1,405 stories from theatrecat.com
A TALL TALE, A SHIMMERING MAGIC Of all Shakespeare's plays this is now the rarest staged, not without reason: some early scenes are co- written with a contemporary John Wilkins, its tale is …
 L'CHAIM ! THE VERY STUFF OF LIFE   Of course it helps to be under a real sky: a lone fiddler high above the cornfield scratches out the first lonely notes against the even…
Duke Theseus offers instructions, Act 1 Scene 1.   "Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments, Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth!" �…
AS LONG AS WE NEED IT… To do a timeworn musical, entangled in all- too -familiar earworms, you can either sharpen, challenge and update it  or lovingly polish the old machine. If y…
UP WHERE SHE BELONGS Imelda Staunton is a marvel, from Mama Rose in Gypsy to HMQ in The Crown. There is no lady of the stage more worthy of being greeted at the top of a Grand Staircase  …
GRISLY GLEE If there is any aspect of 21c Western culture  sorely in need of being laughed at,  it s ithe morbid fascination with police-procedural telly,, especially true-cri…
AN OVEN-READY MUSICAL, NEVER MUFFIN A MOMENT   As summer heats the merciless city, good to know that five minutes' south of London Bridge station is La France Profonde, a …
GEORGIANS IN THE PINK, AND SOMEWHAT PUNK     Sheridan's social satire from the 1770s hits the age of fake news, viral reputation-trashing and post-imperial embarra…
ON THE EVE OF THE ELECTION….    …I emerged onto the Cut in a grey afternoon blinking tears, unable to process having been made to cry by James Corden. He's been for me Â…
TEENAGE DREAMS, AND FAME AS NIGHTMARE Got to love the dedication of the Southwark: to mark its smaller-space production of Samantha Hurley's New York play about a demented teenage fan, it li…
A THING OF WONDER    People who saw Mnemonic at its origin 25 years ago still talk about it. A few say it changed them. It was a collaborative, at first wholly unscript…
A WARTIME SPRINGTIMEÂ Â Â Â It's not the reptile but the turtledove, as in the Song of Solomon "The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in o…
AN ANGLO-INDIAN EDWARDIAN YORKSHIRE…Â Â Â Â Good to be back for another year, Â up on the high tiers in the last golden hour, waiting to watch the great trees darken against …
YOUNG GENTLEMEN (AND LADIES) TO CELEBRATE
   This is very good fun indeed. Who does not want an onstage dog called Crab, benignly upstaging a rarely seen Shakespeare clown? A…
TWO YEARS AFTER THE NEXT ELECTION..    Here, a mere meringue's throw from Eton itself, is an imaginary Prime Minister of that ilk. Tidier in person and with a touch more inte…
NYPD FAMILY BLUES Â Â Â Â Â I fell for the solid, paternal, irascible Walter "Pops" Washington immediately over his whiskey breakfast, as he listens half-patiently to the unrel…
A LOST WEEKEND WORTH FINDING Â Â Â Â It helps if you fall in love with the set;Â even more if the set helps tell the story. For this tale of a louche, tender, disreputably memo…
GANG LIFE, GRIEF AND GREATNESS    There is a very tense moment late on in the second half when Jacob Dunne, only just holding himself together, finally sits down in person…
A RIOTOUS RUSSIAN SATIRE, FOR ALL TIMESÂ Â Â Â Â Â The local governor and councillors are posing for a photograph, more than satisfied with themselves and their genteelly co…
MODERN ECHOES OF A DYING FALL Â Â Â Â Â Years ago I came out of a dullish production in Yorkshire of Chekhov's last play, set very traditionally with samovar, parasols and big …
A BOY BETRAYED Connor was 18 when he drowned in the bath with an epileptic seizure. It needn't have happened. He was under slipshod care, away from the family who loved him, in an NHS "A…
A FEARFUL FUTUREÂ Â I am wary of futurist dystopias, but this is a real treat: intelligent sci-fi with serious thrills. Â As it opens, we are the 2050Â audience at the celebratio…
THE COURT AND THE BEDCHAMBER    Theatre will never tire of the Tudors, nor should it. From every new angle they offer a dramatic gift which never stops giving. Here's 153…
MEN BEHAVING RIDICULOUSLY The lord of Navarre and three nobles have resolved to retreat and study for three years, eschewing female company: so even the princess suing for land has t…
MUD, MARSH, MONEY Â Â Â Now here's a bracing new way to do Dickens:Â avoid sets full of Victoriana by keeping the stage pretty much empty beneath a set of uneasily moving lighting…
