CHARLOTTE VALORI UNCOVERS FORGOTTEN INCA GOLD WITH VERDI IN BUXTON Verdi’s little-known opera about Peruvian Incas and Spanish conquistadors, Alzira, has finally received its UK premiere a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:35PMA REVIVAL CRASHING WITH NEW LIFE AND ANCIENT DARKNESS A heatwave in festival season, everyone’s muzzy yearning for greenwood misrule: it’s perfect timing for the dangerous, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:42AMCRITIC AND HELLRAISER LUKE JONES WINCES AND LAUGHS … This is as violent as anything I’ve seen on the stage. And I’m including in this survey that Titus Andronicus at the Glo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:42AMA RISOTTO OF RESENTMENTS In some plays, you reach the interval not exactly dissatisfied but wondering “where is this going next? How will it knit up the ends.? So many …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:21AMMICHAEL ADAIR SHUDDERS AT THE HARD OLD PATRIARCHY… ‘These modern neurotic women, doctor. What are we going to do with them?’ says one exasperated male character to another.…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:02AMSTRINDBERG MEETS STENHAM, BIRD MEETS BLENDER We’re in a Hampstead mansion. The daughter of the house is whooping it up at her birthday party, a deafening, purple-lit rave where tigh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:28PMTHE RUMBUSTIOUS AFFAIR OF THE CLOGS IN THE NIGHT TIME Barrie Rutter and the Globe are made for each other:. Fresh out of his storming leadership (and frequent personal performa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:38PMA WRITER, A MOTHER, A LIFE The elegant new Bridge continues to demonstrate – firmly — that it is uniquely versatile. After one traditional tragicomedy (Young Marx) we had a sw…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:32AMLUKE JONES REVELS IN VIOLENCE, CHILL, NIGHTMARE..AND GREAT DIALOGUE Orlando Bloom – denim, cowboy hat, slicked back hair, twinkling grimace – is as chilled out as a man …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:59AMA TAPESTRY OF HOPE Lady Anne Tree was the Duke of Devonshire’s daughter, sister in law of Kathleen Kennedy and Debo Mitford: grand as they come. Kept from…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:28PMTHE EDUCATION JUNGLE A late catch-up for this short tour from Theatre Royal York: but blimey, well worth it. sA drawing-room drama of manners with deep, tangled universall…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:53AMSORROW AND SPLENDOUR IN WORDS THAT SING The first act of Brian Friel’s great play ends with a shout of “bloody, bloody, bloody marvellous!”. And so it bloody well is, thi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:03AMLUKE JONES FALLS FOR TINKERBELL… Peter Pan has now flown into every medium possible. He is a play, novel, pantomime, musical, television programme, cartoon and a Kate Bush single. This…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:21AMMULTINATIONAL MENACE It is always a dilemma, for those of us who despise star-ratings as a measuring device, when a 90 minute play seems set fair to earn three, or three-and-a-bit, tr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:50PMTHE NEW ERA BEGINS… Here’s a vulnerable Hamlet: a lonely lad in proper tearful grief and disappointment at his mother’s remarriage. A Hamlet who, in feigning madnes…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:01AMBOW, BOW! THEY’RE ON THE ROAD AGAIN.. It must be nearly five years since Sasha Regan’s all-male Iolanthe at Wiltons’ caused me to break a lifelong resistance and enjo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:28AMSCHLOCK-HORRORWITZ AND HURRAH FOR THE SKELETON Gotta love the buccaneering quality of west end theatres: the Small Faces musical at the little Ambassadors off Cambridge Cir…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:42AMTHE SHINE AND THE TERROR It is no bad thing to have your stage hero effectively co-designing the set. Christopher Oram’s recreation of Mark Rothko’s 1950’s studio is a bl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:18PMCLEAR YOUNG VOICES FROM A DISTANT PAST Three children in the 1540’s play in a hay-barn, built fragrant and real in the tiny theatre. One has found a pilgrim medal…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:55AMROUGH, RURAL, A NEGLECTED ALBION An immense intrusive pipe bisects the stage, a rusty oil tank below it with part of a tractor one side and a cheerless Victorian brick farmhous…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:39PMOSCAR AT HIS MOST EARNEST Worth going to Jonathan Church’s latest Wilde “Classic Spring”revival if only for a feast of Foxes: patriarch Edward as old Lord Caversham and his …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:58PMCREATIVES, C***TS AND CONTRACTS The theatrical repertoire has a new monster: Bernard, created by Joe Penhall and brought to scorchingly memorable, sociopathically irresi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:09AMFAST, FINE STREETWISE SHAKESPEARE Running and scuffling, a crowd of kids in black scatter across the stark stage under an open-sided, distressedly concrete-looking bo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:55AMGUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR FINDS KINSHIP IN A FAMILY SORROW Well, this is timely. In the shadow of Windrush, a play immerses us in the colourful traditions of Caribbe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12AMCOWARD GOES FARCEO-FORTISSIMO In the final outburst from our hero Gary Essendine – silk-dressing-gowned philanderer, arrogantly insecure darling of the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:08AMA WAR OVER, A WORLD ADRIFT It’s a great tapestry of a play: Rodney Ackland’s portrait of a Soho nightclub as WW2 ended. Socialites and slobs, black-marketeers and failing artists,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:06AMREBEL WITHOUT AN ARGUMENT It is a curiosity of the age that young British women seem to be far angrier about The Patriarchy than their mothers , even though law, language, women’s a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:04PMGOLDEN SANDS AND GRIEVANCES Nicola Werenowska has certainly found fertile ground for the setting of her play: the decline of English seaside towns (in this case Clacton) from t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:50PMPart 1: SECRET HEARTS (and an explanation) This is a fabulously quixotic enterprise directed by Tom Littler: a revival of all nine of Noel Coward’s one-act plays, written in 1935 as…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:56AMMORE THAN A PICNIC I could tell you that it is worth going up West for the transfer of Hampstead’s fine play just to see Roger Allam (his fine quiff sadly suppressed under…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:37PMBAT’S BACK… In a remarkably quick return after its Coliseum outing , Jim Steinman’s barmy musical is storming onto the Tottenham Court Road, rocking on. Few cast chang…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:17AM