1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
ROMPING FABLE OF A GREASEPAINT CENTURY        Twins, three sets of them, in a dynasty of performers from the 1880s onward: a theatrical boarding-house with a h…
FOR BETTER FOR WORSE? FOR FIVE MICE ANYWAY    If you're going to mess about with a classic but slightly dated Sondheim musical, be sure to do it brilliantly. Do it …
CONCEPTION AND THE CREATIVES   It's a sign of the sparky credibility of Nina Raine's play about a woman desperate for a sperm donor – having broken with her younger, …
THE HEIGHTS OF LIFE    Theatre sometimes gives films – and books – a remarkable translation, making stories deeper ,stranger , more tense.  …
THE YOUNG DARWIN RISES AGAIN     The Jerwood Gallery is for the first time a theatre: in the small excitement of a new space dark shapes loom ahead of us, angular, …
LUKE JONES TAKES THE MEASURE.. This is a made for measure Measure-For-Measure. Its greatest achievement is hacking the flabby old Jacobian down to the right side of 90 minutes. It rol…
A MASTERPIECE OF LOVE AND LOSS   I saw this on tour in Cambridge, and heroically held of telling you until the West End embargo lifted. It's wonderful: puzzling, moving, c…
A DOSE HARD TO SWALLOW David Hare has chronicled Labour politics – and the state of the nation -for nearly half a century,  brilliantly catching truths and tensions. …
THE EXTINCTION OF ENGLAND'S EASTERNMOST VILLAGE         There is no Grit fishing-village now on the Lowestoft shore, but in 1900 there were homes, shops,Â�…
DIVORCED BEHEADED DIED – REVIVED! Took me a shameful while to catch up on this clever little riot of a feminist musical, down from an Edinburgh triumph and packing the Ar…
TALES OF A CITY    "I see a beautiful city" says a spotlit actor, and the rest take it up in styles from Radio 4 to rap, then group and regroup, changing with the shrug o…
WARM HEARTS,  COLD WAR After the Salisbury-Novichok affair there is a sour laugh when Stewart, the MI5 official, reassures the nervous Jackson family that the coming arres…
GUEST CRITIC BEN BLACKMORE MUSES ON CHEESE-KNIVES AND TELETUBBY HOUSES PINTER 2 announces itself in bold, Sex And The City-type projections, in the Sex And The City font as though it …
STEEL CELLS AND SADISM Â Â Â Settling in, you'd think you were at the Cenotaph or the Tattoo. Â A military soundtrack booms out Imperial Echoes and Jupiter (I Vow To Thee M…
A GLORIOUS SERPENT OF OLD NILE    This can be a beast of a play: epic, three and a half hours, scenes spread across the Mediterranean from Rome to Cairo by land and sea.…
MOLIERE IN THE MODERN MIDLANDS     It says something good about our arts establishment that this sharp caper comes from the Royal Shakespeare Company, not some …
PARENTHOOD, PRAYER , PROSECCO The renamed Tricycle (no, I am not taking sides) Â Is open:Â its leader Indhu Rubasingham launches her sprauncy new theatre with Alexis Zegerman's …
DOING JUSTICE TO AGATHA Â (She'd have loved it!) Â Â Â Â Â Â The courtroom is the marbled council chamber of the old County Hall:the story by Agatha Christie even hoarier…
LOOKING OUT TO SEA, AT PAST AND FUTURE    With the feral teenage violence of HEATHERS (scroll to it below) all snarling and murdering in the West End, and the manic cheer…
OUT OF AUSTERITY, A DREAM OF BEAUTY       A gulf yawns between this musical's two halves: a gulf of wealth, sophistication, hope and colour.  Ida Harr…
DARK LARKS AND HIGH SCHOOL HOMICIDE You thought there were enough school-themed musicals? What with Bring it On, School of Rock and our own dear cross-dressing Jamie…?Â…
A RARE OLD TIME IN DUBLIN , IN IPSWICH The miniature of Libby Watson's gorgeous Dublin pub set in the foyer raises your spirits straight away. Sometimes only an Irish pub w…
HUMANITY RISING FROM HORROR Â Â Â It is one of the oldest notions in the world: the unquiet grave. Â From Sophocles to modern campaigns we are haunted by the idea that the …
 GUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR IS TRANSPORTED TO NEW YORK, AND FAMILY TRUTH The joy of a play like The Humans is that it can take a subject that feels as if it might have been …
ONE OF BENNETT'S FINEST , ON THE ROAD AGAIN     Onstage is a shabby rehearsal room, an Oxford study scruffily indicated with doorframes and signs; at the side a litter of c…
