Tuesday, December 15, 2015
SUICIDE BY THINGS… We are up 71 concrete steps in the old St Martin’s School of Art, eccentric creativity soaked into its grimy plaster and echoing down its grim old Hitchcock…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:06PMMonday, December 14, 2015
A LORDLY FOGG WITH UNDERSTAGE COGS AND A FAITHFUL FROG… If you can’t face another panto (oh no you can’t) but want to share a treat with the young, this is one to h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:54AMFriday, December 11, 2015
BROADBENT & BARLOW BRING BACK THE BIG BAD BANKER… Tom Pye’s design of Victorian découpage creates a toy paper-theatre within the stark stage area: the scenes revolve l…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:00AMWednesday, December 9, 2015
UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLES AND UNPRINCIPLED CERTAINTIES It is a mildly shaming reflection that Tom Stoppard plays generally dismissed by his cadre of scholarly admirers as “not…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:01PMALL IS FORGIVEN (UNLESS YOU’RE DEAD, AND DON’T DESERVE IT) This is part of Dominic Dromgoole’s candlelit farewell to his tenure at the Globe: a set of late Shakesp…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:48PMTuesday, December 8, 2015
SOMEDAY MY PRINCE WILL…GET OUT OF BED AND PULL HIMSELF TOGETHER… It is almost comically calculated to stir up timid traditionalists. The enchanted sleeper is a bloke – David Emming…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:05PMSunday, December 6, 2015
WHO NEEDS CHARLTON HESTON? I have a weakness for schlock-historical movie epics, due to a regular childhood treat when I was at school in France and my Dad and I would sneak down th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:04AMWednesday, December 2, 2015
THE HAPPIEST PEOPLE OF ALL… For half a generation there has been a truism in the musical theatre world that nobody can do Jule Style and Bob Merrill’s FUNNY GIRL, because S…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:58PMTuesday, December 1, 2015
YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL! SURE YOU WANT IT? Revolving sleek as a spaceship is Es Devlin’s multi-layered set: the office and neon slogans of Swan cosmetics: bottles and jars, sed…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:44PMSaturday, November 28, 2015
THE BELLS! THE BELLS! THE BOOMING! “Where else” says an exasperated Sir Henry Irving , asked at the gates of Heaven to justify the profession which estranged him from his religious m…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:32AMThursday, November 26, 2015
SUNRISE TO STARLIGHT, A NORTHERN TRAGEDY Under a bleak black mountain panorama, this is a shattering play about selfishness, mismatched love, and how grief and guilt can make you mons…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:41PMWednesday, November 25, 2015
SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE… Another flickering evening in the candlelight of the Globe’s Jacobean theatre: engrossing, melodramatic, comic, epic. Ben Jonson was disparaging about Pe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:51PMThe last American import Rufus Norris brought to the National – The Motherf—-er with the Hat – was a five-mouse delight, a bold choice which rightly just won a Best Play award. Less we…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 01:53AMTuesday, November 24, 2015
STILL SHOCKING, STILL SEXIST ! GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES SMACKS HIS LIPS OVER A VINTAGE PINTER… I get the itching feeling that if anyone else had written this play …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:23AMFriday, November 20, 2015
Mid-life, an insurance salesman who will never be a big enough man to fulfil his big dream. Better to pretend- plan, to deny daily reality in the glow of an imaginary future and sanctified c…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:23AMThursday, November 19, 2015
OH YES IT IS! CHIPPY , HOME OF PANTO, STRIKES AGAIN It is, famously, the local panto for the Cameron family, though the paterfamilias PM himself might want to avoid swivelling heads an…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:06AMTuesday, November 17, 2015
DOWN WITH PAN AND CINDERELLA! After the high-priced saccharine vapidity of ELF , it felt like time to check out something both classier, and more affordable. Always perilous for the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:53PMThursday, November 12, 2015
OPERA’S THE THING! YOUR LIFE IS BUT A SIDESHOW! HURRAH! A play about the foundation of Glyndebourne Opera – “Snobs on the grass” as some cruel postwar journalist wro…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:19AMWednesday, November 11, 2015
POLITICS AND SCANDAL; IT WAS EVER THUS.. You’re an MP, a clever lawyer with cross-party popularity, newly invited into Cabinet to steer through a Bill to disestablish the Anglican Church a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:10AMSunday, November 8, 2015
A DOUBLE BILL: RATTIGAN AT PLAY AND IN GRIEF There may be voices which jibe at Kenneth Branagh for being producer, deviser and co-director of a year-long season, finding starry casting like …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:58AMSaturday, November 7, 2015
Kenneth Branagh’s Garrick year as actor-manager opens in unquestionable triumph. One of Shakespeare’s greatest, most redemptive plays is richly served without flaw or gimmick, traditiona…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:23PMROLL UP, ROLL UP, ROLL OVER… It’s back for Christmas: pure entertainment, faux-decadent but full of heart, skilful and cheerful and elegant and daft. In the great glittering tent by …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:11AMThursday, November 5, 2015
CURLY HAT AND STRIPY STOCKINGS TIME Play critic-cliché bingo once they’re out! One point each for “Elf ’n Safety”, “National Elf” , kids with phones …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:05PMFLOUNCES AND FLIRTS, INSULTS AND INNUENDOES…A RESTORATION ROUT There’s a bustle of backstage larking before the curtain, cast dashing around in shirtsleeves, manoeuvring a hamper…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:48AMThere’s a bustle of backstage larking before the curtain, cast dashing around in shirtsleeves, manoeuvring a hamper , getting stuck in ropes and tripping over a life-size model crocodile. …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:34AMMEERA SYAL’S MEENA…A MEMORY OF THE 70s, THOUGHTFUL FOR TODAY Any show playing Slade and T. Rex standards before the curtain has me well softened up So does the wide, generous vis…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:45AMWednesday, November 4, 2015
CHOPPER BIKES AND CHANGE, TEENS IN THE DAYS OF TIE-DYE… Any show playing Slade and T. Rex standards before the curtain has me well softened up So does the wide, generous vision of Me…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:26PMTuesday, November 3, 2015
A MAGICAL GLADE OF OFFICE FURNITURE…
Of all Shakespeare’s comedies, this is the one which most combines memorable lines – the seven ages of man, Rosalind’s quickfire epigrams abou…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:29PMThursday, October 29, 2015
FROM THE FIRES BELOW, O”NEILL’S ACCUSING VOICE From the opening moments of Richard Jones’ stunning, nightmarish production of Eugene O’Neill’s early play we have both…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:18PMWednesday, October 28, 2015
OINK! SWIPE! SNOG! STAB! “Ohhh Tim, you beautiful filthy boy!” cries Tina the pig-farmer’s discontented wife, succumbing drunkenly to some pan-banging draining-board sex. Filthy he is …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:11PMTuesday, October 27, 2015
THE PEOPLE OF THE PITS Tender, fierce, intelligent and humane, this superb production reminds us that D.H.Lawrence was at his best a great interpreter of 20th century change. Years before th…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:46PM 
