1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
ENJOY BEING A GIRL? UM, NOT REALLY… Stef Smith's new play – after her acclaimed debut with ROADKILL – is  skilfully written, elegantly performed, and curiously annoyi…
THE COMPUTER COUNTESSÂ It's a topical, Tim-Hunt-tastic moment to celebrate one of the forgotten women of science, and the Edinburgh University Theatre companyhave hit on a cracking good s…
A FATHER AND A SON, Â WHEN THE TIMES WERE A-CHANGING… Old army jokes get readopted by every generation. I suspect that one of the most slyly placed laughs in this ultimately charming…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORIÂ GLIMPSES A RUSSIAN SUMMER WITH PATRICK MARBER Patrick Marber has taken Turgenev's A Month in the Country and strengthened it in all directions, rather like…
GLORIOUS BRIDES AND BROTHERS…  LP NIPS BACK  MID-HOL TO CATCH THEM ALL Innocent virgins abducted from their family hearth, carried off  to wild territory by lawless bearded gu…
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES FINDS AN EMPTY FAMILY DRAMA WITH GOOD GAGS TO KEEP IT AFLOAT After 17 years away, the grown-up daughter returns with the illegitimate child which got her thrown out…
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES FINDS THINGS GET MUCH BETTER AFTER THE INTERVAL The jokes bought this play some time. Richard Bean, a former standup, is hot property at the moment after a slew of …
GUEST REVIEWERÂ CHARLOTTE VALORIÂ LEARNS ABOUT LASPO*… "When I was growing up the poor were seen as unfortunates. Now they're seen as manipulative. Grasping. Scroungers. It's very …
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE Fifty minutes in, we got a 30ft yodelling falsetto caterpillar with flashing saucer eyes, and I cheered up. It also, as it happens, sang the central message of…
A HANDBAG? Â A WHOLE TRUNKFUL OF TREATS The heart sinks beforehand: Oscar Wilde's sunny comedy melodrama is too familiar: skipping from one well-worn epigram to the next, from handbag to m…
COMFORT YE! HANDEL AND THE FIRST MESSIAH Handel's Messiah is a phenomenon: written in three weeks in the composer's most disappointed phase, to this day it plays as sublimely as a chamber pi…
CHEKHOV UNDER THE TREES Fortune favours the brave, and the meteorological riskiness of outdoor theatre sometimes pays handsomely. A great heron flew over, squawking doom, just as Irina screa…
NOW HERE’S THE ONE TO SEE. Â DON’T MIND THE LANGUAGE… If you worry about language, the clue's in the title. More f's and assholes than you can shake a reproving finger at…
SHOCKING, SHAMING, MAYBE SALUTARY It is a cliché to say that over decades of TV fame, showy fundraising and hidden sexual crime Savile 'groomed the nation". There were indeed encomia –…
SUNNY SUMMER KICKS AND SOARING SONGS Here's a joyful thing: a confection of butterscotch and sunshine, a tale of turrets and twosomes and tap-breaks, friendship and chivalry and secret passa…
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES SAYS “BACK OF THE NET, MARBER!” "This isn’t a church, it’s a 'business!" What a sentiment for a theatre crowd to hear – or indeed anyo…
BROADWAY VICTORIANA DOESN’T QUITE GET THERE It was David Lynch's 1980 film – monochrome, moody, with an unforgettable performance by John Hurt – which brought to modern awa…
AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE We're in a World War I field hospital with iron beds and the corrugated-iron, battered detritus of trench warfare below. But young men will always leap and lark like…
DARK, STARK AND DANGEROUS: Â A MERCHANT FOR TODAY What an odd, stark, angry, intelligent Merchant this is! Wholly unlike the last RSC production, Rupert Goold's spectacular Merchant-of-Veg…
A DESIGNER, A DREAM, A DANCE, A DREADÂ "What is it about men with watching eyes…?" asks the ghost of Isabella Blow, she of the troubled soul and hilariously witty hats. One such man was…
BOYS IN BUSTLES: Â SWAGS AND SWAGGER IN VICTORIAN LONDON "The Unnatural History and Petticoat Mystery of Boulton and Park" cries the Victorian poster. "Men in Women's Clothes – with…
AN OLD ANGER, SPEAKING TO TODAY We are short of good political playwrights: they tend to hail from the left and be either depressingly prosey or brainlessly 'bouffon' (ISLANDS at this very t…
A WILD AND WOLFISH WALK IN THE WOODS Last time I went a Norfolk and Norwich Festival outdoor event, I had to spend the night suspended in a nylon flower-petal up a tree and get hugged by tre…
THE BLISS OF JUDITH BLISS: Â FELICITY INDEED Whenever I see this beloved play again I wish it was my first time. It should be seen in youth – when the dread of embarrassing parents g…
