TUMOURS, RUMOURS, A BIT OF HUMOUR The cancer thing finished off another old friend at the weekend, the call coming between the official press night and my getting to Bryony Kimmings…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:08PMAN AFRICAN ODYSSEY Not all refugees are in Calais or aiming for here. This enthralling piece from Mark Dornford-May’s Isango Ensemble of Cape Town tells another story, an African ep…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:27PMNOT A BARNSTORMER. NOT THIS TIME.. About 65 minutes in, the willowy monotone Mona sighingly asks her lover “Don’t you get tired of your character? I think I do”. So civil is the…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:24PMCO-CRITIC LUKE JONES, VIRTUOUSLY UNLUBRICATED, DEPLOYS THE DIPSTICK OF JUDGEMENT.. What I like about the Almeida is that is that the audience smells as if they’ve been bath…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:29AMA DEVOTED DIGNITY I was a little wary of this, the last two productions I saw (including the TV one) having left me mildly irritated and almost bored. For all its skill and wit, there…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:20PMAMERICA AT A CROSSROADS, 1964 When Teresa May at the Tory Conference quoted the Sam Cooke lyric “A change is gonna come” , many on the left suffered, not unreasonably, a violent c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:36PMLIVES IN A LUNCHTIME Having swerved going to the Edinburgh Fringe this year (costs, personal issues, exhaustion , don’t ask) I felt I was owed some hour-long daytime sessio…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:10PMAFTER THE WAR WAS OVER…SOUTHERN ACCIDIE.. Lilian Hellman – tough, personally unconventional, a liberal ahead of her time – counted this as one of her favourite works. Most …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:42AMSEX AND SOCIALISM: AN EDWARDIAN ESCAPE The view E.M.Forster sought for his heroine in the novel is more than a pretty Italian backdrop or a Surrey hillside – though this…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:33PMA SURREAL SPRITZER Zurich a century ago: the still centre of a wheel of war, neutral refuge of “spies, exiles, refugees, artists , writers , revolutionaries and radicals̶…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:05PMCOMIC DARING, DILDO-JABBING, PHILOSOPHICAL DESPAIR… It is not surprising that theatre falls in love with the Restoration : the stage itself springing back to life after Purit…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:48PMOH, WHAT A WITTY, AND PITIFUL, WAR There is greatness in joking at the mouth of Hell; especially if those jokes are part of comradeship, a gift to those alongside. A hundred ye…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:07AMGUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES DOWN WID DA SHAKESPEARE KIDZ Someone find Mark Rylance and distract him. Take him far from Bankside so he can’t see what they’ve done. Not only ar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:27AMAGE, MEMORY, WHISKY AND DEATH… DRINK TO THAT “But you see, its ABOUT being rather bored and baffled. Thats the POINT” said a pleading voice in the interval scuffle. She…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:42PMLIBERATION AND COURTSHIP IN A HEAD-ON CLASH Not long left for Samantha Ellis’ knowing, teasing little comedy of modern manners and delusions, and it’s well worth a look. It was …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:51AMCHILD PRISONERS OF TERROR The faces of Nigerian Chibok schoolgirls – kidnapped en masse from school or in smaller village raids – haunt the world. Bright teenage f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:56AMTWO UP A MOUNTAIN, ONE LOOKING UP IN ANGER From Wales to this easternmost festival Tamara Harvey – newish artistic director of Theatr Clwyd – brings a new play by Elinor Cook. It…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:30PMA SERIOUS, DARK-TONED MORALITY The court is ancient, formal, superstitious. Hunched and huddled figures, anonymously poor, scuttle aside for the courtiers to assemble. When the…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:18PMA RARITY, AND A TOPICAL TREAT It’s an American story and a universal one: choose money and status, or idealistic service? Big business or big heart, slick city or smalltown v…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:30AMKENNETH BRANAGH IS NO KEN DODD… If you find yourself in an audience of maturer years , flee quickly at the final curtain, or someone will creakingly inform you that they …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PMMINCHIN MAGIC. ONE TO SEE AGAIN. AND AGAIN. The film by Danny Rubin gave us the expression for eternal déja-vu: Bill Murray played Phil the arrogant celebrity weatherman, se…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:49PMA TREMENDOUS TRINITY This trilogy, transferred from Chichester is an epic: a thrilling voyage through time to the earliest days of Anton Chekhov. And, if it is not too philistine…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:49PMA CAUTIONARY TALE FOR ALL TIMES AND NATIONS… “Allow for a three-gin recovery period” advised a tweeter, during the previews of Simon Stone’s take on this perennial theme o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:13PMGUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES LIKES LOTT A LOT… It’s easy to get worked up by celebrities and big names crowding out the talented-but-unknown usuals. ‘They’re just there …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:01AMFLASH BANG WALLOP.. This 1963 show – based loosely on H.G.Wells’ semiautobiographical KIPPS – was originally a vehicle for Tommy Steele. And there were moments, a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51PMJUST WHAT WE WAND-ED? It’s not only Henry IV who gets two plays. Cry God for Harry, Hogwarts and St Joanne: the woman who (whether you love the tales or not) admirably got a tell…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:50PMTHE NEW F-WORD (AND A FAIR FEW OF THE OLD ONE) You can trust Alistair Beaton to keep a cast learning last-minute lines. Here, just as grace-notes alongside the main theme, are jokes a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:58AMONCE UPON A TIME, WHICH COULD BE NOW… What a marvel is this Sondheim / Lapine classic musical: playful and deep, absurd and earthy, mocking and wise. And what a piece of luck…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:51PMAYCKBOURN AT IT AGAIN..OR IS IT There’s tennis without a ball (audience requested to do plock-plock sound effects on drums), a mini-farce, thriller and horror story also supported b…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:59AMEIGHTY YEARS ON: MEN BEWARE WOMEN At a moment when both female leaders and would-be leaders are rampaging across the news – May, Merkel, Leadsom, Eagle – it is pleasantl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:37PMFAITH . FAILURE AND THE GENIUS OF FRIEL A veil of rain surrounds the stage where three narrators will appear, each with their own version of a shared life “shabby, bleak, de…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:56PM
