1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN RANTS AGAIN, Â THEN CHANGES SEX This is a sharp bit of work by Derby, marking 60 years since John Osborne's splenetic debut blew the lid – so theatre legen…
A TWO-WHEELED CHARIOT OF FIRE I suppose there must be some lazy, vacillating, unfocused Yorkshirewomen, but I’ve not met one yet. Â And of that tribe of gritty, unselfpitying,…
IT GLITTERS! Â IT SINGS! IT MAKES SENSE. EVEN INÂ MAD TROUSERS! Â I expected a big splashy jukebox musical, a-glitter with tearful Broadway sentiment and popster pizzazz. And i…
THE DAWN OF WAR, Â 1914 World War I and its aftermath are being well served by theatre (my last year's reflections, http://tinyurl.com/q53tp5p). But Jeremy James' play is the first …
LONG ISLAND, THE WIGS AND THE WARDROBE… The Jean Anouilh plays I devoured as a neurotic sixth-former always had Antigone, Joan of Arc or Thomas a Becket heroically refusing comp…
GETTING THEM OFF FOR VICTORY, UP WEST I loved this show at the Theatre Royal, Bath, and – especially given a couple of rather snotty lukewarm reviews – thought I should ch…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GETS UNEXPECTEDLY CASUAL ABOUT HIGH CULTURE Some people get terribly, passionately serious about Wagner. This shouldn't be a problem: truly great music…
BANG THE DRUM FOR THIS ONE: Â AN INTIMATE EPIC OF WAR AND FRIENDSHIP This premiere for the Park is a cracker: a serious, grownup, constantly entertaining light on history with fine-…
A FAREWELL TEMPEST, RICH AND STRANGE For a departing artistic director, especially here, Shakespeare's last plays are a natural choice: great poetic anthems of reconciliation and renu…
A RESTORATION OF HIGH SPIRITS.. Looking back at this play's first outing – in the outdoor, summery, rackety pleasure that is Shakespeare's Globe – I remember actually liking it f…
THEY CAME, THEY CONQUERED Call me a patsy and a soft touch, but you won't find me sneezing at anything which – within twenty minutes of a deafening, blinding opening – off…
McBURNEY ON, AND IN, THE BRAIN If there is any theatre artist reliably able to draw you into a world of disorientation, time-slip, near-death and a sense of licking hallucinogenic frogs in a…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI DISCOVERS SOMETHING GREEN AND FRESH BEHIND A LOT OF DEAD WOOD Robert Icke's new adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya is best summarised as an update " and an A…
AND THEY CALL IT PUPPET LOVE…. "Avenue Q meets The Exorcist" claim posters for Robert Askins' Broadway hit, directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel. Or "The Muppets play The Omen". B…
IN THE END, AN HONOURABLE PLAY Its fame rolls before it: a debut play, premiered in London by Matthew Perry. To a generation of young adults (and to many far younger, thanks to ceasel…
SHAKESPEARE’S TOWN LAID BEFORE US The year 1613: somewhere offstage old Shakespeare is dying, and in her husband's physic-garden, competent and dignified, his daughter Susanna a…
THE DEEPEST GRIEF OBSERVED Pretty much everyone agreed – here and on its West End transfer- that the American David Lindsay-Abaire's GOOD PEOPLE was a masterpiece, with its defi…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS OLD IDEAS COMING BACK TO HAUNT THEIR CREATOR The Master Builder, Halvard Solness, is universally acknowledged by his townsfolk as a lucky man: self-made…
RED VELVET:Â Â DEEP AND RICH AS EVER This (I sneaked in to an early preview , because I am on holiday) was my third visit to Lolita Chakrabarti's play, starring her husband the matchles…
MARTY FELDMAN: Â A GREAT COMIC’S ENDGAME Next week at the Jermyn there opens a play which is a memorial to a late-life friendship with Lucille Ball; already on the far side of the Ch…
THE EMPTY NEST, THE TROUBLED MIND Hold tight. It's the French genius litterateur Florian Zeller messing with our heads again. We are confused, wary, deceived and unsettled by the tric…
A MEMORIAL IN MUSIC This is a solo show, a memorial to a mother and to a generation. It is performed not by an actor but by the American concert pianist, Mona Golabek.  Yet as a…
ANOTHER CHICHESTER SMASH COMES WEST This is a revisit, to a partly recast Chichester show: and I must admit I had qualms about losing that generosity, that overflowing vigour you get with th…
MORE POIGNANT THAN POISONOUS: A 125TH ANNIVERSARY MARKED One wit called it 'the first French novel in English', with its seductive evocation of exotic decadence and corrupting wickedn…
AMNESIA AS A NEW START? In a hospital bed lies Michael: Alistair McGowan, motionless in a coma, we learn, for three weeks. His mother Carol (Maggie Ollerenshaw) holds his hand, has be…
