TO BOLDLY DREAM.. MAINLY OF PLYWOOD AND PROPS THE TWILIGHT ZONE was , long before the phrase was coined, “appointment-to-view television”. In the US in the 50s and 60s families ga…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:46PMLARKING WITHIN TENT As an old radio hack, who started a career over forty years ago in the days when “spot effects” in drama studios were one of the more amusing jobs, I …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:51AMCICERO, CAESAR, CATILINE: ELOQUENCE, AMBITION , HORROR It begins with a corpse: a horrid human-sacrifice, as we shall learn, as a set of libertines and plotters swear a blood-o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:06PMA SPANGLED ANGLESEY ARISTOCRAT WALKS AGAIN One way to win, if your own era rejects you, is to be so spectacularly odd that two centuries later a musical theatremaker gets obses…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:23AMA MINI-CIRCUS AND A MISCASTING A nice irony that this revival of this Mark Bramble / Cy Coleman / Michael Stewart musical about Phineas T.Barnum should open now, just as David Attenbo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:04PMNEW GENERATION CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR WONDERS WHO IT’S FOR…. When The Woman in White debuted at the Palace Theatre in 2004, much of the commentary focused on it being a tec…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:36PMEROTICROBATICS, BANANAS, HIGH JINKS Relief flooded in with the first act, Cabaret Decadanse from Montreal. Here was a larger-than-life lip-synching puppet diva made of glitteri…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:14AMLUKE JONES WANTED TO CARE, BUT SOMEHOW.. Running again through the plot of this play l in my head, I think ‘surely it’s gripping’.? Coffins of martyrs are continuing to s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:53AMDICKENS UNCHAINED Good to see the Old Vic auditorium in the round again (a Spacey innovation). Though this time, there’s a long transverse thrust stage enabling Marley’s gh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:42PMRUFF WORK: AN ELIZABETHAN MORALITY FOR TODAY This is a devilish cunning ploy from Anders Lustgarten – an impassioned critic of state and social policies, sometimes a bit …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:36PMA GLORIOUS, GANGLING, GRACEFUL PRESENT FROM SHEFFIELD This is glorious. Hits the bullseye. It’s about kids – the boiling mass of hormones that is a year 11 class grappling with GCSEs…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:58PMMANTRAS AND MONEY There is a useful play to be written about the lure of fashionable Western Buddhist retreats, and the way discontented rat-racers can transfer their competitive ambi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:29PMAN ANCIENT CRY, A TIMELESS THRILL Across 25 centuries comes a harsh cry: not of war, not from savage male throats but from a swaying, chanting, defiant chorus of young women demandi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:39PMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI MEETS MINDFULNESS IN THE MIDST OF TOLKIEN’S TIMEWASTING J.R.R. Tolkien, among many other things, is famous for two: his unending ability to procrastinate, a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:42AMSEX, SHAME , THE STROP OF THE RAZOR I rashly confessed on Twitter that I spent the afternoon before this astringent production of a Strindberg play revelling in the happy furry…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:39PMPROFIT AND A PROPHET: RANTINGS AND RATINGS I came to this a day late for tedious domestic reasons, but since the original film is about a news anchor , Howard Beale, going …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:37AMMULTIPLE CHOICE IN A MANIPULATED WORLD “We in this country” says the red judge grandly “Do not have trial by media or by mobs”. Hmm. Tell that to anyone now staring con…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:15AMNEW GENERATION REVIEWER MICHAEL ADAIR UNMOVED BY MANSPREADING BUT LOVES THE SWEARING The return of Glengarry Glen Ross feels rather timely. There is something striking about a play consistin…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:07AMA PERFECT TWELVE “What country, friend, is this?” That soon becomes clear, in this beautiful rendition of Shakespeare’s melancholy comedy of love and misapprehension. From the f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:56PMLIGHTS OUT,, CLUTCH YOUR SEAT To be honest I was slightly daunted by the PR point that Karina Jones is the first blind actress in recent years to play Susy (hers was the Audrey Hepbur…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:33AMLITTLE NELL, ON THE ROAD AGAIN Of all Dickens’ works this – originally a serial so gripping that American readers rushed the docks for the new edition – is such a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:52AMTHE LONELY HEARTS OF WARTIME If you need relief from the current outbreak of extreme social primness about male behaviour, you’re going to love the bit with Clive Francis , as the e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:11PMWHOSE BABY? It is a brave theme that Chris Thompson – a former social worker – has chosen. It is also a darkly, and accidentally, topical one since a court case is still…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:37PMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI LOSES HER HEART TO HOODLUMS Even ruthless, psychotic gangsters have to fall in love sometimes. And Rodelinda is all about what happens when the people at the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:16AMROISTERING AND REVOLUTION There is a nice contrarian quality about Nicholas Hytner’s choice for his first production, in the dramatically beautiful new theatre he founded with N…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:29PMSHADOWS OF WAR AND LOSS Not a good week for AA Milne. That “Goodbye Christopher Robin” film about his WW1 trauma comes out – then Philip Pullman sounds off scornfully about …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:24PMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS HALF-TERM HEAVEN AT NORWICH PUPPET THEATRE “Have you ever wondered where dreams come from? Or how they get into your head?” A thought-provok…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:50AMTHE SCIENTIST AND THE SEX SYMBOL, IN A PARANOID WORLD The uneasy 1950s: Albert Einstein is exiled in America and called to appear before the unAmerican Activities committee for…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24PMCLUNTERING FLAPPYSKETS ! DON’T SMITTLE AND SKRYKE , IT’S BARRIE AGAIN… By ‘eck, luv! They Northern Broadsides, they weren’t hid behind t’mangle when they wer…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:38PMA LESSON IN POLITICS, HUMANITY AND LOVE The joyful thing about James Graham is that for all the playwright’s youth, diamond wit and forensic insight, there is a deep humankin…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:17AMAFTER THE WARS WERE OVER… This is a lovely rediscovery, the kind of thing Two’s Company has repeatedly offered us in this enterprising theatre (we owe them those extraordin…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:58PM
