1,414 stories from theatrecat.com
THE SEASON BEGINS! Not doing formal mouse-rate reviews of these, but for local eyes and visitors it’s worth nipping through the ones I can get to – this one is around all week…
TROUBLED HEARTS AND TORCH SONGS When someone pops a sticker on your cameraphone at the door it generally means a performer is going to get their kit off, repeatedly. Not in this …
FLOWERS, PHONETICS, PHABULOUS Always a joy to have them back: the phoneticist and the flower-girl, born to enthral one another and us. Cheers first for Keziah Ibe as Eliza, fresh o…
AMBITION, LOVE AND CHOICES IN AN OLDER IRELAND Jonathan Bank’s Mint Theater company lately gave us an arresting revival of Miles Malleson’s Yours Unfaithfully in this theatre,…
SOLDIERING AND SACRIFICE . This is one of the RSC’s big hitters: five stars everywhere ,and promoted more as comedy than the romantic-chivalric classic it is, Rostand’s 19c tra…
1939: TWO NATIONS, TWO MEN, TWO WIVES It has a familiar sitcom structure: a couple whose marriage is not what it respectably seems, making anxious preparations for weekend guest…
LAUGHING AT LIES It’s ten years since Florian Zeller’s elegantly embroidered trompe l’oeil sex-comedy about two couples opened at the Menier under LIndsay Posner’s direc…
OL’ BLUE EYES, THE COMEBACK It’s one of the great showbiz comeback stories: how a tough Italian-American kid saw Bing Crosby in 1935 and had a dream; rose in he 1940s to cra…
BEAUTIFUL This, to me unexpectedly, was the most beautiful single hour in a theatre yet. Visually, musically, and in its majesty and depth of speech impossible to fault, it’s …
WORTH SINGING ALONG TO? Ask ourselves in all honesty: did we all schlepp out to Richmond for press night because national-treasure Dame Maureen Lipman, at 80, is doing eight s…
THE ELDERLY ENDGAME We are seated in a big arena, on three sides of a care-home sitting-room, clearly secure – staff tap door keypads – designed for the containment of demen…
A SWELL PARTY, EVENTUALLY We “Call the Midwife” fans all suspected there was more pizazz to nurse Trixie than bicycling round Poplar in the 1950s, and indeed Helen George always was …
HOME AGAIN IN TRIUMPH Can it really be nearly twenty years since this show about WW1 galloped into world theatre history on this stage? A maverick experiment with two life-size pu…
THE SAD SERIOUS COMEDY OF DEATH A Devon cottage kitchen, opening to a tangled spring garden: beyond this idyll a semi- abstract tangle of branches around a great circle of sky: …
A FUNNY SHOW HAPPENENED ON THE WAY TO THE COLISEUM Ancient Greece is suffering drought and near-famine, and on a small island (population 16 and a half) prayers to Dionysius (“…
THREE WOMEN AND A DISTANT QUEEN Ava Pickett’s breathlessly exciting début play won, at the Almeida, both a prestigious prize and mixed reviews. As a first-timer, seeing its t…
FREAK ALONG WITH ANCIENT GREEKS The Greek gods, with their legends , family rifts and seduction of hapless mortals, are irresistible to all who love dramatic retelli…
SAD HEARTS AND SHOWBIZ The play begins in a pure music-hall moment: below the stage a hammeringly jolly piano, onto it a capering leg-show chorus and sparklers, ushering…
AFTER THE SHOOTING Despite the title, Anna Yates’ setting in an episcopalian church room full of calm skylight, and one effective moment near the end, Fran Kranz’ tense 105-minute p…
A MUSICAL IS BORN…OUT OF POP”S PAST I liked this rackety, brassy, exhilarating banger of a show: a cartoonish bit of history, a jukebox musical with a heart of gold .…
ETHICS AND EVASIONS It’s a cluttered upper room, overcrowded with grand old furniture, a gramophone, harp, oddities like fencing foils and a home-built valve radio. The sense is o…
UNIVERSAL , INTIMATE, TRUE Sometimes it’s more than worth it to flog irritably through a London strike day, make it without even time for a drink but find someth…
IMPRESSIONS AND OBSESSIONSÂ Â Â The old `Players' Theatre has a good eye of oddball new musicals, cheap enough to sample before anyone's train home. And here off-Broadway's Carmel Owe…
A SHUDDER FROM THE PAST I came to this fresh from admiring two 76-year-olds , Anna Wintour and Meryl Streep, being painfully cool and haughty in a trailer plugging Devil Wears Prada 2. Â …
FRIENDSHIP, BRILLIANCE, DOUBT Â Â Â Â The universe as a bundle of unknowable of approximates:Â Relativity and Complementarity, Uncertainty theory, quantum mechanics, particles …
