LET THERE BE LIGHT! The year 1632 : we are halfway through the epic conflict between Galileo Galilei and the Holy Roman Church, an authority in its day quite as ruthless as Stalin and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:47PMIN WHICH MICHAEL ADAIR LOSES HIS THEATRE-CRITIC VIRGINITY TO A PACK OF SCOTTISH MINXES A few years ago, when High School Musical and Glee were in their pomp, we were forever se…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:11AMBLEACH, BLUES, AND BLACK AMERICA RISING Here’s a pocket musical with huge themes, a blues opera of historic seriousness but with a singing washing-machine in a bubbled minidress. A …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:39PMFRESH AS A (VIOLENT) DAISY AFTER 376 YEARS What wonders, sir, are these? How beauteous fringe theatre is! We Tuesday matinee-goers, paying peanuts for the smaller space in an �…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:05AMA CRIME, A CARDINAL, A CONFLICT It is Twelfth Night, the feast of the Epiphany, 1941. In the Jermyn’s tight intimacy we are sitting in the clinical director’s office of a home…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:18PMAFTER SADDAM: WHAT’S LEFT WHEN YOU TAKE AWAY A TYRANT? An electrifying moment in this sharp, riveting play sees two bitter rivals, in a moment of stillness between blood-feud …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:20PMREAGAN, RELIGION, AND REMEMBERING… Direct comparisons are dangerous, even when – as this week – two consecutive days see major works opening in London, both set in the 1…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:10PMIRELAND OF THE SORROWS: THE KIDS, THE CRAIC AND THE KILLING It is 1982 in County Armagh. Not a good time to be Irish, not there. Not with internees still in the H blocks and ten r…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:48PMNOBILITY AND THE NOSE on tour You’ve hardly sat down before there’s a jolly mass drinking-song in pantaloons, leather breastplates and hat-feathers being romped through in fr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:32AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS THE DONMAR’S NEW VERSION OF BRECHT CRIMINALLY IRRESISTIBLE How do you get, keep and wield power? What do you use it for, and why? And, if you will sto…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:56AMBILIOUS BUT BRACING: THE METROPOLIS AND THE MOVIES Simon may be from the wrong side of New York, a roughneck who ties his wife Anne to a chair and tapes her mouth for being “critical&…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:53AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SEES ANCIENT GRUDGE BREAK TO NEW MUTINY AT THE GLOBE The recent spats at the Globe, between the now outgoing Artistic Director Emma Rice and The Powers That B…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:40PM1918..1968..AND NOW.. ALAN BENNETT’S ENGLAND In his 1994 diaries Alan Bennett described the funeral of a Dunkirk veteran in a village church. “crammed with the men who won the war…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:43AMVAN HOVE, VISCONTI, AND OUR JUDE London is getting used to Ivo van Hove of Toneelgroep Amsterdam. But his tremendous A View from The Bridge (in a bleak arena) and his striking NT …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:26PMA WINDOW ON AN IVORY TOWER… Full disclosure: I bought a ticket for an early preview, because press night was my husband’s birthday but I couldn’t resist checking out Chr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:39PMGHOSTS OF WAR AND SHIPWRECK “When all the world’s at war, it’s better to be dead”. Pallid pessimistic ghosts roam around a lonely Maine lighthouse in WW2, with heaving sepia s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:09AMA JOURNEY THROUGH A PLAGUE YEAR With the horror of Syria fresh on us, and Africa’s travails with Ebola still haunting, this sombre, unforgettable treatment of Albert Camus’ LA PES…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:27PMA CANUTE FOR THE AGE OF ANYWHERES This substantial début play by Tallulah Brown hits an intriguing syncope with David Goodhart’s much-discussed definition of the UK tribes. Not le…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:00PMA WILD TALE FROM HELL’S BORDERS – on the road This enterprising regional touring company generally focuses on the East, whether John Clare or Arthur Ransome, Viking …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:28AMBEVERLEY ON THE ROAD AGAIN This a fascinating play, not least because forty years on we can’t seem to get enough of it. Cherished by am-dram, revived by excellent casts and theatres…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:38AMA DANGEROUS PASTORAL You wait months for a violently emotional taboo-smashing play by Edward Albee and two come along at once. After the bitter razor-sharp humanity of Who’s Afraid …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:56PMTHE HOME LIVES OF OUR OWN DEAR LAWYERS… When a topic is painfully current and theatre plunges in, the heart does not always sing with optimism. But Nina Raine is an old hand , a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:53PMTWO CULTURES, ONE TRICKY DEAL David Henry Hwang’s play as a hit in the US, and as it premiered at this enterprising little theatre under diretor Andrew Keates, I took an appropriate…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:48AMMOLIERE , MOZART, MARBER AND A MORAL.. Something for everyone here. I like the assonance, alliteration and rhetorical flourishes in Patrick Marber’s reworking of the old Don Juan myth …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:47PMA HANDBAG FROM THE PAST.. This is a joyful thing, and it needn’t have been. There is always peril in a play you know too well from schooldays and through a score of performan…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:47PMAN AMPHIBIOUS SONDHEIM ROMP Here’s the god Dionysius, deprived of his Noel-Coward smoking jacket and unconvincingly disguised as Heracles in a lion skin. He’s having a panic attac…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55AMETERNITY WAS IN OUR LIPS AND EYES…. ..and also, frankly, in the stalls. Some evenings, often here at the RSC, three and a half hours pass in a flash leaving you dazed, affected and tearful…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:28AMSPQR: THE ROMAN SEASON STRIKES HOME WITH COLD STEEL The trumpet sounds for the RSC’s Roman season, the mob is rowdily onstage, and the turbulent politics of 44 BC are reflected thr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:14PMMOTHER COURAGE WITH A CRIMINAL TWIST Yetta Solomon survived the Ukrainian pogroms when Cossacks raped and murdered her family. But they didn’t get her. Ten years old in 1919 …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:46PMTHEY GOT RHYTHM..OH YES This is the big one, the Broadway spectacular, the one where rom-com meets top-flight ballets in more costumes than you can blink at; where dream-sequen…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:15PMBLUEBIRDS OVER DOVER, RATTIGAN ON A ROLL Yesterday , on her hundredth birthday, Dame Vera Lynn had her face projected on the white cliffs of Dover and a flight of Spitfires was due ov…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:50PM
