1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
PULLING THE WOOL     Most dystopian visions set themselves quite far in the future. Misha Levkov, however, keeps us in 2025, specifying that productions should always …
AN OLD INJUSTICE REMEMBERED    An old man steps onstage alone: upright, soldierly in khaki as a former US war hero who is, he says resignedly, "brought out every …
A TALE FOR ALL TIMES  The story of Nelson Mandela has become almost a folktale: imprisoned for 27 years for campaigning against the hideous "apartheid" regime which kept the black ma…
THIS DAME HAS A WHOLE LOT BEHIND HIM    I last saw Sir Ian McKellen onstage as Lear,  missed him as the oldest Hamlet ever,  but far longer ago saw him in a frock at …
BREEZILY BLOWING IN FROM 1908, FRESH AS EVER    In Mole End on Christmas Eve,in a burrow cosy with domestic detail they're breaking out the beer and sardines and reminiscing a…
A TRAGICOMIC BEAUTYÂ Â Â Hard to express how much I loved Stephen Karam's play. Maybe it just hit the right moment:Â yomped through freezing night, strikes and 'severe delays" rea…
THE MOST ENJOYABLE STRIKE YOU'LL SEE THIS CHRISTMAS   I love it when the theatre perfectly fits the show. Artists can overcome a wrong space, but there's gleeful concord when it …
FREUDIAN ISUES IN FAIRYLAND    Everyone's got mental health issues in HEX: which is the Sleeping Beauty story extended to the troublesome folk-tale aftermath.  The tou…
A PACK OF WOOLFS PROWL ROUND THE GENDER-BEND  One bespectacled, anxious-looking Virginia Woolf in a sensible brown skirt and dreary cardigan is never enough, so Michael Grandage's pr…
A COLD ANGRY CRUSHING SYSTEM Â Â Â Â It's a cold unadorned monochrome scene: courts, brawls and bedchamber all framed on three sides by vast looming tiered steps and a high flat p…
UP WEST, IT LOSES NOTHING…STILL A FIERCE TREAT Leaving the former Young Vic production a lad far too young to remember 1968 said sadly to me "It was the beginning of Now, wasn't it?"Â H…
A GLORIOUS DOWNSTREAM WILLOWS FOR OUR AGE You won't see a prettier, more refreshing or sustainable stage this Christmas: natural colours, riverbank rushes, a bare tree (which will ha…
CELEBRATORY, MY DEAR WATSON I had come from the magnificent Old Vic Christmas Carol, where once again with mince pies, bells and lanterns and Dickensian cheer and a message about how…
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…
