1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
It is indeed PLUTO not Apollo who rules the Underworld. Was tired. Apologies to all classicists.
SONDHEIM AND THE STYX  I last saw this 405BC Greek classic in Spymonkey's version and found it " sorry " unfroggettable. Giant puppetry, a community chorus tap-dancing as frogs w…
DROWNING PASSION,  TIMELESS RESCUE Marvellous play, this: wrenches the heart out of you , patches it up and sets it back on the hard road of life and love. It wrenched Terence Rattig…
I said it all at the Royal Court " https://theatrecat.com/2024/11/09/giant-royal-court-theatre/ " and it is an event not to miss, especially the way the world is in 2025.   Ev…
WELL WORTH THE MONEYPENNY Â Â Â Â This is glorious: just what we all needed. Â In the company's spirit of never wasting a terrible joke, I absolutely Bond-ed to it. Â Follow…
HOME AND FAMILY, BEAUTY AND SADNESS Â Few days late to the party with this , poor old theatrecat having seemed to fall off the press list;Â but very well worth the ticket (Old Vic prici…
AFFLUENZA APOCALYPSE    As Aubrey de Mandeville puts it in the great Antrobus books, "God, here's a strange lozenge-shaped affair!"  Buñuel meets Monty Python,  cour…
 A MODERN CLASSIC DONE WITH VIGOUR  Michael Frayn's play-about-actors is always welcome: a comic masterpiece and loving study in theatre's own absurdity. The first act shows a final l…
   A SATIRICAL WARNING FROM OLD UKRAINE    Not long ago a rompingly funny version of Gogol's satire on official incompetence ran at Marylebone ( https://theatrecat.co…
MATHILDE AND THE BUILDER (can he fix it? Probably not)      The set is glassand towering, city-chic backed by reeds and seashore; the figures before us NYC glamorous, …
WINNERS, WAGS AND WRONGS Well, here's a summer romp.  Hot on the heels of Tom Hiddleston in a disco version up Drury Lane, here's the RSC take on one of the sunniest Shakespe…
TWO WOMEN, LONG YEARS ACROSS HALF A CONTINENT Â Â Â 1935: below projected headlines about Communists executed in Shanghai and the war between Japan and Red China comes an audition c…
A HAMLET THAT STANDS ALONE "is it not monstrous that this player here,But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,Could force his soul so to his own conceitThat from her working all his visage w…
RIEN TO REGRET!  This is a terrific, impassioned production: not only does Kimberley Sykes' direction and Michele Meazza' s movement work keep it watchably, startlingly vigorous, Â�…
TRAGEDY WITHOUT A MORAL   Raoul Moat used steroids and bulking-powder to armour himself in muscle, nourished a bottomless well of grievance and self-pity , and imposed his ne…
THE DEPTHS BELOW THE WIT   The plays, ever revived, we know well; the wit is often cited, the old injustice of his downfall recreated in plays and films: most recently we…
VENEZIANA !    Buongiorno to Venice 1730, a city stage topped with the golden winged lion of St Mark, arched and curtained and lit with candelabras . Overhead a twelve-pie…
DARK FANGTASY IN A SCAFFOLDING CITY Â Â For this compact and creepy little atmospheric treat, John Donnelly turns to vampires. That's not a spoiler: the programme is full of learned st…
BEYOND QATAR…       Two years ago this show was a pleasure " (https://theatrecat.com/2023/06/21/dear-england-olivier-se1/) , and now, on the far side of …
POWER, MAJESTY AND JUSTICE      Very good to see this intense three-hander by Ryan Calais Cameron (who gave us "For Black Boys.." ) migrating to Shaftesbury Avenue wit…
THE 1660's AND ALL THAT:  THEATRE REBORN     Oddly, for theatrecat it's the second day running of enliveningly energetic female history. After six women told the story…
A ROUSING RACKET TO HONOUR A LIFE   Mary Wollstonecraft was a pearl of the 18c Age of Reason, even more treasurable for having " as a woman " a harder time of it than all the Loc…
THE UNSERIOUS UNDEAD  "You will be horrified!" The five players announce, "- one way or another". And with a flourish they hurl Bram Stoker's book behind them into Tijana Bjelajac's�…
A STRANGE WARTIME FABLE OF LIFE, BIRTH AND JEWELLERY Â In a little Jeweller's shop in 1942Â Paris Joseph Haffmann is making a deal with his young assistant Pierre. Â He is Jewish, a…
AN ANCIENT BRUTALITY, RIGHT HERE     Five women from the past mount the stage, candlelit, to enact theterrible story of the 17c Suffolk witch-trials.  First there…
