1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
WE DON’T OFTEN REVIEW TWICE, BUT THE SHORTAGE OF YOUNGER AND DIVERSE VOICES MATTERS…SO (ON HER OWN TICKET) Â JENNIFER-JANE BENJAMIN, Â A YOUNG LONDONER WHOSE OWN HERITAGE IS …
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES GLORIES IN JAMES GRAHAM’S SUN BACKSTORYÂ It's a solid stunner of a play which has you punching the air for Rupert Murdoch by the interval. Bertie Carvel's …
MILLENIAL  LUKE JONES TIRES OF THIS GENDER AGENDA There aren’t many issues in life that haven’t been solved, rationalised or  helpfully knocked about by plays…
WHEN SHOCK BECOMES A SALES PITCH There are three acts: the first long, expressing an enervatingly pointless world and ending in a sharp shock. The second is competitively cynic…
WHERE ROCK ‘ N ROLL DREAMS COME TRUE “On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?” Or in this case, a red carpet  lined wit…
FOLLICLES, FOLLY, FATHERHOOD It's fun down in the Dorfman pit. Under exuberant African barbershop posters from Lagos, Harare, Accra – and London – a cast of barbers and cu…
WHAT BECOMES OF THE BROKEN-HEARTED? This is a famously significant piece of theatre: created in 2003 in a Cornish field , it was one of the first successes of Emma Rice's Kneeh…
ANOTHER KIND OF ETERNAL TRIANGLE I have a taste for plays about the years between the wars. The WW1 anniversary saw some fascinating contemporaneous ones, often at the J…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS HERSELF REACHING FOR HER PITCHFORK "You are blight and darkness and sin…" Lost village girl Mary comes home to her beloved Laura after a lifetime of s…
BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR ON IT… If Nikolai Foster's production of Annie came in a tin, it would prove to be exactly what the label promised. Feelgood, joyful, corny, gorgeous. Ruby St…
MOLTO SPLENDIDO From caravans in little greens and fields, Velasquez figures emerge into the hastily erected big Top in silks and plackets, ruffs and feathers and frilled pantaloons a…
PITY, TERROR, TRIUMPH For the first fifteen of the hundred minutes no word is spoken by the two men in ragged prison cottons: Edward Dede as the younger Winston, Mark Springer …
THE PERILS OF PC, THE TERROR OF TWITTER This little  theatre is on a roll, catching topicalities as they fly. After David Henry Hwang's wonderful CHINGLISH. about trade with China,…
GUEST REVIEWER MICHAEL ADAIR ROCKS ALONG WITH RICE AT THE GLOBE… "In Love We Trust" – is the motto of the SS Unity, the ship that swiftly sinks moments into Emma Rice's ta…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS LOVE, PITY AND HORROR IN EQUAL MEASURE AT THE OLD VIC Jack Thorne's explosive new Woyzeck brings Büchner's unfinished working class tragedy to B…
LOOK INTO THE DARK AND SMILE ALL TOUR LONG Â Â This cheerfully macabre celebration of Charles Addams' famous 1930's cartoon is off on tour: link below. I saw one of the last shows in i…
TWISTEDLY IRRESISTIBLEÂ I would not like you to think that I stalk Greg Hicks (though obviously I do: aaah, that odd strong Caesar, that agonized Leontes, that bonkers newspaper ed…
ENLARGE, ENLIGHTEN , ENLIVEN…ENTERTAIN! Expatiating on the Grand Staircase of a dreary Tudor stately home (built with ironic love by designer Robert Jones) our tour guide Let…
LET THERE BE LIGHT! The year 1632 : we are halfway through the epic conflict between Galileo Galilei and the Holy Roman Church, an authority in its day quite as ruthless as Stalin and…
IN WHICH MICHAEL ADAIR LOSES HIS THEATRE-CRITIC VIRGINITY TO A PACK OF SCOTTISH MINXES A few years ago, when High School Musical and Glee were in their pomp, we were forever se…
BLEACH, BLUES, AND BLACK AMERICA RISING Here's a pocket musical with huge themes, a blues opera of historic seriousness but with a singing washing-machine in a bubbled minidress. A ti…
FRESH AS A (VIOLENT) DAISY AFTER 376 YEARS What wonders, sir, are these? How beauteous fringe theatre is! We Tuesday matinee-goers, paying peanuts for the smaller space in an �…
A CRIME, A CARDINAL, A CONFLICT It is Twelfth Night, the feast of the Epiphany, 1941. In the Jermyn's tight intimacy we are sitting in the clinical director’s office of a home f…
AFTER SADDAM: WHAT’S LEFTÂ WHEN YOU TAKE AWAY AÂ TYRANT? An electrifying moment in this sharp, riveting play sees two bitter rivals, in a moment of stillness between blood-f…
REAGAN, RELIGION, AND REMEMBERING… Direct comparisons are dangerous, even when – as this week – two consecutive days see major works opening in London, both set in the 1…
