
SO LIFE GOES BY, WITH MELANCHOLY BEAUTY… Is there anything more healing, more reassuring of human kinship than the sound of an audience sighing together, murmurously anxious, fo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:11AM[SHARE]GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SPENDS THREE MOVING WINTERS IN WAR-TORN CROATIA 3 Winters takes us to the beautiful old Kos family house in Zagreb, Croatia, in three different years: 1945, 1…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:27AM[SHARE]PETITE BUT PERFECT PANTO. Oh yes it is. To start with, he's a real kid: a young goat. Matthew Kellett, a cheery figure with furry chaps, horns and ears poking through his cowboy h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12AM[SHARE]GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI CAN’T RESIST A BIT OF THE OLD RAZZLE DAZZLE Gilbert and Sullivan is true Marmite music: some love it, some don't. It is also, without doubt, a litmus te…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:22AM[SHARE]SURE START ,  SPEED HUMPS,  SOLIDARITY AND SENTIMENT… Sharp timing, the night before the Autumn Budget Statement! It's about a Labour council in a post-industrial, work…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:12PM[SHARE]A CENTURY OF SADNESS, MADNESS, AND GUNS "Angry men don't write the rules, and guns don't right the wrongs". The message is unheard in the nightmare fairground, where beneath ra…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:53PM[SHARE]BENEATH THE STREET, DARK PASSIONS BATTLE… What better place to muse on secretive 1930's sexual angst than under Jermyn Street, once synonymous with sharp shirts and smart tar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:02AM[SHARE]MORALITY, MELODRAMA, AND MANSERVANTS… "Suppose I drive down to some newspaper office" says the foxy blackmailerine Mrs Cheveley to the horrified MP Sir Robert Chiltern "A…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:43AM[SHARE]A MODERN DATE, Â AN ANCIENT NEED… You could say it starts with a happy ending. Well, of a sort. Certainly the blackout is riven by an exuberant sexual racket, and as th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:35PM[SHARE]…AND MISCHIEF THEATRE GETS IT TRIUMPHANTLY RIGHT My latE Dad hated the theatre, for the kindest and most dignified of reasons. He preferred cinema : in live performance he feared th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:33AM[SHARE]GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES AGAIN – BAFFLED BY MODERN BIRTHWAYS, Â SOLDIERSÂ BRAVELY ONÂ AND WISHES IT HAD WORKED Immediately this play had the whiff of a concept. This…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:49AM[SHARE]GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES LURKS HAPPILY AT THE BACK OF THE CLASSROOM There is nothing funnier in the world than kids swearing. This play gets us as close to that as possible wi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:25AM[SHARE]TWO LONELY LIARS IN AÂ BIG SAD CITY… Â Â Here's a curiosity worth catching: the only full play by Norris Church Mailer, widow of Norman Mailer (who greatly admired it). It was …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:32PM[SHARE]ALL HUMAN LIFE: Â A TERRIBLE BEAUTY ON A RUBBISH TIP In the interval of this headlong, crowded kaleidoscope of a play it was hard to know where the second part of David Hare’s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PM[SHARE]THE PRICE OF VICE… The accolade is a knighthood: services to literature for the debonair Will Trenting, already a Nobel for his novels on the seamy side of life. The play is set…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PM[SHARE]BURLESQUE BLISS (AND BOON…) There's a towering, assertive giant gay blue rabbit in skintight Spandex, a stripping trapeze artiste hurling garments at the front row, a sadfaced clown wh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:01PM[SHARE]ALED AND TOM DO THE SHOW RIGHT HERE… Aled Jones is wonderful. Honestly. He is. Won't ever hear a word against him. This contentedly hokey stage revival of Irving Berlin's 1954 seasonal…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:55PM[SHARE]A LONG WAY FROM DOCK GREEN… Gail Wilde earned her nickname at Hendon. A firecracker, an enthusiastic gym-bunny aglow with desire to be a good copper in the Met. She turns up early f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:43PM[SHARE]THE POETRY AND THE PITY On this evening of Armistice day a hundred years on, no more fitting place to be than at this finely drawn revival of Stephen MacDonald's two-hander about the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:15PM[SHARE]NO STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS: Â 600 YEAR OLD SEX CRIMEÂ COMES TO TRIAL It is the year 1399. In dim light, great John of Gaunt lies on his funeral bier awaiting burial in St Pa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:46PM[SHARE]GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SINKS INTO HER SEAT UNDER THE WEIGHT OF SCIENCE It so happened that, on my way to 2071, I had been listening (repeatedly) to Brünnhilde's Immolation Scene: W…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:55AM[SHARE]IN WHICH GUEST CRITIC AND TOP THEATREKITTEN LUKE JONES IS SADLY UNDERWHELMED This – created by Lloyd Newson of DV8 physical company – wasn’t quite the piece o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:06AM[SHARE]UP THE WOMEN, UP THE WORKERS…AND A JIGÂ Â FROM HAROLD WILSON It was not until the second-act opener that I thought it might fulfil the hope. That hope has been considerab…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35PM[SHARE]BRAM AT THE BBC: A FRIVOLOUS FORTIES FRIGHTENER Ah, happy memories! As an unfledged BBC techie in the '70s, my favourite job was "Spot Effects" in radio drama studios: a techni…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:25PM[SHARE]THE WOMEN AND THE BOYS: YOUNG RATTIGAN BEGINS… There's a rugby ball and a bottle of Oxford Ale, clothbound law books, pipes, a cricket bat, 1930's clutter. There are twee…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:41PM[SHARE]DORAN CALLS UP DEMONSÂ Devils! Not Hallowe'enily cosy at all. Obscenely beguiling, tenebrous creatures of evil, they lurk inside all human nature and they know it. Mother Sa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:40AM[SHARE]DARKNESS VISIBLE: Â CANDLELIT HORRORS, ANCIENT SORROWS By the end of three hours the gilt-reflecting candlelight of this little jewel-box playhouse is flickering over a birth…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:13PM[SHARE]RADIO FOUR THE MUSICAL? Â ABOUT TIME TOO Radio 4 announcers tend to have a dry, contained sense of humour, honed by years in their lonely hutches listening to that most literate of…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11PM[SHARE]FLINTLOCK STRIKES A SPARK – IN A LIBRARY, TOO… Cervantes' story gave us a word: quixotic. From politics to artistic enterprises, it defines all extravagantly romant…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:21PM[SHARE]“LIKE A SAD OLD MELODY, TEARS YOU UP AND SETS YOU FREE, Â THAT’S HOW MEMPHIS SEEMS TO ME’ "Ain't no daytime on Beale Street, only nighttime!' Delroy's joint is jum…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:50PM[SHARE]A STUNNING SIMPLICITY, A HUMAN HEART Only the dead see life clearly. Â In the last strange simple minutes of this undramatic drama, half of Thornton Wilder’s citizens b…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:00PM[SHARE]

