1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
TOP HATS AND TALES A nice gag in Richard Harris' 1983 play comes in some desultory chat between the ladies of the tap-dancing class. Referring to a play one of them has recommended to…
WEDNAPPED: THE HELL BEFORE THE CALM I really fell for this 2014 comedy by Chris Chibnall, writer of such dark telly stuff as Broadchurch. Not just because it is a hoot, a wickedly joy…
THE DARK HEART OF MARRIAGE One audience tweeter emerged calling James Macdonald's fine production “exhilarating”. A wet rag after three hours' exposure to it, I wouldn't e…
LET COWARDS FLINCH AND TRAITORS SNEER…WE’LL KEEP THE LAFITE FLOWING HERE Some moments of modern history deserve reimagining by honest playwrights: we need to rememb…
LUKE JONES, FRESH FROM HAMLET, Â SPINS WITH ECSTASY AT THE NEW R & GÂ I first and last saw this play whilst at school. It was slowly and quite unforgivingly murdered by fello…
CLEESE MEETS FEYDEAU. DOES IT WORK? Farce. French farce. Feydeau farce. Fin-de-siecle farce with curly cornices and ladies in corsets. Feelings about the genre are always, for me, Â�…
NEVER TOO OLD TO GO ROUND AGAIN… In Arthur Schnitzler 's LA RONDE was a scandal: a chain of sketched sexual encounters in which one of each couple moved on to a new seduction…
LUKE JONES EXULTS: A TACTILE MORIARTY PULLS IT OFFÂ FOR A NEW GENERATION We’ve had so many ‘great’ Hamlets it’s hard to either keep track or care. Cum…
SWEET AS A NUT, SHARP AS A TACK Helpless, really: I was putty in its hands. And I caught it a few days late, so no risk that the ecstatic giggles in the stalls or the standing ovation…
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES GROPES FOR DIAMONDS INÂ THE MUD Timothy Spall tells a good story – bear with me – about performing a Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Nationa…
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME AND BENDING OF GENDERS.. It's a grand thing to be seduced and succumb. To suspect a director of vainly messing about with a Shakespeare play too close to your he…
BACK TO FAUST PRINCIPLES "I hope nobody misses / The moral in a show as short as this is.." . Marie Corelli, whose 1895 bestseller on the Faust theme inspired Luke Bateman and Michael…
FIVE GO ROARING UP WEST… This is a transfer, and well deserved. My Menier review is below…and I stand proudly by every star of it. Five playful mice. But below you will find a…
AN AGED ELEGANCE Beau Brummel is back in Jermyn Street, a century on from his decline, bankruptcy, royal disfavour and exile to a Calais convent madhouse. Down the road from his statu…
YOUNG, CONFLICTED AND GAY: VOICES FROM 1968 It feels dated now: the shrieking queenery, the preening Jules-and Sandy camp, the insider camaraderie. Oh and the angs: the misery of self…
THE WATERS RISE ROUND Â TOKSVIG ISLAND… There's a bit of conflicted-critic syndrome here. Sandi Toksvig is one of the most amiable wits of today: fun, sharp, humane, sensible,…
MORTIFICATION AND MERRIMENT ON TOUR Â Â It was a young Jane Austen who wrote this wonderful squib of a novel, and its delight is in the absurdities and agonies of youth: credulo…
THE LITERARY LIFE,  AS SHAGFEST Those still wondering why on earth 42% of women voted for Donald Trump may feel enlightened by the way in which – in this successful Americ…
CORPSES BY CANDLELIGHT "Dost thou imagine thou canst slide on blood, and not be tainted in a shameful fall?" asks Cardinal Monticello of the murderous Lodovico, a man who tends…
A DAFT DETECTIVE DOUBLE-ACT Retro clutter round a piano: files, a hatstand, model house, gun, notebook, handcuffs. We are in the territory of smalltown detective fiction, a touch of the Poir…
DAFT, Â DIRTY, Â BUT GREAT I remember it at Edinburgh a few years ago : a sly, elegant witty refreshment on an arid Fringe day. Poet-actors Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna deployed…
RIBBIT! RIBBIT! FROGS, FOOLS, FABULOUS Here's a tonic for theis flat , glum season! Divinely tasteless, bracingly cynical , hootingly funny (jokes from subtle to silly) and directed with pac…
MOCK TUDOR, RIOTOUS BUT NOT RUFF It's described by its creator Pat Whymark as "a sort of Tudor/Muppets mash-up with a respectful nod to Blackadder and DIY SOS". To which I would add e…
AN AFGHAN EPIC TO REMEMBER Khaled Hosseini's novel is an intimate epic: a flawed, damaged, remorseful man's journey through thirty years of turbulent history. Amir is the privileged P…
THE MAID OF ORLEANS AND HER TORMENTORS For fifteen minutes as the audience troops in Gemma Arterton, in chainmail and breastplate, kneels on a dais in rapt contemplation: mouthing pra…
