Thursday, July 4, 2024
ON THE EVE OF THE ELECTION…. …I emerged onto the Cut in a grey afternoon blinking tears, unable to process having been made to cry by James Corden. He’s been for me a fig…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:53PMTEENAGE DREAMS, AND FAME AS NIGHTMARE Got to love the dedication of the Southwark: to mark its smaller-space production of Samantha Hurley’s New York play about a demented teenage fan, it …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:53AMWednesday, July 3, 2024
A THING OF WONDER People who saw Mnemonic at its origin 25 years ago still talk about it. A few say it changed them. It was a collaborative, at first wholly unscripted , creatio…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:05AMTuesday, July 2, 2024
A WARTIME SPRINGTIME It’s not the reptile but the turtledove, as in the Song of Solomon “The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our l…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:04PMFriday, June 28, 2024
AN ANGLO-INDIAN EDWARDIAN YORKSHIRE… Good to be back for another year, up on the high tiers in the last golden hour, waiting to watch the great trees darken against the sky. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:05AMWednesday, May 15, 2024
YOUNG GENTLEMEN (AND LADIES) TO CELEBRATE
This is very good fun indeed. Who does not want an onstage dog called Crab, benignly upstaging a rarely seen Shakespeare clown? And a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:20PMTWO YEARS AFTER THE NEXT ELECTION.. Here, a mere meringue’s throw from Eton itself, is an imaginary Prime Minister of that ilk. Tidier in person and with a touch more integrity …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:10AMTuesday, May 14, 2024
NYPD FAMILY BLUES I fell for the solid, paternal, irascible Walter “Pops” Washington immediately over his whiskey breakfast, as he listens half-patiently to the unreliably …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:38AMSaturday, May 11, 2024
A LOST WEEKEND WORTH FINDING It helps if you fall in love with the set; even more if the set helps tell the story. For this tale of a louche, tender, disreputably memorable week…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:38AMFriday, May 10, 2024
GANG LIFE, GRIEF AND GREATNESS There is a very tense moment late on in the second half when Jacob Dunne, only just holding himself together, finally sits down in person opposite …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24AMThursday, May 9, 2024
A RIOTOUS RUSSIAN SATIRE, FOR ALL TIMES The local governor and councillors are posing for a photograph, more than satisfied with themselves and their genteelly corrupt side-h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:05AMFriday, May 3, 2024
MODERN ECHOES OF A DYING FALL Years ago I came out of a dullish production in Yorkshire of Chekhov’s last play, set very traditionally with samovar, parasols and big hats. A …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:48AMWednesday, May 1, 2024
A BOY BETRAYED Connor was 18 when he drowned in the bath with an epileptic seizure. It needn’t have happened. He was under slipshod care, away from the family who loved him, in an NHS �…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:47AMTuesday, April 30, 2024
A FEARFUL FUTURE I am wary of futurist dystopias, but this is a real treat: intelligent sci-fi with serious thrills. As it opens, we are the 2050 audience at the celebration of ten…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:35AMSunday, April 28, 2024
THE COURT AND THE BEDCHAMBER Theatre will never tire of the Tudors, nor should it. From every new angle they offer a dramatic gift which never stops giving. Here’s 1534, and…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:10AMFriday, April 19, 2024
MEN BEHAVING RIDICULOUSLY The lord of Navarre and three nobles have resolved to retreat and study for three years, eschewing female company: so even the princess suing for land has to be…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:47AMThursday, April 18, 2024
MUD, MARSH, MONEY Now here’s a bracing new way to do Dickens: avoid sets full of Victoriana by keeping the stage pretty much empty beneath a set of uneasily moving lighting-bars …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:20AMTuesday, April 16, 2024
REFLECTIONS ON A FAT KNIGHT Due to train disruption – speak not of overhead wires and wind – I had to bail out at the interval, from Robert Icke’s epic three and a half hour modern…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:47AMMonday, April 15, 2024
WHY HALESWORTH MATTERS TO THE NATIONAL DRAMATIC ECOSYSTEM The other day I did an overview-preview from some dress rehearsals at the INK short play festival in Suffolk (scroll below), …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51AMSunday, April 14, 2024
CROOKBACK DICK REIMAGINED Saving Richard III from Shakespeare’s calumny seems to have a particular appeal to women: probably because around his accession in the 1480…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:41AMSaturday, April 13, 2024
DIVING ABOUT IN A UNIQUE SHORT-PLAY FESTIVAL Join me on a parked Hoppa minibus where Henry VIII is chatting up a new Jane. She is not impressed by the Tudor-Tinder qualificat…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:27AMFriday, April 12, 2024
HOLINESS IN THE WHALE It pretty much had me harpooned at the words “Call me Ishmael”. As Mark Arends’ earnestly naive schoolteacher speaks the opening lines and begins…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:26AMThursday, April 4, 2024
WUTHERING SIBLINGS Grace Smart the designer sets the scene as we settle in with a sweet miniature moor, all harebells and heather and cloddy bits of earth. But it rises in the air …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:55PMTHE GAME’S AFOOT. EVENTUALLY. Nick Lane’s adaptation of Conan Doyle’s late, broodingly complicated novel has met many huzzahs from Sherlock Holmes fans, previously here, on tour and …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:56AMWednesday, April 3, 2024
DOSTOYEVSKY IN DALTON
“These days” says the man on the empty stage, “people are precious to me, even when they insult me. I have woken up”. His stark features do no…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:17PMSaturday, March 30, 2024
CAMPUS RITES AND WRONGS Sometimes, I do like a stage set you could cosily move right into. Paul Farnsworth’s is a nice evocation of a Harvard professor’s study: shelves and panelling…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:22PMFriday, March 29, 2024
HOMAGE TO THE FIRST CELEBRITY DIVA Last time theatre’s pre-Victorian glory days – silk breeches, rowdy audiences and Garrickian hamming – were celebrated on this stage w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:35AMWednesday, March 27, 2024
HOW TO WASTE A STELLAR CAST Sheridan Smith is not only a box-office draw but a rare and genuine talent: two decades a star on screen and stage, musicals and drama: phenomena…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:27AMSunday, March 24, 2024
MAGIC . ALWAYS BETTER WHEN DISASTROUS. God bless Mischief Theatre. Eleven years ago this coming May I saw THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG in the tiny downstairs space at Trafalgar S…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:01PMFriday, March 22, 2024
KIDS WITH A KICK IN THEM There’s been an interlockof themes in theatre lately: DEAR ENGLAND at the NT displaying Gareth Southgate’s work in fostering the openness and emotiona…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:31AMThursday, March 21, 2024
HOPE, HEART, HARDSHIP Brian Friel’s 1979 remarkable play stands on its own, offering a kind of depressive beauty: beneath the story of one ramshackle troubled couple it is a meditatio…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:44AM 
