1,405 stories from theatrecat.com
DARK BEFORE THE DAWN     To emerge with any redemptive sense from Joe Hill-Gibbins' spare, scorching rather brilliant production, it helps to remember that Henrik …
ANY TOIL AND TROUBLE WAS WELL WORTH IT Everything a child could want is here:  the dark thrill of imagined orphanhood, a quest, baddies , jeopardy and jokes, bouncy musical spectacle…
GOLDSMITH BEATEN LIGHT AS AIR Â Â Â Nice symmetry in Tom Littler's decision to set Oliver Goldsmith's 1773 comedy in the Wodehousian Jazz Age:Â the Georgians, with their boozy mon…
FLAT WHITE AND WOEFUL Â Â Â Â If you're going to splash out on a visually arresting finale of assassination, a vivId fire destroying a Norman tower and a lyrical monologue about L…
ECHOES OF DARKNESS Â Â Jews gather, laughing and chattering, offering a toast as they run down the aisles to settle downstage for a Passover meal with candles, prayers and the ancient …
FAR MORE THAN A SNACK   Caught this late, and it's much reviewed and almost sold out. But it's worth saying in a brief word here that if you buy a return as I did, you are in luc…
A QUEEN WHO NEEDED QUEENS   The curtain rises on the Clarence House garden room in 1979, where the Queen Mother held her eccentric little court. Much gilding, unreasonably…
   WHEN WE THAT ARE LEFT GROW OLD….    Sometimes you have to rely on a team with multiple comedy awards to hold a mirror to society and move your heart. Thi…
DIANA AND THE DECEIVER Jonathan Maitland did a superb play for this theatre about Thatcher and Howe, "Dead Sheep", and one on Jimmy Savile which was far more telling and cathartic than the T…
SCIENCE FANTASY AND HONEST EMOTION     I don't normally indulge in first-night anecdotes, but feel I should mention that in the big wedding scene Joanna Woodward tossed he…
AGATHA STRIKES AGAIN Â Â Â This is Extreme Agatha Christie, her most preposterous (and bestselling) plot and one of the most murderously morbid (NB the final moments of the staging …
MEMORIES OF A MAVERICK Â It's an immersive show, in that you buy a drink in the cramped saloon of the old pub on Greek Street, find a corner, and ideally fall into conversation with anoth…
WHILE THE REAL ONE RUNS…. With the Covid Inquiry surging along in a froth of accusations and curses and scandalous Whatsappery, it was hard to resist a hasty day-return to Harry Davies' de…
THE FIRST WITCHFINDER, NOT WITHOUT LESSONS FOR TODAY     This is remarkable, Joanna Carrick's best and deepest play yet,  following her acclaimed Reformation trilogy.…
A MOTHER'S LIFE, A SON'S PERSPECTIVE Sometimes it is almost useful to be a day late (sorry, tied up yesterday) because it gives a chance to read other people's take on the play you saw.�…
GENIUS, REALPOLITIK, RELIGION    In days of horrifying conflict there was quite a jolt in a confrontation between Stephen Hagan's resplendently silver-suited Frederick the…
PROPERTY RAGE FROM ANOTHER AGE Here's a curiosity from 1972; an early , rarely-seen Caryl Churchill play revived with dashing elegance under the Jermyn's Artistic director Stella Pow…
GRIM AND PURE BY THE DOCKS, PITY AND POETRY   The lawyer Alfieri, prowling in memory round Arthur Miller's stark tale of immigrant longshoremen on the 1940's Brooklyn docks, s…
A LEARNED FRIEND REMEMBERED   Rumpole of the Bailey is occasional comfort-viewing in our house, thanks to Talkingpicturestv repeats. John Mortimer's portrait of the old barri…
ITS THE PICTURES THAT GOT SMALL? Not if Lloyd can help it. It felt strange to see this in the bowels of a gala-night Savoy, only a week or two after our local arts centre showed the …
IT'S BACK, THROUGH THE NURSERY WINDOW, STILL FLYING    Just to reassure you: this offshoot from Mischief, the team who brought you the perennial Play-goes-wrong, is still…
 THE TWIG WHO BRANCHED OUT    We get up to speed on the period, with irresistible tracks from the golden age of pop: Beatles, Stones, Animals.  Onstage is a photograph…
A TANKFUL OF EMOTIONAL TENTACLES    Where better than Hampstead to watch the interplay of cutting-edge science with emotional intensity and philosophical unanswerables? Upsta…
PHONETICALLY PHABULOUS Â Â Â Last time Bertie Carvel was on this stage it was as Donald Trump. Now our best shapeshifter is Henry Higgins: capering, swearing, somewhere on the far si…
THE INFECTION OF WICKEDNESS Â Â Â Â Â The history of the Lodz ghetto in Poland is a part of the Holocaust story worth foxusing on, ot least because the Jewish population there …
