Thursday, February 15, 2024
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]Wednesday, February 14, 2024
FAIRYTALE AS FESTIVAL    "The lunatic, the lover and the poet" are all served in any Midsummer Night's dream.  Here the first two get most traction, the poetry least (…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:24AM[SHARE]Monday, February 12, 2024
   LYRICAL, FARCICAL, PERFECT Figaro, rascally wigmaker and foam-flinging wet-shaver, is basically the first rapper, isnt he? Staccato eloquence at speed, braggart confidence i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:50PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 7, 2024
 AMERICAN DREAMS IN FADING BLACKPOOL   Suddenly within a fortnight come two very classy new plays, funny and thoughtful and moving beyond the ordinary. Moreover, in a tiny rev…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11PM[SHARE]Friday, February 2, 2024
THAT OL'TIME WESTERN DREAM OF 1979 I have a weakness for this little theatre under the arches and its Players' Bar. Honouring a music-hall history, and with some of the cheapest stal…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:10AM[SHARE]Thursday, February 1, 2024
SMALL PEOPLE,  BIG PLAY      A hot summer wedding-day. The bride Sylvia is a bag of nerves, big sister Hazel competently combing and marshalling her teenage…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:07AM[SHARE]Thursday, January 25, 2024
UNFROGGETTABLE MOMENTS IN THE UNDERWORLD   Aitor Basauri does not need to be framed in a 20ft-high giant puppet frog in order to be funny, but blissful overkill is part of the ple…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:54AM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 24, 2024
A DANCE AROUND AUSTEN'S LEGACY The book is known and loved enough: Jane Austen's first full novel, written with satirical youthful wit but long laid aside unpublished. It gleefully shows…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 23, 2024
LEST ANYONE FORGET..   Storytime! Before a tangled treescape Samantha Spiro sits with a book on her lap.  Across the simple stage a few notes from Gemma Rosefield's 'cello…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31PM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 17, 2024
BORDERS AND BRUTALITIES, Maybe I shouldnt review what is essentially physical-theatre. I have no dance-cred, and I was pleased to be warned years ago by the great Benedict Nightingale, when …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:15PM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 16, 2024
WAR'S LONG SHADOW       I have a taste for "Forgotten" plays of well-made realism, illustrating how it actually felt to live in Britain through now-distant…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:24AM[SHARE]Friday, January 12, 2024
BEFORE THE SALEM TERROR    This week, to little acclaim, the Ambassadors opened Tbe Enfield Haunting, a play centred on the spooky hysteria of troubled teenage girls..…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:48AM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 10, 2024
GRIEF, CLASS, AND THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT Â Â Â Â Â Press night having moved about and gone incommunicado, this is from when I bought a preview ticket at Richmond..sa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:03PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 21, 2023
JAPAN MEETS THE NOISY WEST     This is exquisite, and not only in Paul Farnsworth's dreamy set and Ayako Maeda's costumes, from peasant fishermen to Shogun magnificence. T…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:56AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 20, 2023
BRAINS AND HOW TO MAKE THEM USEFUL    Clearly it is the mission of Hampstead Downstairs to broaden our education, no bad ambition. Not long ago I learned a lot about the l…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 13, 2023
A BLAST FROM THE PAST TO INSPIRE OR IRRITATE Â Â Â By the interval I was mournfully unconvinced that there was any point at all in reviving Tom Stoppard's 17-year-old play , about C…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35AM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 12, 2023
 CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SPIRIT   Can this really be the first Jewish pantomime? Oy vay, surely this culture with its musical genius, ironic jokes , family warmth,  …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:29PM[SHARE]ANOTHER KIND OF INQUIRYÂ Â I suppose we will have to wait a few years for the dust to settle and James Graham to write a nuanced play about the Boris-Covid-Tory-pocalypse. Meanwhile th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:08AM[SHARE]Sunday, December 10, 2023
DICKENS IN RIOTOUS RHYME AND BAGPIPES " ON TOUR Â Â Â Wouldn't be right to get through December without Dickens, would it? Â But I have seen the magnificent Old Vic adaptation by …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:43AM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 29, 2023
  I don't usually record anything that's two-nights-only, but this one I think will flower and fly, so watch out for it. It's already looking like turning up in March at TR Haymar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:32AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 28, 2023
BEWARE OF GREEKS BRINGING GAGS   Where does Kylie get her kebabs? From Jason's doner van!  If that makes you scuttle away in fright, you have not yet achieved the correct seas…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:02PM[SHARE]Saturday, November 25, 2023
DARK BEFORE THE DAWN     To emerge with any redemptive sense from Joe Hill-Gibbins' spare, scorching rather brilliant production, it helps to remember that Henrik …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:21AM[SHARE]Friday, November 24, 2023
ANY TOIL AND TROUBLE WAS WELL WORTH IT Everything a child could want is here:  the dark thrill of imagined orphanhood, a quest, baddies , jeopardy and jokes, bouncy musical spectacle…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:30AM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 22, 2023
GOLDSMITH BEATEN LIGHT AS AIR Â Â Â Nice symmetry in Tom Littler's decision to set Oliver Goldsmith's 1773 comedy in the Wodehousian Jazz Age:Â the Georgians, with their boozy mon…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:43PM[SHARE]Friday, November 10, 2023
FLAT WHITE AND WOEFUL Â Â Â Â If you're going to splash out on a visually arresting finale of assassination, a vivId fire destroying a Norman tower and a lyrical monologue about L…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:10AM[SHARE]ECHOES OF DARKNESS Â Â Jews gather, laughing and chattering, offering a toast as they run down the aisles to settle downstage for a Passover meal with candles, prayers and the ancient …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55AM[SHARE]Thursday, November 9, 2023
FAR MORE THAN A SNACK   Caught this late, and it's much reviewed and almost sold out. But it's worth saying in a brief word here that if you buy a return as I did, you are in luc…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:58PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 7, 2023
A QUEEN WHO NEEDED QUEENS   The curtain rises on the Clarence House garden room in 1979, where the Queen Mother held her eccentric little court. Much gilding, unreasonably…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:58PM[SHARE]   WHEN WE THAT ARE LEFT GROW OLD….    Sometimes you have to rely on a team with multiple comedy awards to hold a mirror to society and move your heart. Thi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:13AM[SHARE]Thursday, November 2, 2023
DIANA AND THE DECEIVER Jonathan Maitland did a superb play for this theatre about Thatcher and Howe, "Dead Sheep", and one on Jimmy Savile which was far more telling and cathartic than the T…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:42PM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 1, 2023
SCIENCE FANTASY AND HONEST EMOTION     I don't normally indulge in first-night anecdotes, but feel I should mention that in the big wedding scene Joanna Woodward tossed he…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:23PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
