Friday, September 28, 2018
GUEST CRITIC BEN BLACKMORE MUSES ON CHEESE-KNIVES AND TELETUBBY HOUSES PINTER 2 announces itself in bold, Sex And The City-type projections, in the Sex And The City font as though it …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:58PMSTEEL CELLS AND SADISM Settling in, you’d think you were at the Cenotaph or the Tattoo. A military soundtrack booms out Imperial Echoes and Jupiter (I Vow To Thee My Coun…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:56AMWednesday, September 26, 2018
A GLORIOUS SERPENT OF OLD NILE This can be a beast of a play: epic, three and a half hours, scenes spread across the Mediterranean from Rome to Cairo by land and sea. It is als…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12PMTuesday, September 25, 2018
MOLIERE IN THE MODERN MIDLANDS It says something good about our arts establishment that this sharp caper comes from the Royal Shakespeare Company, not some daring pub-r…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:00PMSaturday, September 22, 2018
PARENTHOOD, PRAYER , PROSECCO The renamed Tricycle (no, I am not taking sides) Is open: its leader Indhu Rubasingham launches her sprauncy new theatre with Alexis Zegerman’s da…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:29AMThursday, September 20, 2018
DOING JUSTICE TO AGATHA (She’d have loved it!) The courtroom is the marbled council chamber of the old County Hall:the story by Agatha Christie even hoarier. I missed…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55AMMonday, September 17, 2018
LOOKING OUT TO SEA, AT PAST AND FUTURE With the feral teenage violence of HEATHERS (scroll to it below) all snarling and murdering in the West End, and the manic cheerleader ene…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:45PMSaturday, September 15, 2018
OUT OF AUSTERITY, A DREAM OF BEAUTY A gulf yawns between this musical’s two halves: a gulf of wealth, sophistication, hope and colour. Ida Harris, careworn heroi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:23PMThursday, September 13, 2018
DARK LARKS AND HIGH SCHOOL HOMICIDE You thought there were enough school-themed musicals? What with Bring it On, School of Rock and our own dear cross-dressing Jamie…? Make …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:56PMA RARE OLD TIME IN DUBLIN , IN IPSWICH The miniature of Libby Watson’s gorgeous Dublin pub set in the foyer raises your spirits straight away. Sometimes only an Irish pub w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:52AMSunday, September 9, 2018
HUMANITY RISING FROM HORROR It is one of the oldest notions in the world: the unquiet grave. From Sophocles to modern campaigns we are haunted by the idea that the violentl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:35AMFriday, September 7, 2018
GUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR IS TRANSPORTED TO NEW YORK, AND FAMILY TRUTH The joy of a play like The Humans is that it can take a subject that feels as if it might have been do…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:05PMThursday, September 6, 2018
ONE OF BENNETT’S FINEST , ON THE ROAD AGAIN Onstage is a shabby rehearsal room, an Oxford study scruffily indicated with doorframes and signs; at the side a litter of coffee-cu…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21AMWednesday, September 5, 2018
GRAND PLIE, FIRST POSITION, TURN…TWERK… My friend and comrade-in-the stalls Mr Letts of the Mail has suggested ( by means of Twitter ,review on Friday, always worth …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:23PMMonday, September 3, 2018
RAN IN MAIL (STAND-IN TEMPORARY CRITIC COULDN’T RESIST THIS.. SO HERE FOR THEATRECATTERS WHO MIGHT MISS IT.. THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN LIVE SEC Glasgow and touri…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:08PMMonday, August 27, 2018
WAS STANDING IN AS DAILY MAIL CRITIC FOR A WEEK, SO DID NOT DO THESE ON THEATRECAT. HERE THEY ARE FOR T/CAT FOLLOWERS THOUGH, SLIGHTLY EXPANDED. COPENHAGEN Minerva, Chichester …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:05AMThursday, August 16, 2018
DARK LADY DEMANDING LIMELIGHT The Globe has had some tremendous new-writing about history, for which it is nicely suited. Remember Howard Brenton’s Anne Boleyn and Dr Sc…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:47AMTuesday, August 14, 2018
WHAT LARKS… There is a swimming-pool ladder, a rubber-ring shaped like a swan, a robotic golf cart, some decorative flamingos (one used as a weapon) , and a statue of Queen E…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:16PMFriday, August 10, 2018
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI MARVELS AT GREEK PERFECTION AT GRIMEBORN Like the roar of an older, bolder London, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s GREEK bounces snarling onto the Grimeborn stage, c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:42PMLA PETITE PIAF, REVENANTE.. I grew up with Piaf, a temporary French schoolchild in 1960, skated around the patinoire with my friends snarling along with the endless plays of “Je ne…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:42AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS THE BOYS GET ALL THE DRAMA AT GRIMEBORN Lucia di Lammermoor is an opera of shocking brutality, with savage emotional aggression rivalling physical viole…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21AMDREAMS AND LEGENDS OF DECAY Brian Friel’s gift is humane ambiguity, refusing to allow tidy judgements on his characters . Or even – though his theme is Ireland’s history…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:03AMWednesday, August 8, 2018
HIP HOP HURRAH ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS Here’s a hot one, in every sense. Clapped till my hands stuck together at this youthful, truthful, touching and funny tale of acroba…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:31AMTuesday, August 7, 2018
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS REVOLUTION NOT GOING FAR IN A WORLD PREMIERE AT GRIMEBORN Prometheus stole fire from the gods in order to ensure human progress, and met with a grisly e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:34PMFriday, August 3, 2018
A HANDBAG? You’re not often given a surprise by Lane the butler in in his short appearance, as he delivers those immortally celebrated cucumber sandwiches to the piano-strumm…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:19AMThursday, August 2, 2018
DANCE AND DEFIANCE BELOW THE WAVES Metta theatre’s hit JUNGLE BOOK was fashionably hip-hop before Hamilton hit (and was certainly the only time I ever heard grime and c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:15PMGUEST CRITIC and sharp-eyed millennial BEN BLACKMORE DOES THE STATE (well, theatrecat) SOME SERVICE…. Rating three box office shakeapearesglobe.com to 13 Oct I have never seen…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:17AMWednesday, August 1, 2018
RETROMANIA AS A ROAD TO RUIN In a lovely dolls-house set, Judy bustles about happily in a gay flouncy full skirt and pinny. She runs hubby’s morning bath, makes his packed lun…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:34AMTuesday, July 31, 2018
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI VOTES FOR ETHEL SMYTH AT GRIMEBORN The celebrations of the centenary of Women’s Suffrage in Britain have reached Dalston’s cultural heartland as Spectra E…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:11AMFriday, July 27, 2018
MADNESS, MENACE, MAJESTY You need not be aged – or even a man – to be a memorable Lear. But there is an intense and concentrated emotion to it when a great …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:50AMThursday, July 26, 2018
A FERTILE DESPAIR This is two hours of treasure. Barry Humphries of course always was one, in all his characters, and this time he puts on “the most subtle and intricate disguise�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:32AM 
