1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
KIDS WITH A KICK IN THEM Â Â Â Â There's been an interlockof themes in theatre lately: DEAR ENGLAND at the NT displaying Gareth Southgate's work in fostering the openness and emot…
HOPE, HEART, HARDSHIP Â Â Brian Friel's 1979 remarkable play stands on its own, offering a kind of depressive beauty: beneath the story of one ramshackle troubled couple it is a meditat…
RO$$INI BONANZA! Guest reviewer Dean Thompson finds much in a small space… Opera lovers or new to opera will love this! So, get on your horse and gallop over to see Charles Court O…
A CELLULOID INVASION  This was at first a startling choice: Eastern Angles' tradition is generally, as it heroically tours night-by-night across the eastern counties,  to pro…
BOARDROOM BEASTS Â Â This may break all records for the smartest costumes ever at the Southwark's smallest space: six irreproachable business suits, including two sets of tweed-chic fe…
A FRESH CAST, ONE YEAR ONÂ Can it really be a whole year since, with theatre still gallantly recovering from Covid, Nicholas Hytner rolled the dice and opted to offer us some razzle dazzl…
PLANT FOOD PEOPLE FROM THE PAST     I missed this first time round, due to the babysitting years, so it was grand to catch up. It's a 1980's revival, a spoof on 19…
A MAVERICK MINISTER     There's another play to be written about Aneurin Bevan, stubborn founder of the National Health Service: perhaps a more contentious one, or a fant…
ONCE BRITTEN TWICE SHY?   The late David Hemmings, one of Britten's mentored, worshipped boy sopranos, was unforgettable aged 12 as the original MIles in the composer's terrif…
THE WINDRUSH WARRIORS    Moses' crowded bedsit is where the new ones turn up off the boat train, wanting to know how to do London; he can tell them names like Clapham…
GUEST REVIEWER AND OPERABUFF DEAN THOMPSON LOVES ENO'S LATEST Ingenious " Dazzling " Hilarious! If you haven't seen The Magic Flute before, then this is the one to see; if you have see…
CORONATION, COMMISSION, COLLABORATION       You need not be a selfish pig to be an artist of genius, but there's no question that it often helps. Occurs, anywa…
AN ATTIC WARNING    Fasten your seat belts for a bracingly odd German play by Marius von Mayenburg; hold on tight as it veers in a switchback weirdness, which I for one en…
THEY SHALL NOT PASS   Given the current swell of antisemitism there was a heartstopping moment from Jez Unwin as Yitzhak Scheinberg, patriarch of a hardworking East End Jewish fam…
1948 AND ALL THAT   Right now, the birth of the NHS in 1948 is more than appropriate to write about (there's another play about Nye Bevan next week). For as the most jaded doctor …
WANNA BE IN MOVIES? REALLY? BRRRR! We open in a chilly Suffolk cottage in the rain (IÂ am tonight probably the only person here to have come direct from a chilly Suffolk cottage, in rain.…
TENTACLES STRETCHING INTO PAST AND FUTURE   Electricity is coming to the village but the elderly Randolphs wont bother, preferring the paraffin lamplight of their forebears. …
WHEN THE BOOMERS WERE ROCKIN' ALL OVER THE WORLD... Â Â "We were there!" cry the cast of John O'Farrell's jukebox tribute to the 1985 Live Aid concert. Memories undimmed nearly forty y…
FAIRYTALE AS FESTIVAL    "The lunatic, the lover and the poet" are all served in any Midsummer Night's dream.  Here the first two get most traction, the poetry least (…
   LYRICAL, FARCICAL, PERFECT Figaro, rascally wigmaker and foam-flinging wet-shaver, is basically the first rapper, isnt he? Staccato eloquence at speed, braggart confidence i…
 AMERICAN DREAMS IN FADING BLACKPOOL   Suddenly within a fortnight come two very classy new plays, funny and thoughtful and moving beyond the ordinary. Moreover, in a tiny rev…
THAT OL'TIME WESTERN DREAM OF 1979 I have a weakness for this little theatre under the arches and its Players' Bar. Honouring a music-hall history, and with some of the cheapest stal…
SMALL PEOPLE,  BIG PLAY      A hot summer wedding-day. The bride Sylvia is a bag of nerves, big sister Hazel competently combing and marshalling her teenage…
UNFROGGETTABLE MOMENTS IN THE UNDERWORLD   Aitor Basauri does not need to be framed in a 20ft-high giant puppet frog in order to be funny, but blissful overkill is part of the ple…
A DANCE AROUND AUSTEN'S LEGACY The book is known and loved enough: Jane Austen's first full novel, written with satirical youthful wit but long laid aside unpublished. It gleefully shows…
