79 NOT OUT – AYCKBOURN, AT IT AGAIN Suns decline, new stars rise. This is Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s 79th play – not among his best, but when did genius ever run leve…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:20PMLOAD UP THE TWO-SEATER, JEEVES, WE’RE ON TOUR It always seems unfair when particular delights, best-comedy Olivier winners like this, are reserved for the West End, even if they …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 01:14PMIn 1941 young Terence Rattigan was creatively blocked, gloomy after an early success then a relative failure. He joined the wartime RAF as a tail-gunner in a Wellington bomber, and in a crip…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:56PMPRIORY PEOPLE… Acting is a useful metaphor (one man in his life plays many parts, etc), and in this portrait of addiction, therapy and recovery author Duncan Macmillan squarely –…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMGETTING ‘EM OFF FOR VICTORY Never in the field of TR Bath’s excellent endeavours has so much flesh been displayed with such nerve to so many. Some were, in the interval queue for…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:54PMDRAMA AS REDEMPTION From the first moments Nadia Fall’s production sets brutal, bullying humanity against a hot, strange, majestic Australian dawn. A lone aborigine watches, sile…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 03:15AMI’m late on the curve with this one – but it runs into September and for me, In n these WW1 anniversary years, fascinatedly collecting plays which reflect – better than any prosier or …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:13AMIN WHICH I AM EASILY AMUSED BY QUITE OLD JOKES. AND CLIVE MANTLE. We are all urged by manically cheerful Bajan waitresses to sing “`We’re all going on a Summer Holiday” before the show…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:48PMTHE MAN WITH THE TAN When Simon Cartwright came onstage, what with the bright orange tan and smooth hair and that nervy little mannerism of smiling at the punchline, I briefly panicked. Be…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:37PMA VICIOUS AND GLEEFUL PLEASURE… There is a particular kind of modern feminist who fixates on the Mexican painter and free-loving socialist and her endless self-portraits: two other pla…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:06AMA TAINTED HALLELUJAH Hail a bracingly, triumphantly, intelligently unfashionable play, and Christopher Haydon of the Gate Theatre for directing and premiering it here. Lucas Hnath’…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:18AMIt breaks your heart, an epic tragedy in miniature: two men, a couple of sacks and a crate, but their plight and their dreams rise before us in pathetic grandeur. Drilling into the heart of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:22AMDARK COMEDY FROM A FRACTURED EUROPE. BUT WHERE’S THE BEAR? Only in Edinburgh’s August are you likely to find an immense, patient queue snaking round the block for half an hour, unabl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:28AMGENET GENIUS? Hmmmm From time to time, the seeker for cultural enlightenment must deliberately book in to the works of some author he or she can’t see the point of. For some its B…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 03:10AMENJOY BEING A GIRL? UM, NOT REALLY… Stef Smith’s new play – after her acclaimed debut with ROADKILL – is skilfully written, elegantly performed, and curiously annoying…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:29AMTHE COMPUTER COUNTESS It’s a topical, Tim-Hunt-tastic moment to celebrate one of the forgotten women of science, and the Edinburgh University Theatre companyhave hit on a cracking good s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:15PMGRIEF, ILLUSION, PLAY… You can’t label this extraordinary two-hander by Tim Crouch as “experimental” theatre, even though it uses a different – wholly unprepare…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:41AMDINOSAUR-TING OUT FAMILY LIFE.. A school backpack suddenly yawns like the jaws if a Tyrannosaurus Rex, devouring an actor’s head. A toy helicopter overflies three herding brontosauri. …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 01:01PMTHE RHINESTONE COWGIRL RIDES AGAIN I first saw this cabaret-theatre character here in 2002, drawn by curiosity because the theme was “Tina C’s Twin Towers Tribute”. Under a…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:49PMHOLMES AND HOKUM, FRIENDSHIP AND GRIEF Good to start the Fringe-blitz with a winner . (Not that it was the first one that hit me as I lurched off the Caledonian Sleeper, but more of that lat…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:42AMA LOST LADY RETURNS, SAD AND BEGUILING Theatre loves to eat its own history, and fair enough: if you want intensity, volatile emotion, hope and heartbreak and impossible yet irresistible cha…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:16AMA PIG TALE TROTS ITS STUFF Strike day in a hot pedestrian London, and a surreal opening matinee for Stiles and Drew’s new family musical (fresh from the…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:44PMBEHIND THE PALACE WALLS: A CHILLING MODERNITY Peter McKintosh designs cold, skilful dictator chic: above a shining marble floor, the majestic Mittel-Europa chandelier dims to a blood-r…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:19PMA FATHER AND A SON, WHEN THE TIMES WERE A-CHANGING… Old army jokes get readopted by every generation. I suspect that one of the most slyly placed laughs in this ultimately charming e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12PMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GOES HAPPILY DEMENTED AT THE ALMEIDA “Cleverness is not wisdom,” warn the Maenad chorus, as king Pentheus determinedly resists the rise of new god…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:11AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GLIMPSES A RUSSIAN SUMMER WITH PATRICK MARBER Patrick Marber has taken Turgenev’s A Month in the Country and strengthened it in all directions, rather like…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:17AMGLORIOUS BRIDES AND BROTHERS… LP NIPS BACK MID-HOL TO CATCH THEM ALL Innocent virgins abducted from their family hearth, carried off to wild territory by lawless bearded gunmen a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:32PMThis is a tale of romance and of the lure of cinema: tricky on the stage. Mack Sennet, a clownish film director, is losing his beloved star, Mabel Normand, to the dreaded, meatier features. …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:36AMGUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES FINDS AN EMPTY FAMILY DRAMA WITH GOOD GAGS TO KEEP IT AFLOAT After 17 years away, the grown-up daughter returns with the illegitimate child which got her thrown out…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:58AMGUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES FINDS THINGS GET MUCH BETTER AFTER THE INTERVAL The jokes bought this play some time. Richard Bean, a former standup, is hot property at the moment after a slew of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:09AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI LEARNS ABOUT LASPO*… “When I was growing up the poor were seen as unfortunates. Now they’re seen as manipulative. Grasping. Scroungers. It’s ver…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:49PM
