Thursday, December 11, 2014
This is not a review, because the show is not offered for review until its transfer to Birmingham in January. I went because I had heard about its development. And hell, Rula Lenska is a sec…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:07PMWednesday, December 10, 2014
YO HO HO – PIRATES AND PARROTS ON A DEAD MAN’S CHEST The first thing to say is that the sets are extraordinary: magnificent, nightmarish, romantic. Lizzie Clachan makes dramati…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:17PMNOEL COWARD’S CHRISTMAS SPIRITS St James Theatre SE1 “I’ll sing of home and love and work, Of Magna Carta and Dunkirk And Christmas bells and charity and pride…” Who …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:55PMCHRISTMAS 1914: A TRIBUTE, A MEMORY, MANY QUESTIONS That supermarket ad gives a potted version of the 1914 Christmas ceasefire in no-man’s-land: British soldier gets parcel with c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:34AMThursday, December 4, 2014
SO LIFE GOES BY, WITH MELANCHOLY BEAUTY… Is there anything more healing, more reassuring of human kinship than the sound of an audience sighing together, murmurously anxious, fo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:11AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SPENDS THREE MOVING WINTERS IN WAR-TORN CROATIA 3 Winters takes us to the beautiful old Kos family house in Zagreb, Croatia, in three different years: 1945, 1…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:27AMWednesday, December 3, 2014
PETITE BUT PERFECT PANTO. Oh yes it is. To start with, he’s a real kid: a young goat. Matthew Kellett, a cheery figure with furry chaps, horns and ears poking through his cowboy h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI CAN’T RESIST A BIT OF THE OLD RAZZLE DAZZLE Gilbert and Sullivan is true Marmite music: some love it, some don’t. It is also, without doubt, a litmus …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:22AMTuesday, December 2, 2014
SURE START , SPEED HUMPS, SOLIDARITY AND SENTIMENT… Sharp timing, the night before the Autumn Budget Statement! It’s about a Labour council in a post-industrial, working-…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:12PMMonday, December 1, 2014
A CENTURY OF SADNESS, MADNESS, AND GUNS “Angry men don’t write the rules, and guns don’t right the wrongs”. The message is unheard in the nightmare fairground, where be…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:53PMSunday, November 30, 2014
BENEATH THE STREET, DARK PASSIONS BATTLE… What better place to muse on secretive 1930’s sexual angst than under Jermyn Street, once synonymous with sharp shirts and smart t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:02AMFriday, November 28, 2014
MORALITY, MELODRAMA, AND MANSERVANTS… “Suppose I drive down to some newspaper office” says the foxy blackmailerine Mrs Cheveley to the horrified MP Sir Robert Chilter…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:43AMThursday, November 27, 2014
A MODERN DATE, AN ANCIENT NEED… You could say it starts with a happy ending. Well, of a sort. Certainly the blackout is riven by an exuberant sexual racket, and as the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:35PMWednesday, November 26, 2014
…AND MISCHIEF THEATRE GETS IT TRIUMPHANTLY RIGHT My latE Dad hated the theatre, for the kindest and most dignified of reasons. He preferred cinema : in live performance he feared th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:33AMTuesday, November 25, 2014
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES AGAIN – BAFFLED BY MODERN BIRTHWAYS, SOLDIERS BRAVELY ON AND WISHES IT HAD WORKED Immediately this play had the whiff of a concept. This is a …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:49AMFriday, November 21, 2014
GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES LURKS HAPPILY AT THE BACK OF THE CLASSROOM There is nothing funnier in the world than kids swearing. This play gets us as close to that as possible wi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:25AMWednesday, November 19, 2014
TWO LONELY LIARS IN A BIG SAD CITY… Here’s a curiosity worth catching: the only full play by Norris Church Mailer, widow of Norman Mailer (who greatly admired it). It was born…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:32PMTuesday, November 18, 2014
ALL HUMAN LIFE: A TERRIBLE BEAUTY ON A RUBBISH TIP In the interval of this headlong, crowded kaleidoscope of a play it was hard to know where the second part of David Hare’s s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMMonday, November 17, 2014
THE PRICE OF VICE… The accolade is a knighthood: services to literature for the debonair Will Trenting, already a Nobel for his novels on the seamy side of life. The play is set…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:52PMSunday, November 16, 2014
BURLESQUE BLISS (AND BOON…) There’s a towering, assertive giant gay blue rabbit in skintight Spandex, a stripping trapeze artiste hurling garments at the front row, a sadfaced clown …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:01PMThursday, November 13, 2014
ALED AND TOM DO THE SHOW RIGHT HERE… Aled Jones is wonderful. Honestly. He is. Won’t ever hear a word against him. This contentedly hokey stage revival of Irving Berlin’s 1954 seas…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:55PMWednesday, November 12, 2014
A LONG WAY FROM DOCK GREEN… Gail Wilde earned her nickname at Hendon. A firecracker, an enthusiastic gym-bunny aglow with desire to be a good copper in the Met. She turns up early f…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:43PMTuesday, November 11, 2014
THE POETRY AND THE PITY On this evening of Armistice day a hundred years on, no more fitting place to be than at this finely drawn revival of Stephen MacDonald’s two-hander about th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:15PMSunday, November 9, 2014
NO STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS: 600 YEAR OLD SEX CRIME COMES TO TRIAL It is the year 1399. In dim light, great John of Gaunt lies on his funeral bier awaiting burial in St Paul�…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:46PMFriday, November 7, 2014
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SINKS INTO HER SEAT UNDER THE WEIGHT OF SCIENCE It so happened that, on my way to 2071, I had been listening (repeatedly) to Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene:…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:55AMThursday, November 6, 2014
IN WHICH GUEST CRITIC AND TOP THEATREKITTEN LUKE JONES IS SADLY UNDERWHELMED This – created by Lloyd Newson of DV8 physical company – wasn’t quite the piece o…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:06AMWednesday, November 5, 2014
UP THE WOMEN, UP THE WORKERS…AND A JIG FROM HAROLD WILSON It was not until the second-act opener that I thought it might fulfil the hope. That hope has been considerable: …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:35PMTuesday, November 4, 2014
BRAM AT THE BBC: A FRIVOLOUS FORTIES FRIGHTENER Ah, happy memories! As an unfledged BBC techie in the ‘70s, my favourite job was “Spot Effects” in radio drama studios: a …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:25PMFriday, October 31, 2014
THE WOMEN AND THE BOYS: YOUNG RATTIGAN BEGINS… There’s a rugby ball and a bottle of Oxford Ale, clothbound law books, pipes, a cricket bat, 1930’s clutter. There are …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:41PMThursday, October 30, 2014
DORAN CALLS UP DEMONS Devils! Not Hallowe’enily cosy at all. Obscenely beguiling, tenebrous creatures of evil, they lurk inside all human nature and they know it. Mother Sa…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:40AMTuesday, October 28, 2014
DARKNESS VISIBLE: CANDLELIT HORRORS, ANCIENT SORROWS By the end of three hours the gilt-reflecting candlelight of this little jewel-box playhouse is flickering over a birthda…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:13PM 
