Tuesday, November 24, 2015
STILL SHOCKING, STILL SEXIST ! GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES SMACKS HIS LIPS OVER A VINTAGE PINTER… I get the itching feeling that if anyone else had written this play …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:23AMFriday, November 20, 2015
Mid-life, an insurance salesman who will never be a big enough man to fulfil his big dream. Better to pretend- plan, to deny daily reality in the glow of an imaginary future and sanctified c…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:23AMThursday, November 19, 2015
OH YES IT IS! CHIPPY , HOME OF PANTO, STRIKES AGAIN It is, famously, the local panto for the Cameron family, though the paterfamilias PM himself might want to avoid swivelling heads an…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:06AMTuesday, November 17, 2015
DOWN WITH PAN AND CINDERELLA! After the high-priced saccharine vapidity of ELF , it felt like time to check out something both classier, and more affordable. Always perilous for the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:53PMThursday, November 12, 2015
OPERA’S THE THING! YOUR LIFE IS BUT A SIDESHOW! HURRAH! A play about the foundation of Glyndebourne Opera – “Snobs on the grass” as some cruel postwar journalist wro…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:19AMWednesday, November 11, 2015
POLITICS AND SCANDAL; IT WAS EVER THUS.. You’re an MP, a clever lawyer with cross-party popularity, newly invited into Cabinet to steer through a Bill to disestablish the Anglican Church a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:10AMSunday, November 8, 2015
A DOUBLE BILL: RATTIGAN AT PLAY AND IN GRIEF There may be voices which jibe at Kenneth Branagh for being producer, deviser and co-director of a year-long season, finding starry casting like …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:58AMSaturday, November 7, 2015
Kenneth Branagh’s Garrick year as actor-manager opens in unquestionable triumph. One of Shakespeare’s greatest, most redemptive plays is richly served without flaw or gimmick, traditiona…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:23PMROLL UP, ROLL UP, ROLL OVER… It’s back for Christmas: pure entertainment, faux-decadent but full of heart, skilful and cheerful and elegant and daft. In the great glittering tent by …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:11AMThursday, November 5, 2015
CURLY HAT AND STRIPY STOCKINGS TIME Play critic-cliché bingo once they’re out! One point each for “Elf ’n Safety”, “National Elf” , kids with phones …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:05PMFLOUNCES AND FLIRTS, INSULTS AND INNUENDOES…A RESTORATION ROUT There’s a bustle of backstage larking before the curtain, cast dashing around in shirtsleeves, manoeuvring a hamper…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:48AMThere’s a bustle of backstage larking before the curtain, cast dashing around in shirtsleeves, manoeuvring a hamper , getting stuck in ropes and tripping over a life-size model crocodile. …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:34AMMEERA SYAL’S MEENA…A MEMORY OF THE 70s, THOUGHTFUL FOR TODAY Any show playing Slade and T. Rex standards before the curtain has me well softened up So does the wide, generous vis…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:45AMWednesday, November 4, 2015
CHOPPER BIKES AND CHANGE, TEENS IN THE DAYS OF TIE-DYE… Any show playing Slade and T. Rex standards before the curtain has me well softened up So does the wide, generous vision of Me…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:26PMTuesday, November 3, 2015
A MAGICAL GLADE OF OFFICE FURNITURE…
Of all Shakespeare’s comedies, this is the one which most combines memorable lines – the seven ages of man, Rosalind’s quickfire epigrams abou…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:29PMThursday, October 29, 2015
FROM THE FIRES BELOW, O”NEILL’S ACCUSING VOICE From the opening moments of Richard Jones’ stunning, nightmarish production of Eugene O’Neill’s early play we have both…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:18PMWednesday, October 28, 2015
OINK! SWIPE! SNOG! STAB! “Ohhh Tim, you beautiful filthy boy!” cries Tina the pig-farmer’s discontented wife, succumbing drunkenly to some pan-banging draining-board sex. Filthy he is …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11PMTuesday, October 27, 2015
THE PEOPLE OF THE PITS Tender, fierce, intelligent and humane, this superb production reminds us that D.H.Lawrence was at his best a great interpreter of 20th century change. Years before th…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:46PMTHE PRESIDENT OR THE POP STAR? CHOOSE YOUR ROLE MODEL, GIRL! It’s a portmanteau of Theodore Roosevelt and Elvis Presley. And, one must sorrowfully surmise, was lit upon by The Team, a col…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:32PMFriday, October 23, 2015
‘I MUST CLING TO MY HUSBAND!” OH NO YOU MUSTN’T… HE’S IN THE ATTIC… James Dacre’s leadership of this twin theatre is certainly lively: a…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:27AMTuesday, October 20, 2015
CELEBRITY CULTURE DECODED – FURIOUSLY I’m a bit late on the curve catching this, but it runs all week with two more matinees, so Roll up! Shudder as you savour the freakish world…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:41PMSunday, October 18, 2015
TOURING NEAR YOU; RICH DARK OOZING EVIL AND FEMINIST DEFIANCE A fierce bleak play, this. Set in 1712 but, taking the wider world as it is, not un-topical: hangings, tortures, religion …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:53PMThursday, October 15, 2015
SINS OF A PREACHER-MAN Admit it, ladies. Within the most modestly-clothed and lipstickless of us pale white matrons, there lurks a sneaky wish to be – just for an hour or two –…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:40AMMonday, October 12, 2015
EUGENE O’NEILL, EARLY AND IMPASSIONED… Well, God bless the little Jermyn. Director and AD Antony Biggs, an unwearying ferret of lost drama, has dug up another barnstorming earl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:50PMThursday, October 8, 2015
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES FEELS THE NEED FOR A SCRUB Sex is at this play’s core. But it’s not sexy in the slightest. It’s a means of leverage, abuse, it’s a crime, a threat. Each of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:43PMWednesday, October 7, 2015
QUEER ON CAMPUS, THE 21c BLUES Welcome to our college! Meet the students, America’s future. Or, as depicted in Christopher Shinn’s new play, a selection of the most sexuall…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:50PMMonday, October 5, 2015
A FROLIC… This is an artful wheeze. Take the story from the sunniest of films, a 1957 cheer-up British Lion starring Peter Sellers, Margaret Rutherford and Bernard Miles. Bolt on some …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:12PMFriday, October 2, 2015
THE GREATNESS OF SMALL LIVES We are in a pub garden in rural Hampshire, where landlord John is gathering logs for the fire (in high summer, “it’s part of what people come fo…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:57AMThursday, October 1, 2015
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS ANCIENT TRUTH IN A GLORIOUSLY DARK DIVORCE “I can unmake you the same way I made you. I write the story, remember?” Rachel Cusk’s brilliant vis…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:53PMMONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO SOUR The setting is excellent . Terrible flashing screens of numbers, alerts, currencies; sometimes becoming a glass window onto a London scene made of banknot…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:19PMJOLLY HOCKEYSTICKS! “Put on your navy knicks, pick up your hockey sticks – and bully-up, bully-up..” Jeepers. I had completely forgotten that ritual “bul…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:40PM 
