
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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:20AM[SHARE]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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:47AM[SHARE]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)…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51AM[SHARE]Â Â Â CROOKBACK DICK REIMAGINED Â Â Â Â Â Saving Richard III from Shakespeare's calumny seems to have a particular appeal to women: probably because around his accessi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:41AM[SHARE]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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:27AM[SHARE]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 …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:26AM[SHARE]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 …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:55PM[SHARE]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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:56AM[SHARE]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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:17PM[SHARE]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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:22PM[SHARE]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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:35AM[SHARE]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:…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:27AM[SHARE]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…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:01PM[SHARE]KIDS WITH A KICK IN THEM Â Â Â Â There's been an interlockof themes in theatre lately: DEAR ENGLAND at the NT displaying Gareth Southgate's work in fostering the openness and emot…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:31AM[SHARE]HOPE, HEART, HARDSHIP Â Â Brian Friel's 1979 remarkable play stands on its own, offering a kind of depressive beauty: beneath the story of one ramshackle troubled couple it is a meditat…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:44AM[SHARE]RO$$INI BONANZA! Guest reviewer Dean Thompson finds much in a small space… Opera lovers or new to opera will love this! So, get on your horse and gallop over to see Charles Court O…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:23AM[SHARE]A CELLULOID INVASION  This was at first a startling choice: Eastern Angles' tradition is generally, as it heroically tours night-by-night across the eastern counties,  to pro…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:52PM[SHARE]BOARDROOM BEASTS Â Â This may break all records for the smartest costumes ever at the Southwark's smallest space: six irreproachable business suits, including two sets of tweed-chic fe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:26AM[SHARE]A FRESH CAST, ONE YEAR ONÂ Can it really be a whole year since, with theatre still gallantly recovering from Covid, Nicholas Hytner rolled the dice and opted to offer us some razzle dazzl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:40AM[SHARE]PLANT FOOD PEOPLE FROM THE PAST     I missed this first time round, due to the babysitting years, so it was grand to catch up. It's a 1980's revival, a spoof on 19…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15AM[SHARE]A MAVERICK MINISTER     There's another play to be written about Aneurin Bevan, stubborn founder of the National Health Service: perhaps a more contentious one, or a fant…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:44AM[SHARE]ONCE BRITTEN TWICE SHY?   The late David Hemmings, one of Britten's mentored, worshipped boy sopranos, was unforgettable aged 12 as the original MIles in the composer's terrif…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PM[SHARE]THE WINDRUSH WARRIORS    Moses' crowded bedsit is where the new ones turn up off the boat train, wanting to know how to do London; he can tell them names like Clapham…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:49AM[SHARE]GUEST REVIEWER AND OPERABUFF DEAN THOMPSON LOVES ENO'S LATEST Ingenious " Dazzling " Hilarious! If you haven't seen The Magic Flute before, then this is the one to see; if you have see…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:46AM[SHARE]CORONATION, COMMISSION, COLLABORATION       You need not be a selfish pig to be an artist of genius, but there's no question that it often helps. Occurs, anywa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:10AM[SHARE]AN ATTIC WARNING    Fasten your seat belts for a bracingly odd German play by Marius von Mayenburg; hold on tight as it veers in a switchback weirdness, which I for one en…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:47PM[SHARE]THEY SHALL NOT PASS   Given the current swell of antisemitism there was a heartstopping moment from Jez Unwin as Yitzhak Scheinberg, patriarch of a hardworking East End Jewish fam…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:26PM[SHARE]1948 AND ALL THAT   Right now, the birth of the NHS in 1948 is more than appropriate to write about (there's another play about Nye Bevan next week). For as the most jaded doctor …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:16AM[SHARE]WANNA BE IN MOVIES? REALLY? BRRRR! We open in a chilly Suffolk cottage in the rain (IÂ am tonight probably the only person here to have come direct from a chilly Suffolk cottage, in rain.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:31AM[SHARE]TENTACLES STRETCHING INTO PAST AND FUTURE   Electricity is coming to the village but the elderly Randolphs wont bother, preferring the paraffin lamplight of their forebears. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:46PM[SHARE]WHEN THE BOOMERS WERE ROCKIN' ALL OVER THE WORLD... Â Â "We were there!" cry the cast of John O'Farrell's jukebox tribute to the 1985 Live Aid concert. Memories undimmed nearly forty y…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:14PM[SHARE]

