1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
LEST ANYONE FORGET..   Storytime! Before a tangled treescape Samantha Spiro sits with a book on her lap.  Across the simple stage a few notes from Gemma Rosefield's 'cello…
BORDERS AND BRUTALITIES, Maybe I shouldnt review what is essentially physical-theatre. I have no dance-cred, and I was pleased to be warned years ago by the great Benedict Nightingale, when …
WAR'S LONG SHADOW       I have a taste for "Forgotten" plays of well-made realism, illustrating how it actually felt to live in Britain through now-distant…
BEFORE THE SALEM TERROR    This week, to little acclaim, the Ambassadors opened Tbe Enfield Haunting, a play centred on the spooky hysteria of troubled teenage girls..…
GRIEF, CLASS, AND THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT Â Â Â Â Â Press night having moved about and gone incommunicado, this is from when I bought a preview ticket at Richmond..sa…
JAPAN MEETS THE NOISY WEST     This is exquisite, and not only in Paul Farnsworth's dreamy set and Ayako Maeda's costumes, from peasant fishermen to Shogun magnificence. T…
BRAINS AND HOW TO MAKE THEM USEFUL    Clearly it is the mission of Hampstead Downstairs to broaden our education, no bad ambition. Not long ago I learned a lot about the l…
A BLAST FROM THE PAST TO INSPIRE OR IRRITATE Â Â Â By the interval I was mournfully unconvinced that there was any point at all in reviving Tom Stoppard's 17-year-old play , about C…
 CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SPIRIT   Can this really be the first Jewish pantomime? Oy vay, surely this culture with its musical genius, ironic jokes , family warmth,  …
ANOTHER KIND OF INQUIRYÂ Â I suppose we will have to wait a few years for the dust to settle and James Graham to write a nuanced play about the Boris-Covid-Tory-pocalypse. Meanwhile th…
DICKENS IN RIOTOUS RHYME AND BAGPIPES " ON TOUR Â Â Â Wouldn't be right to get through December without Dickens, would it? Â But I have seen the magnificent Old Vic adaptation by …
  I don't usually record anything that's two-nights-only, but this one I think will flower and fly, so watch out for it. It's already looking like turning up in March at TR Haymar…
BEWARE OF GREEKS BRINGING GAGS   Where does Kylie get her kebabs? From Jason's doner van!  If that makes you scuttle away in fright, you have not yet achieved the correct seas…
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…
