1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
ONE MORE TIME, WITH FEELING . Â After two other full cast renderings in a fortnight -David Edgar's socially angry take at the RSC and Jack Thorne's warm spectacular at the O…
A GOTHIC EYEFUL In this troublous nation, 2018 seems to be the Christmas of Aaargh! and Eughhh! and hahahahaaa! , as a gross-out gigglefest sweeps London theatre. There's …
ENERGY, ANGER, HOPE      It is 1842: young Charles Dickens, thirty years old and with five novels under his belt, is ranting.  The Industrial Revolution is re…
 CHRISTMAS,  BREXIT,  GRIEF, HOPE   A few hours after Theresa May postponed the parliamentary vote and spun us down into another layer of Brexi-hell , the little O…
 I WENT TO THE PANTO. O YES I DID.    The great thing about the proud tradition of Oxford Playhouse panto is that while cannily aware of the audience's likely cultural…
A WONDERLAND WINNER      "Posh panto", for wincing parents fleeing the rackety showbiz 'n smut of the season, can be a bit chilly – neither one thing nor…
, Â GEESE CACKLE, LIFE GOES ONÂ Â Â Â I have a friend of Russian heritage who boycotts any Chekhov production which lacks scabby birch-trees, a samovar and some parasols. Â …
L'CHAIM – TO LIFE!   A SPECIAL NIGHT      We are there, over a century ago, beyond the Caucasus.  Designer Robert Jones has wrapped us around in …
GUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR EMPATHISES WITH DEADLINE FEVER.. Here is a tale of two brothers. First, Kit Harrington's serious, intelligent and moustachioed Austin, Ivy League educated and with…
DARK MAGIC, Â REAL THEATRE Â Â Long, long before Harry Potter there was a gallant orphan, a boy dreamer sucked into a world of murderous magic, facing grief and responsibility alike.…
DICKENS UNCHAINED: A SCROOGE FOR OUR TIMESÂ Â Â Â It is , if possible, even finer and more heartfelt and gripping, tuneable and serious and moving than last year. Â My�…
DARK DOINGS AND DISSECTION   Oyez, Oyez.  Let it be known that this suspenseful yet dreary political season has become officially the Year Of Dark Panto. Down at The Bridge w…
BREAKING THE MOULD….   Our politics is partisan, quarrelsome, dated in its pattern of two-parties-plus-minnows.  A nest of weary careerists, pointless betrayals and illo…
DEATH AND THE DIFFICULT WOMAN Those who call Theresa May a 'bloody difficult woman' should pop in to the Ambassadors and realise that in the ranks of  of BDWs she is the merest dab…
THE EMPTY DARKNESS OF THE HEART   Third time lucky: after two glumly disappointing 2018 productions steeped in directorial gimmicks  – RSC and NT – the ca…
THE KNIGHT WINS HIS SPURS AGAIN:Â A NOBLE DELUSION Â Â Â Need a Christmas outing? Quailing at panto, feel you and the kids need some Euro-culture to counteract Brexidepression? Tr…
A SWING AND SWIRL THROUGH HELL Â Â It's certainly not family-panto time along the glittering Thames riverbank:Â what with Martin McDonagh' grossout-silly Dark Matter downstream at t…
LIKE A BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED DECADES….  If you're my age, it's a time machine. Songs like The Sound Of Silence and Bridge Over Troubled Water (bestselling album 1970,71 and 72…
THE SAVAGE BEAUTY OF THE FIRST AIR WAR   Britain did not stand alone in WW1.  As our hero sings in John MacLachlan Gray's 1982 play: "South Africa and Canada and Austr…
GUEST CRITIC MICHAELÂ ADAIRÂ LISTENS, AS WE SHOULD A glass box filled with smoke encapsulates the Royal Court stage. Shadowy figures patrol its perimeter, sometimes staring out a…
LOVE’S PRECEDENCE AND CRUELTY    George is a journalist-intellectual, award-winner, amiably vain and sixtyish.. He twinkles for England, with much black-…
NOT SO VERY   A wooden box swings, pendulum-regular, in a peerlessly spooky attic of Halloween horror, designed with glee by Anna Fleischle .  It is inhabited. Difficult, …
LOVE,  LIES AND THE PAIN OF TRUTH   Is it better to live in a lie, a happy story, or to admit the messy sinful truth? Should you assume that every person you…
ALONE ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA      The Rime of the Ancient Mariner may be studded with overfamiliar quotations, but taken in its entirely, has power to disturb .…
LECHERY AND TREACHERY, MACHISMO AND METAL…  'I had forgotten" said a companion as we staggered out, deafened by the final outbreak of crazed metallic drumming, "how syph…
