Tuesday, 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 OH, 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 03:07AMSaturday, September 24, 2016
GUEST 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 03:27AMWednesday, September 21, 2016
AGE, 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 05:42PM LIBERATION 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 11:51AMSunday, September 18, 2016
CHILD 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 11:56AMMonday, September 12, 2016
TWO 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 01:30PMThursday, September 1, 2016
A 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 07:18PMWednesday, August 31, 2016
A 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 10:30AMTuesday, August 30, 2016
KENNETH 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 05:45PMTuesday, August 16, 2016
MINCHIN 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 07:49PMFriday, August 5, 2016
A 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 12:13PMFriday, July 29, 2016
GUEST 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 02:01AMTuesday, July 26, 2016
FLASH 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 07:51PMMonday, July 25, 2016
JUST 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 06:50PMSaturday, July 16, 2016
THE 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 04:58AMWednesday, July 13, 2016
ONCE 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 07:59AMThursday, July 7, 2016
EIGHTY 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 12:37PMTuesday, June 28, 2016
FAITH . 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 05:56PMMonday, June 27, 2016
ZELLER ZOOMS UP WEST, SHARP AS EVER The Menier, back in spring, brought grave delight and snorts of laughter with this zinger of a play by Florian Zeller; its rapid transfer up…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:41PMSunday, June 26, 2016
IN RANSOME’S WAKE, A NORTH SEA TALE OF TOUGHER DAYS Eastern Angles having a cleaner mind than BBC Films, Titty gets to keeps her name in this faithful, ingenious, charmin…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:53AMWednesday, June 22, 2016
VACATION, EXPLOITATION, ACCUSATION… I caught up a few days late with this (cheap seats aloft, excitingly closer to the rock-face in Hildegard Bechtler’s Mediterranean-te…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:10AMMonday, June 20, 2016
REBELLION AND REALITY IN A SKEWED WORLD God bless a playwright you can’t predict. Mike Bartlett’s Charles III was founded on a pretty simple idea, and a frankly rather jej…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:25PMSaturday, June 18, 2016
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES IS CHILLED, THRILLED, DAZZLED Ralph Fiennes is a menace. An utter menace. Other actors beware. He will cheat, stab and simply out-act you right off th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:38AMThursday, June 16, 2016
A hairdo can be eloquent. When Bryan Dick as Willie Mossop first emerges quaking with humility from a trapdoor under old Hobson’s shop, above a flapping leather apron and ragged shirt his …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:29AMFriday, June 10, 2016
STRINGS, SWINGS, A SOPRANO SOARING In E.M.Forster’s HOWARD’S END, the dreamy Helen Schlegel can’t listen to Beethoven without imagining heroes, goblins, dancing elephant…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:59PMThursday, June 9, 2016
A CLASSIC OF THE DESPERATE HEART “We’re death to one another, you and I”. The great cry from trapped, degraded macho Freddie, struggling to leave the desperate demanding Hester …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:45AMWednesday, June 8, 2016
A DREAM AND A DISASTER: TRIBUTE WORTH PAYING Full disclosure: I really care about the Titanic story, love maritime history, have met one of the last living survivors of the 1…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:11PMTuesday, June 7, 2016
INNOCENCE, EXPERIENCE, MEMORY, TRAUMA Around a derelict room and abandoned trunk, Michael Crawford prowls, a tweedy, damaged old man at the heart of this low-key but unforgetta…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:30PM 
