1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
ROLL UP, ROLL UP, ROLL OVER… It's back for Christmas: pure entertainment, faux-decadent but full of heart, skilful and cheerful and elegant and daft. In the great glittering tent by th…
FLOUNCES AND FLIRTS, Â INSULTS AND INNUENDOES…A RESTORATION ROUTÂ There's a bustle of backstage larking before the curtain, cast dashing around in shirtsleeves, manoeuvring a hamp…
CHOPPER BIKES AND CHANGE, Â TEENS IN THE DAYS OF TIE-DYE… Any show playing Slade and T. Rex standards before the curtain has me well softened up So does the wide, generous vision of …
FROM THE FIRES BELOW, Â O”NEILL’S Â ACCUSING VOICEÂ From the opening moments of Richard Jones' stunning, nightmarish production of Eugene O'Neill's early play we have both…
OINK! SWIPE! SNOG! STAB! "Ohhh Tim, you beautiful filthy boy!" cries Tina the pig-farmer's discontented wife, succumbing drunkenly to some pan-banging draining-board sex. Filthy he is indeed…
THE PRESIDENT OR THE POP STAR? CHOOSE YOUR ROLE MODEL, GIRL! It's a portmanteau of Theodore Roosevelt and Elvis Presley. And, one must sorrowfully surmise, was lit upon by The Team, a col…
SINS OF A PREACHER-MANÂ Admit it, ladies. Within the most modestly-clothed and lipstickless of us pale white matrons, there lurks a sneaky wish to be – just for an hour or two ̵…
EUGENE O’NEILL, Â EARLY AND IMPASSIONED… Well, God bless the little Jermyn. Director and AD Antony Biggs, an unwearying ferret of lost drama, has dug up another barnstorming ea…
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES FEELS THE NEED FOR A SCRUB Sex is at this play's core. But it's not sexy in the slightest. It's a means of leverage, abuse, it's a crime, a threat. Each of the 50 o…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORIÂ FINDS ANCIENT TRUTH INÂ A GLORIOUSLY DARKÂ DIVORCE "I can unmake you the same way I made you. I write the story, remember?" Rachel Cusk's brilliant vis…
A SMILE, A SONG, AND SAPPHIC SOCIALISM At last. The question tormenting many a fretful middle-aged man – what do lesbians actually DO? – is answered. Aerialism! When the giddy mo…
THE PROTESTANT WHORE RETURNS IN TRIUMPH Charles II came to the throne (in a fabulous wig, surrounded by fabulous spaniels), with England in a mood to throw aside Puritanism and party. The th…
A KIND OF HORRIFIC GRACE.. We are having a spate of grisly classicana at the moment, brutal old tales of curses and murders and doom spinning down the unforgiving generations. A brace of sta…
A FINE PLUM-PUDDING OF ACTS AND IDEAS "Sex and the 18th century" said Brigid Brophy, quoted by the playwright Sam Kelly, "are the two most interesting things in the world". The fiery, subver…
YOUTHFUL YEARNINGS A CONTAINER PORT CAN’T CONTAIN… You grow up with your mates in a dead-end town, and you're a solid gang – five a side footie team, in and out of each oth…
A WINNER AND A LOSER Human beings sometimes – disastrously – get erotically fixated on one phase of their sexual history. In the case of Patrick (Nick Sidi) it is a teenage momen…
SMALL BUDGET, BIG HEART, WELCOME UP WEST I had been wanting for a while to catch up on this fringe squib about the lives of front-of-house theatre workers, and with devilish cunning Max Reyn…
THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR DANCING.  IF YOU DARE. Sequins, feathers, glitter, two and a half hours of hurtling from one noisy shining set-piece to another, this is more of a gig than a …
SCIENTISTS, SEXISM, THE SCR AND THE SECRET OF LIFE Nicole Kidman, an Oscars star descending again on the West End, is the "story" here; so begin by saying that as the half-forgotten 1950's J…
VISIONS FROM 1931 OF A TEST TUBE FUTURE… Hot on the heels of Headlong's obliquely brilliant treatment of 1984 comes a rival dystopia: Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, eight…
PRIORY PEOPLE… Acting is a useful metaphor (one man in his life plays many parts, etc), and in this portrait of addiction, therapy and recovery author Duncan Macmillan squarely –…
IN WHICH I AM EASILY AMUSED BY QUITE OLD JOKES. AND CLIVE MANTLE. We are all urged by manically cheerful Bajan waitresses to sing "`We're all going on a Summer Holiday" before the show. It's…
THE MAN WITH THE TANÂ When Simon Cartwright came onstage, what with the bright orange tan and smooth hair and that nervy little mannerism of smiling at the punchline, I briefly panicked. …
It breaks your heart, an epic tragedy in miniature: two men, a couple of sacks and a crate, but their plight and their dreams rise before us in pathetic grandeur. Drilling into the heart of …
DARK COMEDY FROM A FRACTURED EUROPE. BUT WHERE’S THE BEAR? Only in Edinburgh's August are you likely to find an immense, patient queue snaking round the block for half an hour, unable …
