as its completes its triumphant national tour with (amazingly) no stopping-injuries despite the heroically vigorous slapstick direction by Lindsay Posner (move…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15PMBy Libby Purves Our very own theatre Cat Libby Purves reviews Allegiance the musical now playing at the Charing Cross Theatre. This post REVIEW: Allegiance, Charing Cross Theatre ✭✭✭�…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 04:37PMHELLMAN’S LESSON IN HUMANITY Theatre can offer few more topical messages for a nation which might hesitate over Ukraine’s needs than this neglected one-set domestic play by Lilia…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:28AMPULLING THE WOOL Most dystopian visions set themselves quite far in the future. Misha Levkov, however, keeps us in 2025, specifying that productions should always be set a cou…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:22AMAN OLD INJUSTICE REMEMBERED An old man steps onstage alone: upright, soldierly in khaki as a former US war hero who is, he says resignedly, “brought out every year on the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:37AMA TALE FOR ALL TIMES The story of Nelson Mandela has become almost a folktale: imprisoned for 27 years for campaigning against the hideous “apartheid” regime which kept the black ma…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:42AMBy Libby Purves Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves ventured out to see Sir Ian McKellen and John Bishop in Mother Goose at the Duke of York's Theatre. This post REVIEW: Mother Goose, Duke …
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 11:31AMTHIS DAME HAS A WHOLE LOT BEHIND HIM I last saw Sir Ian McKellen onstage as Lear, missed him as the oldest Hamlet ever, but far longer ago saw him in a frock at the … Cont…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:15AMBREEZILY BLOWING IN FROM 1908, FRESH AS EVER In Mole End on Christmas Eve,in a burrow cosy with domestic detail they’re breaking out the beer and sardines and reminiscing about t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:34PMA TRAGICOMIC BEAUTY Hard to express how much I loved Stephen Karam’s play. Maybe it just hit the right moment: yomped through freezing night, strikes and ‘severe delays” readi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31AMTHE MOST ENJOYABLE STRIKE YOU’LL SEE THIS CHRISTMAS I love it when the theatre perfectly fits the show. Artists can overcome a wrong space, but there’s gleeful concord when it su…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:16AMFREUDIAN ISUES IN FAIRYLAND Everyone’s got mental health issues in HEX: which is the Sleeping Beauty story extended to the troublesome folk-tale aftermath. The tousled Fairy…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:04AMBy Libby Purves Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves reviews the Michael Grandage Company's production of Orlando starring Emma Corrin at the Garrick Theatre. This post REVIEW: Orlando, Garr…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 08:48AMA PACK OF WOOLFS PROWL ROUND THE GENDER-BEND One bespectacled, anxious-looking Virginia Woolf in a sensible brown skirt and dreary cardigan is never enough, so Michael Grandage’s prod…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:49PMA COLD ANGRY CRUSHING SYSTEM It’s a cold unadorned monochrome scene: courts, brawls and bedchamber all framed on three sides by vast looming tiered steps and a high flat parapet…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:59PMUP WEST, IT LOSES NOTHING…STILL A FIERCE TREAT Leaving the former Young Vic production a lad far too young to remember 1968 said sadly to me “It was the beginning of Now, wasn’t it?”…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:58PMA GLORIOUS DOWNSTREAM WILLOWS FOR OUR AGE You won’t see a prettier, more refreshing or sustainable stage this Christmas: natural colours, riverbank rushes, a bare tree (which will have…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:02PMCELEBRATORY, MY DEAR WATSON I had come from the magnificent Old Vic Christmas Carol, where once again with mince pies, bells and lanterns and Dickensian cheer and a message about how poo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:47AMCLEVER, CLOWNING, CLASSIC What could be more seasonal than Flaubert’s tale of wifely frustration, romantic illusions, disastrous adulteries and ruinous shopaholic debt? This adapt…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:57AMA DAUGHTER OF DISREPUTE 1893, and here’s George Bernard Shaw passing the Bechdel Test with flying colours by centring the action on two women at odds , with surrounding men remarkably d…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:28PMPURE PLEASURE AT HER MAJESTY’S It seemed worth the money – these were not press tickets – to check out how good old Fanty is getting on after 36 years at Her Majesty’s The…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21AMDRUNKENNESS AND THE DARK The studio at Hampstead has been on a roll recently, with intelligent and emotionally honest plays : FOLK, RAVENSCOURT, THE ANIMAL KINGDOM et al. It nurt…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:00AMTHE IMPORTANCE OF NOT BEING TOO TRADITIONAL ABOUT IT This cheerfully exuberant rendering of Oscar Wilde’s witty rom-com is also a sort of political act. In the foyer a gorgeous selection…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:34AMBy Libby Purves Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves reviews Rona Munro's play Mary at Hampstead Theatre. This post REVIEW: Mary, Hampstead Theatre ✭✭✭ first appeared on British Theatr…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 06:17AMABDUCTION, ASSAULT, ABDICATION For four hundred years the reputation of Mary, Queen of Scots, has been battled over: she has been called victim and whore, murderess and heroine, flight…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:39PMWHEN THEY PUT THE FUN – AND THE FUNDS – INTO FUNDAMENTALISM.. Rarely in the history of Islington playgoing have so many first-nighters whooped so enthusiastically at Gospe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:00PMDODD-LEVEL HAPPINESS IN SOHO Hard, on its first night ever, not to review the theatre itself. Nica Burns and Nimax open the first new West End theatre in fifty years: agleam with …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:17AM