1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
THE LAST GREAT PLAGUE Â Â Â Â If you lived as an adult alongside the onset of AIDS forty years ago you don't forget it: the lost friends and workmates , the rumours of ignorance w…
A POCKET JEWEL    We always knew that among the first sproutings of recovery would be a few Alan Ayckbourns, popping up as welcome as snowdrops. I am always fond of this early…
AN ARCATI MORE THAN MEDIUM I once took a student nephew to this Coward masterpiece, and the thrill for me was that he didn't know there was a g"". Until there was. Therefore for a rising gen…
A SHAGGY-DOG TALE IN CRUMBLING SPLENDOUR     Sometimes the building upstages the play. I had not explored the late-Victorian, half-restored glory of the Coronet before,Â�…
AN EPIC OF PASSION AND PERFORMANCE     Here is life, history, theatrical passion, great migrations and lyrical romance in the rain. Here's anger and humour and…
A HISTORIC HIT BACK, BETTER THAN EVER   This portrait of three bickering sisters, trading memories and revelations in the days before a mother's funeral in a snowy Yorkshire …
LOVE, GRIEF, AND A BRAD PITT ALBATROSS  With loving detail, right down a glimpse of coat-racks beyond the far door, the downstairs studio serving Tom Wells' new play has become a…
ICE WORK IF YOU GET IT…     Phew. The Broadway-rooted, Disneylicious, long-awaited red-carpet premiere night featured (of course) an ice -blue carpet. And the th…
ARTHUR SMITH CONJURES UP HIS DAD   These days our Arfur comes complete with an overture! It takes the form of Kirsty Newton at the piano (artfully disguised as an upright 1940's …
THEATRE'S FAIRY GODFATHER DOES IT AGAIN We needed this. The return of the big classic shows to packed houses  in the Barbican, Chichester and Sadlers Wells has been invigorating, but Lloy…
   Occupied France, 1944. Two teenagers newly in love meet in an empty house.  Elodie is French, Otto a German soldier. They are both endearing and annoying, as b…
NOT A REVIEW BUT MIGHT SEND YOU THERE… Take this as a report not a review, because actual work commitments made me skip at the interval. But I was persuaded to the long 70 minute first…
     This is the Mercury rising, rebuilt over two years with a cool café and dance studio, modern eco-glazing and, to respect the town's history, a solemn archae…
WONDERFUL OLD COBBLERS ONÂ ABDICATION STREETÂ (longer version of review done for Mail) Â Â Â You know you're in safe hands when a stagestruck Prince Edward, diffident and exci…
FLOODS OF RELIEF Ten years have passed since, in a Times Chief Theatre Critic hat, I last saw a former principal of the Royal Ballet leaping in puddles , singing his great heart out,…
A VOICE FROM THE 90's PREFIGURES THE FUTURE… Â Â This is a grand intellectual teaser of a show, and under Lucy Bailey's almost mischievous direction does a good job of shaking up fas…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS MORE SMOKE THAN FIRE ON THE HACKNEY STAGE Grimeborn are following up their fantastic 2019 Das Rheingold (see my previous review) with Die Walküre this …
VICARIOUS TRAVEL, JUST WHAT WE NEED   The big musicals are back: two dark-edged, South Pacific at Chichester and Carousel imminent at Regent's Park, while halfway between them flo…
THE DARK SIDE OF THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. DON'T TELL JACOB REES-MOGG Â Â Â Â Â Hats off to James Dacre's Royal & Derngate for bravely slapping on a brand new musical in t…
ROARING BACK TO LIFE Â Â Â Almost the most magnificent part of Daniel Evans' production is that it's happening at all:Â despite the distanced glimmer of blue paper masks, Chiches…
t IF RANSOME MET ORWELL   It's 1939 in Southwold harbour (nicely resonant for me to see this in Southwold itself, on its second night).   Arthur Ransome, famed alread…
MIDLIFE, MIDNIGHT, MEMORY    Fittingly, Deborah Bruce's play is set over the night the clocks change back. It's  about Time, its reverses and attritions; and being…
FORMAL. INTERVIEWS DON'T END JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE DEAD Â Â The afterlife is out of fashion, at least in traditional religious forms " harps and angels, heaven and hell, reincarnation or…
SHEEN SHINES AS THE WELSH WORD-WIZARD Â Â Â It might be helpful if critics admitted sometimes arriving bad-tempered, hot, out of tune, dreading the long masked late night train jour…
FATHERS AND SONS, PASSION AND PIETY Â Â Last night saw one famous victory as England kicked through to the semis. Indeed the Bridge theatre press-night audience was a bit banjaxed by e…
