A GRIPPING PIECE OF HISTORY In 1944 the adventurous British director Peggy Webster cast the first black Othello in the USA, where for a white woman even to walk with …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:34AMBy Libby Purves Libby Purves reviews The Doctor very freely adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's Professor Bernhardi by Robert Icke now playing at thew Almeida Theatre, London. This post REVIEW:…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 07:19AMArthur Schnitzler was, like Chekhov, a doctor; he was an Austrian Jew at a time when mistrust was rising. The Doctor belongs passionately to that time: but director Robert Icke’s very free…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:00AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GETS INTO THE BLITZ SPIRIT WITH OPERA ALEGRIA AT GRIMEBORN Rossini’s Le Comte Ory is a flirtatious farce in which a naughty young Count drives everyone de…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:37AMA YOUTHFUL HALLELUJAH ANother fascinating London premiere for Two’s Company and the Finborough, buried for nearly half a century after one brief 1970 tour . As Philip …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:52AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GOES BATS FOR BASELESS FABRIC’S SOCIAL MEDIA TAKE ON STRAUSS “I’m not saying I’m Batman. I’m just saying nobody has ever seen me and Batman in a roo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:36AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF GRIMEBORN’S GLITTERING TREASURE The Ring Cycle is opera’s biggest box set: a sixteen-hour binge of dwarves, nymphs, dragons, gods, h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:18PMROCK ’N ROLL N’ ROMEO Deep under the trees, beyond Jimmy’s meerkat and camel enclosures lies a 1960’s beach: shelter, deckchairs and lounging teens, Mods and Rocker…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:00AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GOES MAD FOR AMERICAN MONODRAMA A pairing of two American music dramas promised plenty of angsty feminist fun for a Friday night at Grimeborn; and I admit, in…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:39PMVioletta is a reduction of Verdi’s La traviata, using only three characters: the doomed courtesan Violetta, her idealistic yet immature lover Alfredo, and – surprise! Alfredo’s mother.
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:00AMHEROIC ENDURANCE In the background a lecture in the old Home Service style, decorous and passionless, finishes relating the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition: …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:03AMCOWBOYS WITHOUT INDIANS I suppose it’s perverse to start at the end, but of all the aspects of Jeremy Sams’ handsome production of the Rodgers & Hammerstein crowd-pleaser…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:34AMFALLEN ANGELS ENDURING THE STORM You can feel the heat in Rae Smith’s design, Mexican sun on the rock overhead, and the corrugated iron roofs of the rundown hotel. Somewher…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:30AMIT’S BACK, YOUNGER THAN EVER… We love a starry debut, especially on opening night in a huge theatre: a 21-year-old not yet through drama school making a stonking, belting …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:31AMDavid Hare has made as much sense of Ibsen’s sprawling masterpiece Peer Gynt as seems possible.
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:00AMDEVOTION , DISGUISE, DECADENCE What a strange and stirring play this is! Set in convent, court and condemned-cell, it is spiked with moral ambiguities and fuelled equally by s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:03PMBLAIR TO BREXIT – A FAMILY TALE Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany, are the Harry Potter team. They know how not to bore. But they’ve been here before too in a R…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:29AMFARCE AS LIFE, LIFE AS FARCE, FRAYN AGAIN TRIUMPHANS It felt like a pilgrimage, homage to pay. 37 years ago Michael Frayn’s greatest of comedies, a wicked love-song to the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:01AMThe Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ The Musical is the result of Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary badgering the late Sue Townsend to be allowed to do it, and with poppy tunes and a high-s…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:00AMCOMEDY SHADING TO MELANCHOLY: WHAT’S TO COME IS STILL UNSURE… First of all let’s say that Andrew Scott is a marvel, a 21st century Ur-Coward hero, who manages to do it with…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:06PMThis 25th anniversary revival of David Greig’s play Europe is, for the most part, a long chin scratch about home, belonging and division.
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:00AMA SHILLING SHOCKER IS A JOY FOREVER To come clean: one reason I dashed to catch this fresh back from holiday is not only that the Finborough is always interesting, but that fa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:40AMGUEST CRITIC BEN DOWELL SHIVERS – ADMIRINGLY – AT A TROUBLED TALE In this hypersensitive age of MeToo accusations, anxieties about online pornography and even deeper-seated disquiet a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:58AMRANCID LILIES, GORGEOUS WORDS All the little Jermyn needs to complete this reimagination of Wildean epigrammatic decadence is to scent the auditorium overwhelmingly with lilies and …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:02AMFLYING, FUNNY, FABULOUS This is a dream of a Dream. One expected fun from the combination of Nicholas Hytner, a roiling mass of promenaders in the pit and a Bunny Christie…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:38PMA NOTE ON A TREAT, MOUSELESS BUT MELLOW The film based on Scott Fitzgerald’s story of a life lived backwards, born old and ending in babyhood, was pretty awful. So I did not le…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:44AMWhen I left I thought I was disappointed in The Starry Messenger, but this morning I can’t help thinking about Matthew Broderick’s character Mark, and his wife, and the sadness of all ou…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:00AMBULLYING, BOMBAST, BETRAYAL The rediscovery of Githa Sowerby in the 1990s is very satisfying. At its premiere in 1913 critics saw the quality of this one but were dismayed …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:46AMMusically Dido is okay, especially Eyra Norman’s Belinda and the spirited chorales. But it could have been a piece of theatre magic, and wasn’t.
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:00AMAfter the querulous, inward-looking tedium of her feminist polemic The Writer, Ella Hickson returns to interesting form with this curiosity, Anna.
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 03:53AMFive mice for White Pearl at the Royal Court Theatre because it’s different and clever and useful, and horribly good fun.
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:00AM