RETURN OF A WILD AND QUESTIONING PLAY This is the return of Robert Icke’s modern version of Schnitzler’s 1912 play – details below, as laid out in part of my original Almeida r…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:07AMA WARNING FOR ALL TIMES This is the big one. It’s the National Theatre at its strongest: unapologetic, classic, unsparing, gripping, impassioned. Here’s the heavy art…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:17AMTHERAPISTS AS HUMANS Georgina Burns is a trained and experienced NHS therapist, now with Hampstead support a playwright. So, unlike most other writers tempted by the theatricality of…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:34PMA MODEST AND REMORSEFUL SELF-REBUKE There’s a curious outbreak of reparations going on. The Old Vic, which binned Into the Woods in outrage at Terry Gilliam’s reportedly inc…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:48PMA GOTHIC SORROW IN OLD BOSTON When you say you’re off to a Suffolk village hall to see a tiny company – best known for its mini-pantos – doing a dramatised tribute to Edgar Allan Po…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:23AMAMBITION , DISGRACE, RUIN, WOMEN Heavy footfalls pace overhead, enervating, raising anxiety. Anna Fleischle’s galleried grey set is half Scandi-minimo-chic, half penitentiary. Downstairs…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:44AMGLORIOUS AS EVER Millions know it by now, but in case like my enthralled companions last night you aren’t among them, grant me a moment or skip the the penultimate paragraph…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:08AMWISHFUL DELUSIONS IN A MIDDLE AGED DOLDRUM Susan finds herself in mid-life with a dull clerical husband (Nigel Lindsay really enjoying it) , obsessed with his dreary parish history pamphle…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:23PMLORD, WHAT FOOLS WE LIBERALS BE… In a beanbagged, bright-coloured primary school in Berkeley, California, its executive committee of five seek consensus over reclassifying the dr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:37PMREFINED AND FEATHER-DUSTED: CRUELTY IN THE SUBURBS We are in a suburban drawing-room in 1926, which some characters will still call the “parlour”. Near the front, close enough to t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:03AMA CENTURY SURVIVED It is no bad week to be contemplating the Jewish custom of sitting shiva: spending seven days on a hard wooden bench when “you laugh, you cry, you argue” in tri…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:22PMEVEN A SNAIL WILL REACH ITS HOME That’s a Nigerian saying, apparently. But shiny though the shell is, Richard Eyre’s play becomes a frustrating stew of ideas, attitud…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:39PMSAYERS, SAYING IT FOR WORKING WOMEN Here’s a treat: first half in Venice (with a glorious Canaletto backdrop) and the second, after some elegant Jermyn set-changing, in a London playw…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:50PMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS SOME INTERESTING THREADS SLIGHTLY UNRAVELLED AT GRIMEBORN Fringe opera festivals sometimes give us a chance to see new work in progress – i.e. unfinis…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15AMA SPIKY AND SPECTACULAR DELIGHT Humanity in every century has needed to plunge into the dark forests, questing or fleeing, finding wonders or wolves: it’s in Dan…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:04PMIT’S BACK: A NEW DIRECTION HOME This humbly immense, uniquely created show threw me for a loop five summers ago. It’s back on tour, via Oliviers and Broadway awards, with its…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:47AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GETS SWEPT UP IN THE MAGIC, THE MUSIC AND THE META Opera Alegria’s vivacious foray into Mozart’s Magic Flute for Grimeborn takes its inspiration from the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:00AMVOICES FROM THE GRAVE AND THE CELLAR, UNIGNORABLE Timely, enterprising, emotionally shattering, politically shaming. These two plays were both both first born at the time of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:20PMCARRY ON. OR, TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY, KEEP MESSIN’ ABOUT… My first concern was, will they dare give us the sadness? Kenneth Williams was a comic marvel self-created, a versatile act…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:40PMGLITTER AND HARD GRAFT A basement hung with glitter strings, a small moody band with earthy bass, a bar: few better places to revel in torch songs, deep-dug anthems and memory o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMMUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. Lyttelton, SE1 SHAKESPEARE IN THE SWING AGE A star danced, and under it was Simon Godwin’s joyful, 1930s Riviera production born. Quite apart fro…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:47PMSTARRY SISTERHOOD IN OLD VIENNA Identical twin girls, separated at birth in their parents divorce, meet at summer camp and resolve to swop places. Remember “The Parent Trap�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:13AMTHE SCOTTISH PLAY ON ANCIENT TURF “This castle hath a pleasant seat..” Indeed it does: Red Rose Chain’s traditional outdoor show now lives alongside the mysterious mounds wh…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:40AM101 DALMATIANS Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park NW1 BARKING IN THE PARK Wooof! The OAT’s new show, bounding and cavorting along under the direction of that am…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:18AMCHARLIE IS , ONCE AGAIN, OUR DANCING DARLING… Foiled by heatwave and trains, I made it six days later to the summer’s highlight, the glorious absurdity of this wickedly succ…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35AMTwice lately, under tall oaks and pines on what is becoming known as Suffolk’s mini-Minack, I have encountered touring opera companies doing wonderfully, relaxedly, professionall…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21AMSCRAMBLE! CHOCKS AWAY! Who knew that Caroline Quentin could achieve (almost) the splits, while strumming a ukulele? Or that that Richard Bean and Chris Oliver – who a decade ago…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:01PMDECK-LICIOUS, DELOVELY, SAILING BACK IN STYLE A year on, and after a partly recast tour, SS America drops anchor back in the Barbican and in style. Actually feels even better than before. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:45AMMOTHER RUSSIA AND ITS MEN Here’s a fresh history play: confrontational , shocking, classic in its focus on vast flawed characters and pretty close to documented – and very re…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:49PMMOB JUSTICE, NO JUSTICE There are women who, seeing a friend in an almost-good outfit, cannot help reaching out: adjusting a belt , removing an ill-judged frill, suggesting a hat.�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:42AMSTEP BACK TO THE SIXTIES SIMPLICITIES… Once again , off to this most enticing dinner-theatre embedded in a historic treasure, its big real watermill whirling away in the bar and the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:35PM