1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
 QUEER AS FOLK BY THE INFINITY POOL Jeremy O Harris is a much feted American playwright (a Tony for Slave Play) adept at drilling in to the moment: BLM, fashionable white guilt, sh…
SCIENCE, SIBLINGS, SOUND AND FURY   This is a satisfying play. To take a painting analogy, it satisfies not in the way that a perfect still-life vase might, but more like a Ka…
CAMPING ON THE PLANKING At the Coliseum last autumn Gilbert and Sullivan's seagoing Savoy Opera was immense, with a huge revolving ship, Les Dennis as the first sea lord, a massive chorus an…
THE SHADOW OF A BEGINNING, ALABAMA 1936Â Â Â Â Forget, for the moment, both the fame and the the arguments over Harper Lee's classic novel:Â Aaron Sorkin's stage adaptation is …
WELCOME BACK, BITING SHARP AS EVER   In 2010 Bruce Norris' play wowed the Royal Court: this is a ten-year anniversary (well, plus two years lost to Covid) so forgive me for quotin…
THE ROUGH TOUGH BIRTH OF A CITY Â Â It is not often I resort to drawing in the notebook, but there it is: half an hour into the first part of David Hare's play about the city planner Ro…
A PLAY IS A PLAY IS A PLAY IS A WEDDING   With typical wit, the doughty little Jermyn has captured an intellectual-farcical oddity from New York complete with author-director …
BRACING, BELTING, BENIGN    At the end of the evening the great diva, director and muse informs us that we too must sing. In a packed house, on the far side of a pandemic whi…
 LEARNING TO LIVE     Sometimes judging others harshly is a relishable guilty pleasure. In Ruby Thomas' wonderful 80-minute sequence of snapshots of family therapy,…
NOT A FINE ROMANCE Â Â Mamet plays are Marmite plays. You can applaud Speed the Plow, adore Wag the Dog on screen, and have a pleasurable argument with the opposite sex after a particu…
LOVE AS AN UNCOURTLY CONTESTÂ Â Â In 2009 " and again in Chichester 2018 " I missed Mike Bartlett's mischievous, half-earnest play about a gay man wrestling with his identity (and h…
A VIGOROUS, HEARTSHAKING BRUSH OF OPPOSITES    Two artists in a studio:  the older one pale and floppily blond, languidly self-protective, drawling, preaching a cool…
AN ORDINARY TRIANGLE TWISTS INTO NIGHTMARE     The French novelist-turned-playwright Florian Zeller hit the British theatre scene a few years ago with two comedies: The LieÂ�…
HOMAGE TO A HEALING CHAOS    If " like Prince Charles " you grew up with the Goons in the background ("Ying Tong! Bluebottle! He's fallen in da water!" etc) this will ring be…
MIDDLECLASS MOUNTAIN MISERIES Â Â Â Inspired programming here. Â You'd find a decent overlap in any January Venn diagram of regular Donmar audiences and people who wish they were…
Puppets move the heart…    It was a third attempt ( like so many, it has had cancellations and suspensions), and I missed it in Sheffield 2019 through illness. So I bought …
SONGS FROM THE LAND    There's a lovely serendipity here. The main theatre is running PEGGY FOR YOU (till 29th) while the little downstairs space has Neil Leyshon's r…
PLAGUE YEAR Part 2 "  2021  Below, if you care to scroll , I chronicled the shows that met my return from chemo-then-lockdown in 2020.  An enfeebled theatrical year.  …
PART 1: THE ONSET   I set out, in this eerie Twixtmas gap, to chronicle and celebrate the return of live theatre since May 2021. And this will follow. But when I tott…
A SHARP , SERPENTINE, SUPERB PERFORMANCE Â Â Â Â Â Lounging in the small hours on her office couch, under a wall of posters for her many clients' shows " both famous and forgo…
A PRIMA DONNY JOINS THE FEARLESS FOUR   Last year as a family we came to see the doughty quartet doing this variety show, an adult-joking non-panto to fill the fearful gap. I…
1968 AND ALL THAT James Graham's mission might seem unfashionable: trawling 20c history and public culture, looking not for villains and heroes but for the nuances of human behaviour,Â�…
PULLING OUT THE STOPS FOR PULLMAN Â Â First things first: this is the most wonderfully evocative, romantic and dramatic bit of set-projection you will see all year. Bob Crowley, video …
A REVIVING REVIVAL    Do you need to be of a generation to remember Morecambe and Wise, to which this play is a loving tribute-cum-amiable-ripoff? Probably not. They are stamp…
ISLAND OF WONDER AND UNEASE Â Â Â Â One of the interesting, rewarding quirks in Tom Littler's small-but-perfectly-formed Tempest is that Tam Williams doubles as Ferdinand, the ul…
