1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
IT IS JUST AS WONDERFUL AS THEY SAID IT WAS. It could have been just a novelty: the biography of a half-forgotten Founding Father of the USA, an orphaned immigrant who rose to be …
THE OTHER OSCAR, Â A DELIGHT What delight, in the midst of Michael Grandage’s Oscar Wilde season at this theatre, that daytimes this month (11 pm and 2pm) t should see the sta…
SWEET YOUNG LOVE IN PARIS: Â NOT. "We're not going the full Mousetrap here" said the press desk, "but there is a moment at the end…we're asking.." . Fine, no spoilers. Plen…
DISNEY ECHOES AT THE NT: YOU WOODN'T BELIEVE IT The first glimpse of old Geppetto does make you gasp. He is immense, a huge benevolent head bowed attentively as great arms operate the…
OLD DOG NEW TRICKS After a couple of challenging takes on Strindberg, the little theatre's new AD Mr Littler (one presumes with a "whoooff!" of relief) has booked in, and jazze…
ESPIONAGE, ESCAPE, AND THE WORLD'S WORST FLATSHARE This is the one that got away. Simon Gray's 1995 play, set largely in Moscow, is about the Cold War '60s spy George Blake and the Ir…
TO BOLDLY DREAM.. MAINLY OF PLYWOOD AND PROPS THE TWILIGHT ZONE was , long before the phrase was coined, "appointment-to-view television". In the US in the 50s and 60s families gather…
LARKING Â WITHIN TENT As an old radio hack, who started a career over forty years ago in the days when "spot effects" in drama studios were one of the more amusing jobs, I ha…
CICERO, CAESAR, CATILINE: ELOQUENCE, AMBITION , HORROR It begins with a corpse: a horrid human-sacrifice, as we shall learn, as a set of libertines and plotters swear a blood-o…
A SPANGLED ANGLESEY ARISTOCRAT WALKS AGAIN One way to win, if your own era rejects you, is to be so spectacularly odd that two centuries later a musical theatremaker gets obses…
A MINI-CIRCUS AND A MISCASTING A nice irony that this revival of this Mark Bramble / Cy Coleman / Michael Stewart musical about Phineas T.Barnum should open now, just as David Attenbo…
 NEW GENERATION CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR WONDERS WHO IT'S FOR…. When The Woman in White debuted at the Palace Theatre in 2004, much of the commentary focused on it being a tec…
EROTICROBATICS, BANANAS, HIGH JINKS Relief flooded in with the first act, Cabaret Decadanse from Montreal. Here was a larger-than-life lip-synching puppet diva made of glitteri…
LUKE JONES WANTED TO CARE, BUT SOMEHOW.. Running again through the plot of this play l in my head, I think 'surely it's gripping'.? Coffins of martyrs are continuing to stack u…
DICKENS UNCHAINED Good to see the Old Vic auditorium in the round again (a Spacey innovation). Though this time, there's a long transverse thrust stage enabling Marley's ghost …
RUFF WORK: AN ELIZABETHAN MORALITY FOR TODAY This is a devilish cunning ploy from Anders Lustgarten – an impassioned critic of state and social policies, sometimes a bit …
A GLORIOUS, GANGLING, GRACEFUL PRESENT FROM SHEFFIELD This is glorious. Hits the bullseye. It's about kids – the boiling mass of hormones that is a year 11 class grappling with GCSEs a…
MANTRAS AND MONEY There is a useful play to be written about the lure of fashionable Western Buddhist retreats, and the way discontented rat-racers can transfer their competitive ambi…
AN ANCIENT CRY, A TIMELESS THRILL Across 25 centuries comes a harsh cry: not of war, Â not from savage male throats but from a swaying, chanting, defiant chorus of young women deman…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI MEETS MINDFULNESS IN THE MIDST OF TOLKIEN'S TIMEWASTING J.R.R. Tolkien, among many other things, is famous for two: his unending ability to procrastinate, and…
SEX, SHAME , THE STROP OF THE RAZOR I rashly confessed on Twitter that I spent the afternoon before this astringent production of a Strindberg play revelling in the happy furry…
PROFIT AND  A PROPHET: RANTINGS AND RATINGS I came to  this a day late for tedious domestic reasons, but since the original film is about a news anchor , Howard Beale, go…
MULTIPLE CHOICE IN A MANIPULATED WORLD "We in this country" says the red judge grandly "Do not have trial by media or by mobs". Hmm. Tell that to anyone now staring confusedly …
NEW GENERATION REVIEWER MICHAEL ADAIR UNMOVED BY MANSPREADING BUT LOVES THE SWEARING The return of Glengarry Glen Ross feels rather timely. There is something striking about a play consistin…
A PERFECT TWELVE "What country, friend, is this?" That soon becomes clear, in this beautiful rendition of Shakespeare's melancholy comedy of love and misapprehension. From the first g…
