Saturday, February 24, 2018
If the conflicting obsessions of the characters and the murkiness of the plot in Foul Pages at the Hope Theatre were more brightly illuminated, this could be a sustained and hilarious evenin…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:00AMMonday, February 12, 2018
It’s conspicuously worthy to try to combine elements of poverty, migration, feminism, dysfunction and dementia but neither Simon Longman’s tedious time-skipping script nor Vicky Feathers…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:00AMSaturday, February 10, 2018
The gilt and red velvet box of Covent Garden, the austerity of the set, the wit of the production and the clarity of the voiceover narration clash magnificently with the romantic music to ma…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:00PMThursday, February 8, 2018
Julius Caesar really isn’t Shakespeare’s best play, there’s very little poetry in the lines and after the assassination, the plot’s far from clear, but this production makes it acces…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 02:00PMThursday, February 1, 2018
It’s impressively well executed – some of the performances are a bit breathless and the plot based on the illegitimate offspring of Michael Caine and Marilyn Monroe is barmy – but the …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:00AMI wanted to know more what happened to the boys’ differing careers – banking houses in London, Paris, Vienna, Naples – and how did they get into wine? Actually, that’s a fabulous sto…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:00AMSaturday, January 6, 2018
It is a complicated logistical exercise to put on stage all the elements familiar from the film, and to deliver them with an authentic sense of menace. Often it works, the bed shaking and 3…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:00AMSunday, December 31, 2017
Following critical and commercial success with last year’s Cinderella, QDOS Entertainment have again invested millions to make Dick Whittington the biggest, boldest and glitziest pantomime…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:00AMSunday, December 24, 2017
Hamilton is slick, and lavish, and a glorious parade of movement and dance: Andy Blankenbuehler’s seamless choreography is a constant athletic cavalcade.
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:15PMThursday, December 14, 2017
The Tin Drum is the ultimate ‘Marmite’ show – anyone who’s read the 1959 Günter Grass novel will thrill to this enthusiastic and explosive production, as will devotees of Kneehigh�…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:00AMIt’s wonderful to see conductor Freddie Tapner with the haircut and enthusiastic shoulder action of a young Andre Previn, urging them to greater and greater heights. But, to misquote Dicke…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:00AMTuesday, December 12, 2017
We should applaud productions brave enough to kick against the seasonal schmaltz. From exciting trap doors in floors and cupboards, to a talking disembodied head and spectacular floods, Tom …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:00AMMonday, December 11, 2017
The trouble with The Woman in White is that if you dissect the elements Andrew Lloyd Webber fused into the show, they’re all perfectly fine. You could also add that Thom Southerland’s p…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017
It takes a lot to put me in the mood for Christmas. But if anything can, this inventive A Christmas Carol does, pulling together tip-top modern stagecraft, a venerated story, and our proude…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 01:00PMSaturday, December 2, 2017
Everything good rests on the broad shoulders and Borat-like moustache of director, writer, star and Sheffield export John Savournin. Not only does he have the best jokes and costumes as ‘L…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:00AMFriday, December 1, 2017
The actors playing the teens are very fine, but top of the class are John McCrea as a spectacularly well-sung and well-observed Jamie, and Josie Walker as his mum with the only really heartf…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:00AMMonday, November 27, 2017
Eleven years since opening at the Apollo Victoria, Wicked is a well-oiled machine but the newest cast show the same enthusiasm and energy as at that unusual first night in 2006 when so many …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:00AMMonday, November 20, 2017
Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross – not a tartan bonnet in sight, it’s an All-American play set in Chicago in the 80’s – is about ruthless competition between real estate salesmen, paid …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 11:00AMSunday, November 12, 2017
Two old muckers run a semi-professional club in the Northern League – John Bowler‘s wonderfully poetic Yates, a deeply loyal ex-player with the stamp of Nobby Stiles, is the ‘kit man�…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:00AMSaturday, November 11, 2017
Hoping to contribute to the ‘conversation’ about death in a time of rapid medical advancement, Jon Spooner and Chris Thorpe’s Am I Dead Yet? will leave you asking yourself the same que…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 11:00AMTuesday, November 7, 2017
The Diary of a Nobody is one of those books you’re convinced you’ve read, until you see it staged and realise that either you’ve forgotten it, or the director had a completely differen…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:00AMWednesday, November 1, 2017
It’s a clever idea by Richard Bean, to envision a story set when Karl Marx was an impecunious migrant living in the ‘squalor’ of Dean Street in Soho, caught between the pawnbrokers and…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 11:00AMSaturday, October 28, 2017
It might be too early for pantomime, but it’s never too soon to see Mel Brooks’ ingenious updating of Young Frankenstein delivered as a spoof both of the horror movie genre and of the th…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 11:00AMWednesday, October 25, 2017
The first crime uncovered in Witness for the Prosecution is that this amazing space, the glorious council chamber of the LCC then GLC at County Hall has not been pressed into service for sit…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:00AMMonday, October 23, 2017
It doesn’t help that everyone’s so unlikeable – younger Oliver (Joshua Silver) is a self-centered underachieving queen with Disney fantasies, partner Daniel (James Lance) is an ex-hete…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:00PMThursday, October 19, 2017
A Woman of No Importance is the most Shavian of Wilde’s plays – in fact with a slight reshuffling of the cast the same company could present Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession al…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:00AMTuesday, October 17, 2017
James Graham is on an electoral roll: There’s certainly a surfeit of election nights in Labour of Love and Martin Freeman’s bright boy Blairite David Lyons
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:00AMMonday, October 16, 2017
No ‘turn’ unstoned? The fourteen young performers in Hair certainly give a credible impression of being out of their skulls on psychedelic substances while still managing to deliver som…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:00AMWednesday, October 11, 2017
A starry home team enthusiastically play up the comedy. Sarah Tynan is one of ENO’s most technically perfect sopranos but she’s also their wittiest actress and her Rosina is effortlessly…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:00AMFriday, September 8, 2017
We should never be afraid to attack sacred cows. And when sacred cows are also cash cows, we should never be afraid to kick them in their milky udders
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:00AMTuesday, August 29, 2017
Filth, farce and absurdism are individually difficult to pull off so combining all three in a ripely uncensored 50th-anniversary version of Joe Orton’s Loot is high risk, but when it works…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 01:00PM 
