1,410 stories from theatrecat.com
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 …
A HOUSE OF ANCIENT SHAME     What terrible secrets lie in an impressive yet spooky mansion, with artful descending ceilings and a trapdoor designed by Jon Bausor ? We…
RUPERT AND BRENDA Â Â Couldn't miss this piece of 40th anniversary history by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky because I had a very small "Â infinitestimal "Â dog in this fight. I wa…
  CRY HAVOC!  Director Tamara Harvey, who gave us that beautiful, thoughtful PERICLES last year (also starring Alfred Enoch),  is not one to interpret Henry V in the stormingl…
TOO DEEP FOR TEARS Perhaps this imagining of the young Vincent gains extra power after the emotional hit of the recent Van Gogh at Arles exhibition; starry nights and wonder lie fresh in…
