GUEST REVIEWER AND OPERABUFF DEAN THOMPSON LOVES ENO’S LATEST Ingenious – Dazzling – Hilarious! If you haven’t seen The Magic Flute before, then this is the one to see; if you have…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:46AMCORONATION, COMMISSION, COLLABORATION You need not be a selfish pig to be an artist of genius, but there’s no question that it often helps. Occurs, anyway. In Mark R…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:10AMAN ATTIC WARNING Fasten your seat belts for a bracingly odd German play by Marius von Mayenburg; hold on tight as it veers in a switchback weirdness, which I for one ended up tho…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:47PMTHEY SHALL NOT PASS Given the current swell of antisemitism there was a heartstopping moment from Jez Unwin as Yitzhak Scheinberg, patriarch of a hardworking East End Jewish family wh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:26PM1948 AND ALL THAT Right now, the birth of the NHS in 1948 is more than appropriate to write about (there’s another play about Nye Bevan next week). For as the most jaded doctor pred…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:16AMWANNA BE IN MOVIES? REALLY? BRRRR! We open in a chilly Suffolk cottage in the rain (I am tonight probably the only person here to have come direct from a chilly Suffolk cottage, in rain. C…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:31AMTENTACLES STRETCHING INTO PAST AND FUTURE Electricity is coming to the village but the elderly Randolphs wont bother, preferring the paraffin lamplight of their forebears. Their ho…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:46PMWHEN THE BOOMERS WERE ROCKIN’ ALL OVER THE WORLD... “We were there!” cry the cast of John O’Farrell’s jukebox tribute to the 1985 Live Aid concert. Memories undimmed nearly f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:14PMBy Libby Purves Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves reviews A Midsummer Night's Dream presented by the RSC at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford Upon Avon. This post REVIEW: A Midsumm…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 04:30AMFAIRYTALE AS FESTIVAL “The lunatic, the lover and the poet” are all served in any Midsummer Night’s dream. Here the first two get most traction, the poetry least (until …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:24AMLYRICAL, FARCICAL, PERFECT Figaro, rascally wigmaker and foam-flinging wet-shaver, is basically the first rapper, isnt he? Staccato eloquence at speed, braggart confidence in breech…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:50PMAMERICAN DREAMS IN FADING BLACKPOOL Suddenly within a fortnight come two very classy new plays, funny and thoughtful and moving beyond the ordinary. Moreover, in a tiny revolution …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11PMBy Libby Purves Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves reviews Bronco Billy, a new musical at the Charing Cross Theatre. This post REVIEW: Bronco Billy, Charing Cross Theatre ✭✭✭ first a…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 11:59PMTHAT OL’TIME WESTERN DREAM OF 1979 I have a weakness for this little theatre under the arches and its Players’ Bar. Honouring a music-hall history, and with some of the cheapest stal…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:10AMSMALL PEOPLE, BIG PLAY A hot summer wedding-day. The bride Sylvia is a bag of nerves, big sister Hazel competently combing and marshalling her teenage and smaller daught…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:07AMUNFROGGETTABLE MOMENTS IN THE UNDERWORLD Aitor Basauri does not need to be framed in a 20ft-high giant puppet frog in order to be funny, but blissful overkill is part of the pleasure …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:54AMA DANCE AROUND AUSTEN’S LEGACY The book is known and loved enough: Jane Austen’s first full novel, written with satirical youthful wit but long laid aside unpublished. It gleefully sho…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PMLEST ANYONE FORGET.. Storytime! Before a tangled treescape Samantha Spiro sits with a book on her lap. Across the simple stage a few notes from Gemma Rosefield’s ‘cello settl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31PMBORDERS AND BRUTALITIES, Maybe I shouldnt review what is essentially physical-theatre. I have no dance-cred, and I was pleased to be warned years ago by the great Benedict Nightingale, when …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:15PMWAR’S LONG SHADOW I have a taste for “Forgotten” plays of well-made realism, illustrating how it actually felt to live in Britain through now-distant decades. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:24AMBEFORE THE SALEM TERROR This week, to little acclaim, the Ambassadors opened Tbe Enfield Haunting, a play centred on the spooky hysteria of troubled teenage girls.. The followi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:48AMGRIEF, CLASS, AND THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT Press night having moved about and gone incommunicado, this is from when I bought a preview ticket at Richmond..same cast an…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:03PMJAPAN MEETS THE NOISY WEST This is exquisite, and not only in Paul Farnsworth’s dreamy set and Ayako Maeda’s costumes, from peasant fishermen to Shogun magnificence. The Men…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:56AMBRAINS AND HOW TO MAKE THEM USEFUL Clearly it is the mission of Hampstead Downstairs to broaden our education, no bad ambition. Not long ago I learned a lot about the life and em…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PMA BLAST FROM THE PAST TO INSPIRE OR IRRITATE By the interval I was mournfully unconvinced that there was any point at all in reviving Tom Stoppard’s 17-year-old play , about Commu…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35AMCHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SPIRIT Can this really be the first Jewish pantomime? Oy vay, surely this culture with its musical genius, ironic jokes , family warmth, tall tales and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:29PMANOTHER KIND OF INQUIRY I suppose we will have to wait a few years for the dust to settle and James Graham to write a nuanced play about the Boris-Covid-Tory-pocalypse. Meanwhile this 8…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:08AMDICKENS IN RIOTOUS RHYME AND BAGPIPES – ON TOUR Wouldn’t be right to get through December without Dickens, would it? But I have seen the magnificent Old Vic adaptation by Jack…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:43AMI don’t usually record anything that’s two-nights-only, but this one I think will flower and fly, so watch out for it. It’s already looking like turning up in March at TR Haymar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:32AMBEWARE OF GREEKS BRINGING GAGS Where does Kylie get her kebabs? From Jason’s doner van! If that makes you scuttle away in fright, you have not yet achieved the correct seasonal a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:02PMDARK BEFORE THE DAWN To emerge with any redemptive sense from Joe Hill-Gibbins’ spare, scorching rather brilliant production, it helps to remember that Henrik Ibsen, after…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:21AM
