Friday, October 12, 2018
LUKE JONES TAKES THE MEASURE.. This is a made for measure Measure-For-Measure. Its greatest achievement is hacking the flabby old Jacobian down to the right side of 90 minutes. It rol…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:44AMWednesday, October 10, 2018
A MASTERPIECE OF LOVE AND LOSS I saw this on tour in Cambridge, and heroically held of telling you until the West End embargo lifted. It’s wonderful: puzzling, moving, cleve…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15AMTuesday, October 9, 2018
A DOSE HARD TO SWALLOW David Hare has chronicled Labour politics – and the state of the nation -for nearly half a century, brilliantly catching truths and tensions. This t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:01PMFriday, October 5, 2018
THE EXTINCTION OF ENGLAND’S EASTERNMOST VILLAGE There is no Grit fishing-village now on the Lowestoft shore, but in 1900 there were homes, shops, bakeries, laundr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:01AMThursday, October 4, 2018
DIVORCED BEHEADED DIED – REVIVED! Took me a shameful while to catch up on this clever little riot of a feminist musical, down from an Edinburgh triumph and packing the Ar…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:54PMWednesday, October 3, 2018
TALES OF A CITY “I see a beautiful city” says a spotlit actor, and the rest take it up in styles from Radio 4 to rap, then group and regroup, changing with the shrug of a ja…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:48AMTuesday, October 2, 2018
WARM HEARTS, COLD WAR After the Salisbury-Novichok affair there is a sour laugh when Stewart, the MI5 official, reassures the nervous Jackson family that the coming arrest of t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:22AMFriday, September 28, 2018
GUEST CRITIC BEN BLACKMORE MUSES ON CHEESE-KNIVES AND TELETUBBY HOUSES PINTER 2 announces itself in bold, Sex And The City-type projections, in the Sex And The City font as though it …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:58PMSTEEL CELLS AND SADISM Settling in, you’d think you were at the Cenotaph or the Tattoo. A military soundtrack booms out Imperial Echoes and Jupiter (I Vow To Thee My Coun…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:56AMWednesday, September 26, 2018
A GLORIOUS SERPENT OF OLD NILE This can be a beast of a play: epic, three and a half hours, scenes spread across the Mediterranean from Rome to Cairo by land and sea. It is als…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12PMTuesday, September 25, 2018
MOLIERE IN THE MODERN MIDLANDS It says something good about our arts establishment that this sharp caper comes from the Royal Shakespeare Company, not some daring pub-r…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:00PMSaturday, September 22, 2018
PARENTHOOD, PRAYER , PROSECCO The renamed Tricycle (no, I am not taking sides) Is open: its leader Indhu Rubasingham launches her sprauncy new theatre with Alexis Zegerman’s da…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:29AMThursday, September 20, 2018
DOING JUSTICE TO AGATHA (She’d have loved it!) The courtroom is the marbled council chamber of the old County Hall:the story by Agatha Christie even hoarier. I missed…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:55AMMonday, September 17, 2018
LOOKING OUT TO SEA, AT PAST AND FUTURE With the feral teenage violence of HEATHERS (scroll to it below) all snarling and murdering in the West End, and the manic cheerleader ene…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:45PMSaturday, September 15, 2018
OUT OF AUSTERITY, A DREAM OF BEAUTY A gulf yawns between this musical’s two halves: a gulf of wealth, sophistication, hope and colour. Ida Harris, careworn heroi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:23PMThursday, September 13, 2018
DARK LARKS AND HIGH SCHOOL HOMICIDE You thought there were enough school-themed musicals? What with Bring it On, School of Rock and our own dear cross-dressing Jamie…? Make …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:56PMA RARE OLD TIME IN DUBLIN , IN IPSWICH The miniature of Libby Watson’s gorgeous Dublin pub set in the foyer raises your spirits straight away. Sometimes only an Irish pub w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:52AMSunday, September 9, 2018
HUMANITY RISING FROM HORROR It is one of the oldest notions in the world: the unquiet grave. From Sophocles to modern campaigns we are haunted by the idea that the violentl…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:35AMFriday, September 7, 2018
GUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR IS TRANSPORTED TO NEW YORK, AND FAMILY TRUTH The joy of a play like The Humans is that it can take a subject that feels as if it might have been do…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:05PMThursday, September 6, 2018
ONE OF BENNETT’S FINEST , ON THE ROAD AGAIN Onstage is a shabby rehearsal room, an Oxford study scruffily indicated with doorframes and signs; at the side a litter of coffee-cu…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21AMWednesday, September 5, 2018
GRAND PLIE, FIRST POSITION, TURN…TWERK… My friend and comrade-in-the stalls Mr Letts of the Mail has suggested ( by means of Twitter ,review on Friday, always worth …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:23PMMonday, September 3, 2018
RAN IN MAIL (STAND-IN TEMPORARY CRITIC COULDN’T RESIST THIS.. SO HERE FOR THEATRECATTERS WHO MIGHT MISS IT.. THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN LIVE SEC Glasgow and touri…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:08PMMonday, August 27, 2018
WAS STANDING IN AS DAILY MAIL CRITIC FOR A WEEK, SO DID NOT DO THESE ON THEATRECAT. HERE THEY ARE FOR T/CAT FOLLOWERS THOUGH, SLIGHTLY EXPANDED. COPENHAGEN Minerva, Chichester …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:05AMThursday, August 16, 2018
DARK LADY DEMANDING LIMELIGHT The Globe has had some tremendous new-writing about history, for which it is nicely suited. Remember Howard Brenton’s Anne Boleyn and Dr Sc…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:47AMTuesday, August 14, 2018
WHAT LARKS… There is a swimming-pool ladder, a rubber-ring shaped like a swan, a robotic golf cart, some decorative flamingos (one used as a weapon) , and a statue of Queen E…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:16PMFriday, August 10, 2018
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI MARVELS AT GREEK PERFECTION AT GRIMEBORN Like the roar of an older, bolder London, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s GREEK bounces snarling onto the Grimeborn stage, c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:42PMLA PETITE PIAF, REVENANTE.. I grew up with Piaf, a temporary French schoolchild in 1960, skated around the patinoire with my friends snarling along with the endless plays of “Je ne…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:42AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS THE BOYS GET ALL THE DRAMA AT GRIMEBORN Lucia di Lammermoor is an opera of shocking brutality, with savage emotional aggression rivalling physical viole…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21AMDREAMS AND LEGENDS OF DECAY Brian Friel’s gift is humane ambiguity, refusing to allow tidy judgements on his characters . Or even – though his theme is Ireland’s history…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:03AMWednesday, August 8, 2018
HIP HOP HURRAH ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS Here’s a hot one, in every sense. Clapped till my hands stuck together at this youthful, truthful, touching and funny tale of acroba…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:31AMTuesday, August 7, 2018
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS REVOLUTION NOT GOING FAR IN A WORLD PREMIERE AT GRIMEBORN Prometheus stole fire from the gods in order to ensure human progress, and met with a grisly e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:34PM 
