1,418 stories from theatrecat.com
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…
REFLECTIONS ON A FAT KNIGHT Due to train disruption " speak not of overhead wires and wind " I had to bail out at the interval, from Robert Icke's epic three and a half hour modern-d…
WHY HALESWORTH MATTERS TO THE NATIONAL DRAMATIC ECOSYSTEM Â Â The other day I did an overview-preview from some dress rehearsals at the INK short play festival in Suffolk (scroll below)…
   CROOKBACK DICK REIMAGINED      Saving Richard III from Shakespeare's calumny seems to have a particular appeal to women: probably because around his accessi…
DIVING ABOUT IN A UNIQUE SHORT-PLAY FESTIVAL      Join me on a parked Hoppa minibus where Henry VIII is chatting up a new Jane. She is not impressed by the Tudor-Tinde…
HOLINESS IN THE WHALE     It pretty much had me harpooned at the words "Call me Ishmael".  As Mark Arends' earnestly naive schoolteacher speaks the opening lines and …
WUTHERING SIBLINGS    Grace Smart the designer sets the scene as we settle in with a sweet miniature moor, all harebells and heather and cloddy bits of earth. But it rises in …
THE GAME'S AFOOT. EVENTUALLY. Nick Lane's adaptation of Conan Doyle's late, broodingly complicated novel has met many huzzahs from Sherlock Holmes fans, previously here, on tour and stre…
DOSTOYEVSKY IN DALTON
   "These days" says the man on the empty stage, "people are precious to me, even when they insult me. I have woken up". His stark features d…
CAMPUS RITES AND WRONGS Sometimes, I do like a stage set you could cosily move right into. Paul Farnsworth's is a nice evocation of a Harvard professor's study: shelves and panelling…
HOMAGE TO THE FIRST CELEBRITY DIVA     Last time theatre's pre-Victorian glory days " silk breeches, rowdy audiences and Garrickian hamming " were celebrated on this s…
HOW TO WASTE A STELLAR CAST    Sheridan Smith is not only a box-office draw but a rare and genuine talent: two decades a star on screen and stage, musicals and drama:…
MAGIC . ALWAYS BETTER WHEN DISASTROUS.      God bless Mischief Theatre. Eleven years ago this coming May I saw THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG in the tiny downstairs space at…
