Friday, March 24, 2017
ETERNITY 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 10:28AMThursday, March 23, 2017
SPQR: 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 01:14PMWednesday, March 22, 2017
MOTHER 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 06:46PMTuesday, March 21, 2017
THEY 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 07:15PMMonday, March 20, 2017
BLUEBIRDS 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 09:50PMSunday, March 19, 2017
BREXIT MEANS… A BIT OF A DOG’S BREAKFAST Rufus Norris of the National Theatre is to be applauded for taking on the post-referendum mood, and making an honest stab at under…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:44AMTuesday, March 14, 2017
TOP HATS AND TALES A nice gag in Richard Harris’ 1983 play comes in some desultory chat between the ladies of the tap-dancing class. Referring to a play one of them has recommended …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:33PMSunday, March 12, 2017
WEDNAPPED: THE HELL BEFORE THE CALM I really fell for this 2014 comedy by Chris Chibnall, writer of such dark telly stuff as Broadchurch. Not just because it is a hoot, a wickedly joy…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:16PMThursday, March 9, 2017
THE DARK HEART OF MARRIAGE One audience tweeter emerged calling James Macdonald’s fine production “exhilarating”. A wet rag after three hours’ exposure to it, I wouldn…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:29PMWednesday, March 8, 2017
LET COWARDS FLINCH AND TRAITORS SNEER…WE’LL KEEP THE LAFITE FLOWING HERE Some moments of modern history deserve reimagining by honest playwrights: we need to rememb…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:20PMLUKE JONES, FRESH FROM HAMLET, SPINS WITH ECSTASY AT THE NEW R & G I first and last saw this play whilst at school. It was slowly and quite unforgivingly murdered by fellow si…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:58AMSaturday, March 4, 2017
CLEESE MEETS FEYDEAU. DOES IT WORK? Farce. French farce. Feydeau farce. Fin-de-siecle farce with curly cornices and ladies in corsets. Feelings about the genre are always, for me, m…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:27AMThursday, March 2, 2017
NEVER TOO OLD TO GO ROUND AGAIN… In Arthur Schnitzler ’s LA RONDE was a scandal: a chain of sketched sexual encounters in which one of each couple moved on to a new seducti…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:47PMWednesday, March 1, 2017
LUKE JONES EXULTS: A TACTILE MORIARTY PULLS IT OFF FOR A NEW GENERATION We’ve had so many ‘great’ Hamlets it’s hard to either keep track or care. Cumbe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:02AMTuesday, February 28, 2017
SWEET AS A NUT, SHARP AS A TACK Helpless, really: I was putty in its hands. And I caught it a few days late, so no risk that the ecstatic giggles in the stalls or the standing ovation…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:03PMSaturday, February 25, 2017
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES GROPES FOR DIAMONDS IN THE MUD Timothy Spall tells a good story – bear with me – about performing a Midsummer Night’s Dream at the National.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:33AMWednesday, February 22, 2017
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME AND BENDING OF GENDERS.. It’s a grand thing to be seduced and succumb. To suspect a director of vainly messing about with a Shakespeare play too close to your …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:59PMTuesday, February 21, 2017
BACK TO FAUST PRINCIPLES “I hope nobody misses / The moral in a show as short as this is..” . Marie Corelli, whose 1895 bestseller on the Faust theme inspired Luke Bateman and Mic…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:17PMWednesday, February 15, 2017
FIVE GO ROARING UP WEST… This is a transfer, and well deserved. My Menier review is below…and I stand proudly by every star of it. Five playful mice. But below you will find a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:19PMAN AGED ELEGANCE Beau Brummel is back in Jermyn Street, a century on from his decline, bankruptcy, royal disfavour and exile to a Calais convent madhouse. Down the road from his statu…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:53AMFriday, February 10, 2017
YOUNG, CONFLICTED AND GAY: VOICES FROM 1968 It feels dated now: the shrieking queenery, the preening Jules-and Sandy camp, the insider camaraderie. Oh and the angs: the misery of self…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:44AMWednesday, February 8, 2017
THE WATERS RISE ROUND TOKSVIG ISLAND… There’s a bit of conflicted-critic syndrome here. Sandi Toksvig is one of the most amiable wits of today: fun, sharp, humane, sensible,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:48PMTuesday, February 7, 2017
MORTIFICATION AND MERRIMENT ON TOUR It was a young Jane Austen who wrote this wonderful squib of a novel, and its delight is in the absurdities and agonies of youth: credulous e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:33PMThursday, February 2, 2017
THE LITERARY LIFE, AS SHAGFEST Those still wondering why on earth 42% of women voted for Donald Trump may feel enlightened by the way in which – in this successful American t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:09PMCORPSES BY CANDLELIGHT “Dost thou imagine thou canst slide on blood, and not be tainted in a shameful fall?” asks Cardinal Monticello of the murderous Lodovico, a man who t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:59AMTuesday, January 31, 2017
A DAFT DETECTIVE DOUBLE-ACT Retro clutter round a piano: files, a hatstand, model house, gun, notebook, handcuffs. We are in the territory of smalltown detective fiction, a touch of the Poir…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:47AMWednesday, January 25, 2017
DAFT, DIRTY, BUT GREAT I remember it at Edinburgh a few years ago : a sly, elegant witty refreshment on an arid Fringe day. Poet-actors Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna deployed “…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:52PMTuesday, January 17, 2017
RIBBIT! RIBBIT! FROGS, FOOLS, FABULOUS Here’s a tonic for theis flat , glum season! Divinely tasteless, bracingly cynical , hootingly funny (jokes from subtle to silly) and directed with p…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:55PMSaturday, January 14, 2017
MOCK TUDOR, RIOTOUS BUT NOT RUFF It’s described by its creator Pat Whymark as “a sort of Tudor/Muppets mash-up with a respectful nod to Blackadder and DIY SOS”. To which I would…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:56AMTuesday, January 10, 2017
AN AFGHAN EPIC TO REMEMBER Khaled Hosseini’s novel is an intimate epic: a flawed, damaged, remorseful man’s journey through thirty years of turbulent history. Amir is the privileg…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:17PMTuesday, December 20, 2016
When Yasmina Reza won an Olivier for best comedy, she joked “I thought I had written a tragedy”. She did both: the French actor-novelist-playwright sees far enough into the cracks in hum…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:15PM 
