1,406 stories from theatrecat.com
     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…
 YESTERDAY'S MEN LOVING MEN   The mission of Two's Company is producing "new plays from the past", and their talent is for treasure-hunting . Plays written now about past decad…
AMELIORATING PARISIAN LIVES ONE PUPPET AT A TIME Â Â Â It could hardly be calculated more finely to fulfil every post-lockdown need: Â a cast of sixteen nimble actor-musician-sin…
PINK SATIN AND A FAIRY PINATA FOR A PIMMS-Y NIGHT OUT     Face it, this play's a rom-com, a lark, a happy pretty way to blame the fickleness of young love on petu…
SPACE IS THE LIMIT AS THE WEST END RETURNS There was real excitement in a first west end moment since the November lockdown crushed the few brave shoots of returning theatre. The Sonia F…
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYSÂ Â Â Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds INSTEAD OF TRAVEL… Â Â So what do we need, to reopen a tiny Georgian playhouse in a time of continuing uncert…
   O YES IT IS    I had booked us in the very day Lloyd Webber and QDOS announced that with antiviral door handles, fogging, separating of bubbles and teeth-gritted de…
 ANOTHER ….GOD BLESS US EVERY ONE   Scrooge is testy, cold and solitary as an oyster, shocking as ever in his indifference to the poor who ought to die off and "decrease the su…
A SCROOGE TO REMEMBER    Beneath festoons of horrid chains, nimble amid strongboxes and trunks and safes, three actors bring the old text to violently emotional life. Assiste…
Great journeys told in tiny windows     The daily epics of the refugee crisis haunt us on every bulletin:: small boat crossings, lethal lorry journeys, arrests and detentions. …
MINIATURE REVELS They're at it again. And in this dour year, crowned with the financially reckless renaissance of West End theatre, Dan and Jeff " Daniel Clarkson and Jeff Turner " are welco…
TITTER YE NOT: IT WAS TOUGH Â Â Â Â An element of pilgrimage here: new-fledged theatre, new play, worth the long masked train to London and then a bus's wild wanderings south of …
And so to a real press night, an event now as rare as a mystical apparition , a shining sword rising from a dark lake. . The gallant Southwark Playhouse offers a miniature musical, Jason Rob…
