Wednesday, December 12, 2018
A GOTHIC EYEFUL In this troublous nation, 2018 seems to be the Christmas of Aaargh! and Eughhh! and hahahahaaa! , as a gross-out gigglefest sweeps London theatre. There's …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:40PM[SHARE]ENERGY, ANGER, HOPE      It is 1842: young Charles Dickens, thirty years old and with five novels under his belt, is ranting.  The Industrial Revolution is re…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:37AM[SHARE]Monday, December 10, 2018
 CHRISTMAS,  BREXIT,  GRIEF, HOPE   A few hours after Theresa May postponed the parliamentary vote and spun us down into another layer of Brexi-hell , the little O…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:52PM[SHARE] I WENT TO THE PANTO. O YES I DID.    The great thing about the proud tradition of Oxford Playhouse panto is that while cannily aware of the audience's likely cultural…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:42PM[SHARE]Sunday, December 9, 2018
A WONDERLAND WINNER      "Posh panto", for wincing parents fleeing the rackety showbiz 'n smut of the season, can be a bit chilly – neither one thing nor…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:18AM[SHARE]Friday, December 7, 2018
, Â GEESE CACKLE, LIFE GOES ONÂ Â Â Â I have a friend of Russian heritage who boycotts any Chekhov production which lacks scabby birch-trees, a samovar and some parasols. Â …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:17AM[SHARE]Thursday, December 6, 2018
L'CHAIM – TO LIFE!   A SPECIAL NIGHT      We are there, over a century ago, beyond the Caucasus.  Designer Robert Jones has wrapped us around in …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:33AM[SHARE]GUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR EMPATHISES WITH DEADLINE FEVER.. Here is a tale of two brothers. First, Kit Harrington's serious, intelligent and moustachioed Austin, Ivy League educated and with…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:42AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 5, 2018
DARK MAGIC, Â REAL THEATRE Â Â Long, long before Harry Potter there was a gallant orphan, a boy dreamer sucked into a world of murderous magic, facing grief and responsibility alike.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:32PM[SHARE]DICKENS UNCHAINED: A SCROOGE FOR OUR TIMESÂ Â Â Â It is , if possible, even finer and more heartfelt and gripping, tuneable and serious and moving than last year. Â My…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:31PM[SHARE]Friday, November 30, 2018
DARK DOINGS AND DISSECTION   Oyez, Oyez.  Let it be known that this suspenseful yet dreary political season has become officially the Year Of Dark Panto. Down at The Bridge w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:25PM[SHARE]Friday, November 23, 2018
BREAKING THE MOULD….   Our politics is partisan, quarrelsome, dated in its pattern of two-parties-plus-minnows.  A nest of weary careerists, pointless betrayals and illo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:28PM[SHARE]Monday, November 19, 2018
DEATH AND THE DIFFICULT WOMAN Those who call Theresa May a 'bloody difficult woman' should pop in to the Ambassadors and realise that in the ranks of  of BDWs she is the merest dab…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:22PM[SHARE]Thursday, November 15, 2018
THE EMPTY DARKNESS OF THE HEART   Third time lucky: after two glumly disappointing 2018 productions steeped in directorial gimmicks  – RSC and NT – the ca…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:53AM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 14, 2018
THE KNIGHT WINS HIS SPURS AGAIN:Â A NOBLE DELUSION Â Â Â Need a Christmas outing? Quailing at panto, feel you and the kids need some Euro-culture to counteract Brexidepression? Tr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:37PM[SHARE]A SWING AND SWIRL THROUGH HELL Â Â It's certainly not family-panto time along the glittering Thames riverbank:Â what with Martin McDonagh' grossout-silly Dark Matter downstream at t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:16AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 13, 2018
LIKE A BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED DECADES….  If you're my age, it's a time machine. Songs like The Sound Of Silence and Bridge Over Troubled Water (bestselling album 1970,71 and 72…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11AM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 7, 2018
THE SAVAGE BEAUTY OF THE FIRST AIR WAR   Britain did not stand alone in WW1.  As our hero sings in John MacLachlan Gray's 1982 play: "South Africa and Canada and Austr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:51AM[SHARE]Sunday, November 4, 2018
GUEST CRITIC MICHAELÂ ADAIRÂ LISTENS, AS WE SHOULD A glass box filled with smoke encapsulates the Royal Court stage. Shadowy figures patrol its perimeter, sometimes staring out a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:04AM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 31, 2018
LOVE’S PRECEDENCE AND CRUELTY    George is a journalist-intellectual, award-winner, amiably vain and sixtyish.. He twinkles for England, with much black-…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:51AM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 24, 2018
NOT SO VERY   A wooden box swings, pendulum-regular, in a peerlessly spooky attic of Halloween horror, designed with glee by Anna Fleischle .  It is inhabited. Difficult, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PM[SHARE]LOVE,  LIES AND THE PAIN OF TRUTH   Is it better to live in a lie, a happy story, or to admit the messy sinful truth? Should you assume that every person you…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45AM[SHARE]Sunday, October 21, 2018
ALONE ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA      The Rime of the Ancient Mariner may be studded with overfamiliar quotations, but taken in its entirely, has power to disturb .…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:12PM[SHARE]Friday, October 19, 2018
LECHERY AND TREACHERY, MACHISMO AND METAL…  'I had forgotten" said a companion as we staggered out, deafened by the final outbreak of crazed metallic drumming, "how syph…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:25AM[SHARE]Thursday, October 18, 2018
ROMPING FABLE OF A GREASEPAINT CENTURY        Twins, three sets of them, in a dynasty of performers from the 1880s onward: a theatrical boarding-house with a h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:59PM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 17, 2018
FOR BETTER FOR WORSE? FOR FIVE MICE ANYWAY    If you're going to mess about with a classic but slightly dated Sondheim musical, be sure to do it brilliantly. Do it …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24PM[SHARE]CONCEPTION AND THE CREATIVES   It's a sign of the sparky credibility of Nina Raine's play about a woman desperate for a sperm donor – having broken with her younger, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:48PM[SHARE]Monday, October 15, 2018
THE HEIGHTS OF LIFE    Theatre sometimes gives films – and books – a remarkable translation, making stories deeper ,stranger , more tense.  …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:05AM[SHARE]Saturday, October 13, 2018
THE YOUNG DARWIN RISES AGAIN     The Jerwood Gallery is for the first time a theatre: in the small excitement of a new space dark shapes loom ahead of us, angular, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:06AM[SHARE]Friday, October 12, 2018
LUKE JONES TAKES THE MEASURE.. This is a made for measure Measure-For-Measure. Its greatest achievement is hacking the flabby old Jacobian down to the right side of 90 minutes. It rol…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:44AM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 10, 2018
A MASTERPIECE OF LOVE AND LOSS   I saw this on tour in Cambridge, and heroically held of telling you until the West End embargo lifted. It's wonderful: puzzling, moving, c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
