1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
LIGHTS OUT,, CLUTCH YOUR SEAT To be honest I was slightly daunted by the PR point that Karina Jones is the first blind actress in recent years to play Susy (hers was the Audrey Hepbur…
LITTLE NELL, ON THE ROAD AGAIN Of all Dickens' works this – originally a serial so gripping that American readers rushed the docks for the new edition – is such a f…
THE LONELY HEARTS OF WARTIME If you need relief from the current outbreak of extreme social primness about male behaviour, you're going to love the bit with Clive Francis , as the eld…
WHOSE BABY? It is a brave theme that Chris Thompson – a former social worker – has chosen. It is also a darkly, and accidentally, topical one since a court case is sti…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI LOSES HER HEART TO HOODLUMS Even ruthless, psychotic gangsters have to fall in love sometimes. And Rodelinda is all about what happens when the people at the …
ROISTERING AND REVOLUTION There is a nice contrarian quality about Nicholas Hytner’s choice for his first production, in the dramatically beautiful new theatre he founded with N…
SHADOWS OF WAR AND LOSS Not a good week for AA Milne. That "Goodbye Christopher Robin" film about his WW1 trauma comes out – then Philip Pullman sounds off scornfully about how …
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS HALF-TERM HEAVEN AT NORWICH PUPPET THEATRE “Have you ever wondered where dreams come from? Or how they get into your head?” A thought-provok…
THE SCIENTIST AND THE SEX SYMBOL, IN A PARANOID WORLD The uneasy 1950s: Albert Einstein is exiled in America and called to appear before the unAmerican Activities committee for…
CLUNTERING FLAPPYSKETS ! Â DON’T SMITTLE AND SKRYKE , IT’S BARRIE AGAIN… By 'eck, luv! They Northern Broadsides, they weren't hid behind t'mangle when they were ha…
A LESSON IN POLITICS, HUMANITY AND LOVE The joyful thing about James Graham is that for all the playwright's youth, diamond wit and forensic insight, there is a deep humankindl…
AFTER THE WARS WERE OVER… This is a lovely rediscovery, the kind of thing Two's Company has repeatedly offered us in this enterprising theatre (we owe them those extraordinar…
GUEST CRITIC Â MICHAEL ADAIR Â ENCOUNTERS IBSEN’S BRACING RAGE Ibsen's 1889 work, The Lady From the Sea has washed ashore at the Donmar in a new version written by Elinor Co…
O ENGLAND IS A GARDEN… There’s a lawn and a vast magnificent tree. In dim moonlight before the start a figure in khaki – could be any war – kneels to feel the eart…
OSCAR'S BACK! Â IN THE VERY WEEK OF HIS BIRTHDAY… A theatrical phenomenon of the 20th century is the way that some of the most perceptive parts for women were written by g…
LUKE JONES RELISHES ELDRIDGE ON MIDLIFE CHAOS When the music stops and the lights click on, your first thought is 'sweet Jesus what the hell went down at this party”? Â�…
A TRANSYLVANIAN TRANSPORT OF DELIGHT Sometimes you just want a bit of fun. That is the moment to turn to Mel Brooks, master of daft parody. At 91, the master strode onstage ton…
A FINE ROMANCE? A quick quantum-mechanics lesson (though this is not a play about science). The Heisenberg principle asserts that there is a limit to knowing what will happen to the p…
FAITHFUL TO UNFAITHFULNESS, ZELLER SPARKLES AGAIN This is a companion-piece to the stormingly funny, cruelly witty THE TRUTH: Florian Zeller, translated from the French with ve…
A JOYFUL JIGSAW: TABLE MANNERS, LIVING TOGETHER, ROUND AND ROUND THE GARDEN In more rigorous technical times there was an art school exercise: "draw an imagined street-scene in perspe…
A FAMILY SITCOM UPS ITS GAME… I didn't much rate its premiere at the National in 2015, despite the achingly chic set I felt was "a kitchen-diner so huge and smart it makes David Cam…
ON SEEING IT AGAIN…THE LATE EDITION IS BETTER STILL… Nipping late into the Almedia after the opening, Â I concurred with every word of Luke Jones' review on theatrec…
CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS HERE, TOO, ARE TEARS FOR THE MISFORTUNES OF TROY While there are many excellent reasons to read Virgil's Aeneid from cover to cover, more than once, the fourth book of…
CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS CLASS CIVIL WAR AT THE RSC Coriolanus doesn't often hit the modern stage: its plot, a hymn to the necessary evil of educated patrician privilege in order to provide fo…
PEACE IN THEIR TIME…HOW TO DO IT This is a three-hour historical political play about Middle East negotiations in the 1990s: and it is absolutely thrilling. Pins you to your seat wi…
