1,405 stories from theatrecat.com
CLEVER, CLOWNING, CLASSIC   What could be more seasonal than Flaubert's tale of wifely frustration, romantic illusions, disastrous adulteries and ruinous shopaholic debt? This…
A DAUGHTER OF DISREPUTE Â 1893, and here's George Bernard Shaw passing the Bechdel Test with flying colours by centring the action on two women at odds , with surrounding men remarkably d…
PURE PLEASURE AT HER MAJESTY'SÂ Â Â Â It seemed worth the money " these were not press tickets " to check out how good old Fanty is getting on after 36 years at Her Majesty's The…
DRUNKENNESS AND THE DARK   The studio at Hampstead has been on a roll recently, with intelligent and emotionally honest plays : FOLK, RAVENSCOURT, THE ANIMAL KINGDOM et al.…
THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT BEING TOO TRADITIONAL ABOUT IT This cheerfully exuberant rendering of Oscar Wilde's witty rom-com is also a sort of political act. In the foyer a gorgeous selection…
ABDUCTION, ASSAULT, ABDICATION For four hundred years the reputation of Mary, Queen of Scots, has been battled over: she has been called victim and whore, murderess and heroine, …
WHEN THEY PUT THE FUN " AND THE FUNDSÂ " INTO FUNDAMENTALISM.. Â Â Â Â Rarely in the history of Islington playgoing have so many first-nighters whooped so enthusiastically atÂ…
DODD-LEVEL HAPPINESS IN SOHO    Hard, on its first night ever, not to review the theatre itself. Nica Burns and Nimax open the first new West End theatre in fifty years: agle…
OLD MEN DO NOT FORGET     Peter Gill's new play has a melancholy beauty about it; it's a sort of poem as the veteran playwright and director engages with age, …
THE PROFESSORIAL ROAD TO HELL   David Tennant is a fastidious actor. That sounds negative, prim perhaps, but in fact expresses why his performance in C.P.Taylor's extraordinary p…
A HARLEM TRAVIATA Three in the morning and Angel the showgirl is raring , glitterimg drunk "if you caint be drunk in Harlem.." she slurs furiously. Her friend Guy brought her home, an…
RETURN OF A WILD AND QUESTIONING PLAY Â Â Â This is the return of Robert Icke's modern version of Schnitzler's 1912 play " details below, as laid out in part of my original Almeida r…
A WARNING FOR ALL TIMES   This is the big one. It's the National Theatre at its strongest:  unapologetic, classic, unsparing, gripping, impassioned.  Here's t…
THERAPISTS AS HUMANS  Georgina Burns is a trained and experienced NHS therapist, now with Hampstead support a playwright. So, unlike most other writers tempted by the theatric…
A MODEST AND REMORSEFUL SELF-REBUKE     There's a curious outbreak of reparations going on. The Old Vic, which binned Into the Woods in outrage at Terry Gilliam's reported…
A GOTHIC SORROWÂ IN OLD BOSTON When you say you're off to a Suffolk village hall to see a tiny company "Â best known for its mini-pantos " doing a dramatised tribute to Edgar Allan Poe,…
AMBITION , DISGRACE, RUIN, WOMEN Heavy footfalls pace overhead, enervating, raising anxiety. Anna Fleischle's galleried grey set is half Scandi-minimo-chic, half penitentiary. Downstairs…
GLORIOUS AS EVER Â Â Â Â Millions know it by now, but in case like my enthralled companions last night you aren't among them, Â grant me a moment or skip the the penultimate p…
WISHFUL DELUSIONS IN A MIDDLE AGED DOLDRUM Susan finds herself in mid-life with a dull clerical husband (Nigel Lindsay really enjoying it) , obsessed with his dreary parish history pamph…
LORD, WHAT FOOLS WE LIBERALS BE…    In a beanbagged, bright-coloured primary school in Berkeley, California, its executive committee of five seek consensus over reclassifyin…
REFINED AND FEATHER-DUSTED: CRUELTY IN THE SUBURBS We are in a suburban drawing-room in 1926, which some characters will still call the "parlour". Near the front, close enough to…
A CENTURY SURVIVED Â Â It is no bad week to be contemplating the Jewish custom of sitting shiva:Â spending seven days on a hard wooden bench when "you laugh, you cry, you argue" in t…
EVEN A SNAIL WILL REACH ITS HOME Â Â Â Â Â That's a Nigerian saying, apparently. Â But shiny though the shell is, Â Richard Eyre's play becomes a frustrating stew of idea…
SAYERS, SAYING IT FOR WORKING WOMEN Â Here's a treat:Â first half in Venice (with a glorious Canaletto backdrop) and the second, after some elegant Jermyn set-changing, in a London pla…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS SOME INTERESTING THREADS SLIGHTLY UNRAVELLED AT GRIMEBORN Fringe opera festivals sometimes give us a chance to see new work in progress " i.e. unfinishe…
