A HUNDRED YEARS AGO IN LONDON More than anything this is about atnosphere: Patrick Hamilton’s chronicle in three psychologcally vivid novels is distilled by Simon Reade into two-h…
THE ECONOMIST AND THE BALLERINA That “iron streak of tinsel” which Alan Bennett once observed in Nicholas Hytner has again come good, giving us a play about early 20c economic theo…
Twelve years ago, Priyanga Burford came upon an unusual, striking story that moved her to admiration and fellowship: Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, like her half-Indian, was one of the f…
MOLIERE WOULD HAVE LOVED IT Much to celebrate here, and not only the return of that maverick angel Mark Rylance: once again treading a London stage, adorned with a clerical collar and…
HOBO , GENIUS, AMERICA’S SOUL “Everybody might be just one big soul, so everywhere you look in the day or night, that’s where I’m gonna be” . That’s Woody Guthrie, in his…
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE, OR HANG ON A MINUTE.. Everyone (especially journalists) loves a drama about newspapers. Hot-tempered rackety bantering , stories urgently chased, rival…
ABSURDITIES OF PASSION WIND UP A TORRID SUMMER This is by Turgenev, revolutionary in his time (banned for a while), now adapted with mischief and appreciation by the late…
THEY’RE BACK. SO AM I. Well, you know by now how it is with me and Mischief Theatre. All the way from 2013’s first west end outing to the new Thespians (https://theatrecat.com/2026/05/…
WHEN THE SAGE OF SCARBOROUGH SAW THROUGH THE SWINGING ‘SIXTIES 1969: nearly half a century ago, and this was Alan Ayckbourn’s breakthrough. Philip Breen’s direction respect…
A LEGEND REBORN On a sweltering opening night under the trees, what more can you ask than fresh life and passion flung into a famous show which had become, frankly, a bit of an e…
SHAKESPEARE: OUTDOOR, OUTRAGEOUS AND OPEN-HEARTED Start by knowing that this is a bangingly entertaining evening out under the Suffolk skies, with ragamuffin costumes and lovely ramshackl…
THE SEASON BEGINS! Not doing formal mouse-rate reviews of these, but for local eyes and visitors it’s worth nipping through the ones I can get to – this one is around all week…
TROUBLED HEARTS AND TORCH SONGS When someone pops a sticker on your cameraphone at the door it generally means a performer is going to get their kit off, repeatedly. Not in this …
FLOWERS, PHONETICS, PHABULOUS Always a joy to have them back: the phoneticist and the flower-girl, born to enthral one another and us. Cheers first for Keziah Ibe as Eliza, fresh o…
AMBITION, LOVE AND CHOICES IN AN OLDER IRELAND Jonathan Bank’s Mint Theater company lately gave us an arresting revival of Miles Malleson’s Yours Unfaithfully in this theatre,…
SOLDIERING AND SACRIFICE . This is one of the RSC’s big hitters: five stars everywhere ,and promoted more as comedy than the romantic-chivalric classic it is, Rostand’s 19c tra…
1939: TWO NATIONS, TWO MEN, TWO WIVES It has a familiar sitcom structure: a couple whose marriage is not what it respectably seems, making anxious preparations for weekend guest…
LAUGHING AT LIES It’s ten years since Florian Zeller’s elegantly embroidered trompe l’oeil sex-comedy about two couples opened at the Menier under LIndsay Posner’s direc…
OL’ BLUE EYES, THE COMEBACK It’s one of the great showbiz comeback stories: how a tough Italian-American kid saw Bing Crosby in 1935 and had a dream; rose in he 1940s to cra…
BEAUTIFUL This, to me unexpectedly, was the most beautiful single hour in a theatre yet. Visually, musically, and in its majesty and depth of speech impossible to fault, it’s …
WORTH SINGING ALONG TO? Ask ourselves in all honesty: did we all schlepp out to Richmond for press night because national-treasure Dame Maureen Lipman, at 80, is doing eight s…
THE ELDERLY ENDGAME We are seated in a big arena, on three sides of a care-home sitting-room, clearly secure – staff tap door keypads – designed for the containment of demen…
A SWELL PARTY, EVENTUALLY We “Call the Midwife” fans all suspected there was more pizazz to nurse Trixie than bicycling round Poplar in the 1950s, and indeed Helen George always was …
HOME AGAIN IN TRIUMPH Can it really be nearly twenty years since this show about WW1 galloped into world theatre history on this stage? A maverick experiment with two life-size pu…
THE SAD SERIOUS COMEDY OF DEATH A Devon cottage kitchen, opening to a tangled spring garden: beyond this idyll a semi- abstract tangle of branches around a great circle of sky: …