1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
A DARK SEASIDE PARABLE If there is one stumbling block for lovers of Graham Greene's darkly thrilling gangster novel, it is the elegance of Gloria Onitiri. She is Ida; and Gree…
DICKENS EXCEEDING Â EXPECTATIONS Putting great literary masterpieces onstage is an erratic business. Within the same week we see the Artistic Director of the National Theatre…
SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE Is love a Gothic Cathedral, a yearning for a permanent, holy, respectful connection to the best in our nature? Or is it lust and fun, animal attraction,…
THE SCOTTISH PLAY, DARK AND DANK You don't expect robes and battlements these days. This is a shaven-head-and-machete Macbeth, its theme an indeterminate, timeless squalor: pos…
LOVE AND THE NOT-FOR-MARRYING MAN Love stories take many forms. Here – electric, understated, unmistakeable and timeless – the erotic connection is between Ben Batt's Geor…
MA'AM , THE MINION AND THE MACHO MAN "I never boasted an education. I learned tricks" says Princess Margaret, bitterly, at a late point in Richard Stirling's interesting but fr…
SIN OR SYMPTOM? A HUMAN TURNED TO A HORROR Last time I encountered a monologue written for a paedophile abuser, it was by Alan Bennett in a remarkable – and I think unrep…
FAIRY DUST AND PHYSICAL COMEDY I am happy to say that in the second act there is some inappropriate sexual harassment. By garishly clad fairies, deploying weaponized soprano trills an…
A CITY'S MEMORY Two girls on the Downs in 1940 giggle over a spot of rabbit-poaching on Lady Cooper's land. A roar, Junkers overhead. Figures emerge from smoke and darkness as a chant…
A WATCHFUL SORROW There are some evenings when, as the cast take their bow with that half-relaxed half-smile, you are shocked: you feel you have not been watching a performance…
CELEBRATION FOR A CITY Right place, right time, a last flurry of fireworks by the Humber. The hottest of young playwrights, James Graham, lovingly teases the city where he was a stude…
BANKERS AS LIBERATORSÂ The first recitative line in this one-act musical, as the little band sounds curfew, is chilling: a Town Crier from the 1760's : "Jews and aliens of F…
YOU HAVE TO LAUGH OR YOU WOULD WEEP.. The most arresting new character I've met this year is the magnificent Hayley Atwell as Jenny; star of a New York private equity investmen…
AVE HYTNER IMPERATOR! Â Â THE BRIDGE AS ARENA Before the start, singing along with Eye of the Tiger in the melée and enjoying the red flags, baseball hats and beercans,Â…
AVE HYTNER IMPERATOR! Â Â THE BRIDGE AS ARENA Before the start, singing along with Eye of the Tiger in the melée and enjoying the red flags, baseball hats and beercans,Â…
TWO QUEENS, TWO FATES Who shall be whom? In Robert Icke's arresting adaptation of Schiller's play, the scene opens with a sober-suited group of men watching two women in identical bla…
A WILDE RIDE WITH A BOLTER Beneath the artful fan-shapes of the set, gloriously coloured bustles and ruffles flit between black tailcoats and epigrams ping around the room like…
CLAMBERING TOWARDS LOVE You don't often, in romances, get lines like "Tomato ketchup's always been my Achilles heel". Or indeed proper consideration being given to the erotic p…
PEGGY GUGGENHEIM WALKS AGAIN You cross the stage floor to the toilets and a warning sign on the little set alerts you to the danger of tripping over a "solid stone" bench. So I…
SULTRY HEAT AND SEXUAL DREAD… Our age is beginning, once more, to appreciate E.M.Forster properly: the recent TV Howards's End caught his wit as well as the social indignatio…
My principal review from the Old Vic is here (http://tinyurl.com/y8u2na24) . But now it transfers (with glorious irony to the Noel Coward Theatre..it’s the least Cowardy of all plays e…
VILLAIN VAUDEVILLEÂ Everyone loves the film. Something in the nostalgic British psyche likes to think of a gang of ruthless desperadoes lodging with a dear old lady, pretend…
TOP FOLK ON THE ROADÂ There are boxes , planks, a rope; around and upon them, singly and severally, still or moving, the aristocracy of modern folk music. Strings, accordion, guita…
GIRLS ON THE EDGE Honour to the Royal Court for two things. First for the initial wobble, then  for executing a rapid u-turn over Andrea Dunbar' s rather wonderful play . So after …
AT LAST…AND FINE TO THE LAST After snowbound frustration in December drove me onto the road after part I, I saw the first again and  that evening reached the second play in o…
