Thursday, 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 07:27PMSunday, October 30, 2016
AMERICA’S STORY, EVERYBODY’S SONG America’s twentieth century belongs to all of us, and its events and themes echo round the world: the rise of corporate power, the racia…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:05PMSaturday, October 29, 2016
This is an unusual post, not about any current production, and far too long. And the latest current reviews are available below, AMADEUS at the top and well worth it. But there has…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:00PMWednesday, October 26, 2016
ONE OF THE GREAT NIGHTS The old man’s eye is unforgiving, his squat wrecked strength of will cows the vast room as he invokes us – “ghosts of the future” – t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:07PMTuesday, October 25, 2016
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 06:08PMTuesday, October 18, 2016
AN 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 06:27PMMonday, October 17, 2016
NOT 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 06:24PMSaturday, October 15, 2016
CO-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 06:29AMThursday, October 13, 2016
A 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 06:20PMTuesday, October 11, 2016
AMERICA 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 11:42AMFriday, October 7, 2016
SEX 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 04:33PMTuesday, October 4, 2016
A 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 07:05PMTuesday, September 27, 2016
COMIC 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 05:48PM 
