1,405 stories from theatrecat.com
A TIME CAPSULE OF OPEN MARRIAGE  I am pleased to find out about Miles Malleson: an Edwardian student joker, WW1 conscientious objector, Bolshevist, founder of Left drama groups a…
MOTHER RUSSIA's WARRING SONS Â Â Â Â Â At the Almeida this shook and delighted us last year:Â a fresh history play: confrontational , shocking, classic in its focus on vast …
BIG SHOW, BIG HEART, SMALL SPACE     This, I urgently must tell you, is rather wonderful:  an example of the way that sometimes a big show in a small theatre can b…
  BACK TO THE OFFICE, EVERYONE!    There is, by chance a bit of a Thing going on in theatre right now: women playing a particularly alpha type of men, with glee and an…
WHEN DIVORCE WAS DISASTER   It's 1921.   Thirty years ago Lady Kitty ran out on her MP husband Clive and small son with his friend and colleague Hughie, exploding a public…
BORN TO LEAD..    This is a joy, quirky and full-hearted, musically adroit and fast-moving and witty.  Moreover, I suspect its self-mocking variety-show humour would …
THE ROARING TWENTIES, ROLLING OVER THE EDGE When Noel Coward shocked and enthralled the 1920s with this most bitter and intense of his plays, he was meanwhile hastily finishing the farcical …
GATHER ROUND AND HEAR AN OLD, OLD STORY… Â Deep breath, concentrate at the back:Â there's this Ancient Briton King, who once banished a chap who vengefully stole his baby sons, leavi…
A THEATRICAL ECHO, SEVENTY YEARS AGO Â Â A theatrical tease opens both halves: the voice of Noel Coward singing "There's a right way and a wrong way, an old way and a new way" for the o…
HARRY HILL TAKES ON TONY BLAIR. FIIIIIIIGHHHT!!!!  I couldn't be more delighted that it's touring, this splendidly rude show. We need this kind of merrily offensive burlesque, in…
THE POWER OF NO, IN 1950S AMERICA  If we think we suffer from a paranoid cancel-culture , we should note this reminder of mid-1950s America " notably Hollywood " in the M…
BLACK, BOYISH, BEAUTIFUL    It's not all musicals and movie-spinoffs that put bill-paying bums on seats. The best producers trust their nerve and instinct ,rake through the f…
  REDEFINING FEELINGS IN AN AGE OF ANGRY ANGST "We are three people trying to redefine feeling" they say. They do this between Paris, Munich, Salzburg and Greek islands, and eith…
BLAZING MUSIC HOLDS THE HOUSE TOGETHER     After 1930's Donegal at the NT the day before,  Dancing at Lughnasa portraying a group of women meeting  stress and poverty…
A SAD LOST WORLD . A HUMAN BEAUTY There is particular genius in creating a play which doesn't build to a showy debacle but grips you with the possibility of an unnamed crisis, and so…
​ABBASOLUTELY A DELIGHT  ​​  ​​   If there is a formula for a cheerful touring play in our frazzled and disputatious times, it woul…
NEVER FLAT, COWARD There 's always a slight frisson when Noel Coward's rueful, dark-streaked romantic comedy is revived in our censorious age. We are nine decades on from the night i…
LOVE, DEATH, GRIEF    It's a joy to have the intimate Swan auditorium open again, refurbished after going dark in the first sudden Covid closure, and to see once again a stro…
SEA FRETÂ Â Â Â I'll give it one thing: over an hour into this infuriating two- hour play there's a brief but wonderful part for the veteran June Watson. She stumps in with octog…
  BEAUTIFUL SCIENCE. UGLY WORLD    Unexpectedly enthralled, I spent an hour and a half eavesdropping on six nuclear physicists, and couldn't be more glad to have caught…
BLISS WITH THE BLISSES I don't always make it through the Oxfordshire lanes to the gorgeous, eccentric, water-wheeled Mill, but the thought of Issy van Randwyck as Judith Bliss lured me . Ca…
FUTURE IMPERFECT    Artificial intelligence and robotics have long been a boon to us ethical-scifi buffs, films like AI and I, Robot mercifully saving us from rocket ships and…
HYTNER ROLLS ANOTHER WINNING DICE   Daniel Mays has played a lot of tough-guy roles but has by nature a rather innocent and worried-looking face. It is this quality that Nick Hyt…
RIDE A WILD APP   In a week when tech firms shuddered at the shock demise of their favourite bank, how better to spend 90 minutes withJoseph Charlton's exhilarating, fast …
A RADIATING RESPONSIBILITY      Since I watched Sizewell A going up as a child, live close to Sizewell B and dwell amid a forest of local posters furiously condemning …
