STAIRCASE Southwark Playhouse SE1
 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…
 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…
TWO MORE FROM ALAN BENNETT Â Â Â Â Â Â Â One of the darkest and one of the merriest. Â PlAYING SANDWICHESÂ is an even more than usually sombre one of Alan Bennett's…
BACK IN THE STALLS! Â AND A VERY FIENNES START Â Â Â Â After nine months' exile " my chemotherapy ended slap bang at the start of lockdown "Â I felt like the Ancient Marine…
AÂ SINGING, SEASIDE, Â STRIKING DEFIANCE OF THE NEW SEPARATION Â Theatrecat remains dark, Â as it has been since December when chemotherapy began and then ran seamlessly, in March, …
…FROM ME AND FROM THEATRECAT.COM (&HOUSE ARTIST ROGER HARDY) Â HERE'S THE CAT AND THE MICE . Â Â THEY COLLABORATE FOR ONCE TO WISH EVERY THEATRE, ARTIST AND SUPPORT WORKER LUCK…
A MESSAGE FOR THOSE KIND ENOUGH TO DROP INTO THIS SITE… Theatrecat followers: a bit of news below, in detail for your information or in case any of you are undergoing the parallel thing.Â…
 MONSTROUS AND MAJESTIC , A NARNIA FOR NOW    How to interpret an old favourite? A Christian fantasy allegory, the world of Narnia, the first of C.S.Lewis' immortal…
BEN DOWELL REVIEWS: A bright, socially withdrawn teenager called Evan is desperately lonely, taking comfort in the internet and not much else. He has a crush on a girl from his school, but c…
BEN DOWELL AND DAUGHTER POP WITH PLEASURE AT ITS PEP.. It has floated in one the chilly autumn breeze like a much-needed blast of summer sunshine. Yes, this Mary Poppins is as supercalifragi…
A BIG APPLE ROMANCE WITH CRUNCH     How romantic New York is to the British heart! From Superman to Friends we seem to know it, from Elf and 34th Street (not to mentio…
NORTHERN GUEST REVIEWER HELEN GASKELL TIRES OF THE RELENTLESS GRIT…  A family of five, scattered across the North of England, are brought together by tragedy. The play shows a pict…
ARROGANCE, ANGER ,  INDIA'S SHAME   Hema's is a house of women now. The old grandmother is in bed below the tall screen doors , feeding crows who move shadow-s…
GUEST CRITIC BEN DOWELL DOES NOT HAVE A GOOD NIGHT OUT Â What a strange evening this is. Young director Tinuke Craig has taken Maxim Gorky's 1911Â play (there was a revision in 1935 but…
RENAISSANCEÂ RUTTING, Â VENUS ANDÂ Â VANITIES Â Sandro Botticelli, he makes clear to us at the start, plans to tell his version. He's Dickie Beau: skinny and swaggeringly queeny…