Saturday, 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 05:15PMMonday, December 19, 2016
THE MAID OF ORLEANS AND HER TORMENTORS For fifteen minutes as the audience troops in Gemma Arterton, in chainmail and breastplate, kneels on a dais in rapt contemplation: mouthing pra…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:06PMSaturday, December 17, 2016
FRESH AS PAINT, THE OLD STORY “Marley was dead…”. Oh how we need Dickens’ story every year. You can do it panto or earnest, screen or stage, Tommy Steele or Alistair …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:20PMWednesday, December 14, 2016
OH YES IT IS, IT REALLY IS… Want to see Julian Clary in a feather headdress and spangles, looping the loop on a flying Vespa over the front stalls.? Course you do! Hungry for pumpki…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:41PMTuesday, December 13, 2016
LIVES IN LIMBO At the Connection at St Martin’s they say that none of us is more than two bad decisions away from the pavement. The street homeless we know, a little. Less plainly l…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:50PMMonday, December 12, 2016
A COLD-BURNING BRILLIANCE A century ago Henrik Ibsen saw, with more clarity than the strait bourgeois world around him, that it wouldn’t do. Not the hypocrisies, not the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:17PMSunday, December 11, 2016
BETTER TO RANT IN HELL.. Magnificent in military jacket as he lectures the College of Tempters, then at ease in his study in fine brocade against a marvellous backdrop of skulls and b…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:04AMFriday, December 9, 2016
All the Angels is a fascinating, moving examination of the power of music to inspire, to challenge, and to regenerate souls, as well as an unnerving glance at the strange intimacy between co…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:30AMLUKE JONES BUZZES HAPPILY ROUND THE HONEY Where Ivanov, The Seagull and Uncle Vanya mull, the youthfully fresh and fashionably unfinished Platonov rattles along like the TGV. Michael …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:10AMThursday, December 8, 2016
O THE PRETTINESS, O THE JOKES… Our heroine gets a job as sales clerk in Maraczek’s perfumery by selling a customer ia gorgeous hand-painted musical candy box. Which sum…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:29AMTuesday, December 6, 2016
HURRAH FOR HOLLYWOOD, AND LONG LIVE FOOLS ’Tis the season to be silly, and the Young Vic’s revival of a screwball 1930’s Hollywood satire hit the spot triumphantly with this the…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:48PMSaturday, December 3, 2016
PULLING THE FAIRY STRINGS IN AN URBAN NEVERLAND Wendy is grown up now, earthbound , with her own child to tell about the wonder and danger of Neverland and Pan. She can’t leave the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:27AMThursday, December 1, 2016
IN WHICH LUKE JONES TRIES AND FAILS TO DISINTER DEEP TRUTHS As in all slow-burning plays there moments where you tune out for a second and ask yourself ‘is this a masterpiece or …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:06PMTHE BLEAK AND THE BOUNCY…RICE COOKS UP A CHRISTMAS PUD Emma Rice’s warm, candelit take on Hans Christian Andersen, inventive and full-hearted as ever, raises a certain anxiety: I …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51PMDIVISIONS…DIVISIONS…DIVISIONS…. The Parliamentary chaos of the 1970’s – hung parliaments, fragile alliances and lost divisions which predated the dawn of Mrs Tha…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:32AMWednesday, November 30, 2016
THE 1930’S SPEAK TO US AGAIN… It’s 1937, hard times for the just-managing family. The Monkhams are broke, dreading creditors and bailiffs. The great hope is that the son…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:08AMFriday, November 25, 2016
HERE’S THE PLAICE TO BE… Ah ,universal truths! We are all living on thin ice, knocking up inadequate shelters, fishing hopefully down holes into the chilly truth beneath, accepti…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:15PMThursday, November 24, 2016
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES CHEERS KIRKWOOD AT THE COURT The Children are the focus of this play, in their absence. Instead we have The Pensioners. Parents and a non-parent sink…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:02PMWednesday, November 23, 2016
O BRAVE NEW WORLD, IN BRAVE CAPTIVITY Three years ago the Donmar’s all-woman Julius Caesar, set in prison, left me feeling that something genuinely new had happened: a revolution, a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:11AMFriday, November 18, 2016
O BRAVE NEW WORLD…. The talking-point is Ariel: a daring innovation for live theatre. Motion-capture technology sensors on Mark Quartley’s graceful body – skintig…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:15AMThursday, November 17, 2016
THEY’RE BACK. OH YES. INCLUDING URSULA. There comes a time in the year when the spirit yearns for a stiff drink and a whoop-along night in a mirrored tent, watching men in…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:41AMWednesday, November 16, 2016
TRUTH, BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE Nearly 25 years on from its first outing at the National, Stephen Daldry’s interpretation of the old JB Priestley standard – not least due to …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:12PMLUKE JONES ON THE RSC’s NEW LEAR.. (interesting contrast of response with LP’s Stratford review , here on http://tinyurl.com/gnu73zq . We both love Essiedu’s Edmund tho…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:53AMMonday, November 14, 2016
TWO LORDS A-ROCKING… Now we know why Lord Lloyd Webber got so grumpy about being summoned back from the US to vote. Been head-down and happy, revelling in his first Broadway hit sin…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:33PMThursday, November 10, 2016
COMEDY AS PAIN, PAIN AS COMEDY A late catch-up, this: I was away on press night, so it seemed a good wheeze to dive into the Vaudeville for a matinee on Trumpageddon day. And here ind…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:59AMTuesday, November 8, 2016
THE AGE OF ECSTASY AND AFFRONT It’s not the first time that the idea of a family “intervention” has tempted a dramatist. Why wouldn’t it? You’ve got one character out…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:57PMFriday, November 4, 2016
A DIFFERENT AND (ALMOST) GREAT LEAR… This is, of course, “event theatre”. Glenda Jackson, aged 80 , after 25 years off the stagedourly battling as a Labour MP, returns to th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:36PMLUKE JONES CONTEMPLATES THE RSC’S ANCIENT BRITONS The first impression of this RSC import to London is messiness. The staging; nipped and tucked from the RSC thrust to the Bar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:13AMTuesday, November 1, 2016
A MIRTHFUL MORALITY If Lucy Bailey’s wickedly funny interpretation of Milton’s moralising work gets another run (make it so!) anyone auditioning should make sure they are one of the part…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:27PM 
