Thursday, March 22, 2018
A SOLO REFLECTION ON PUBERTY AND AFTER. Naomi Sheldon’s solo, semi-autobiographical hour comes from Edinburgh crowned with plaudits, though cunningly in the programme she doe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:32AMFOR ONCE IN A LIFETIME THE DEAR MENIER DOES NOT MAKE GUEST REVIEWER LUKE JONES HAPPY. NOT HAPPY AT ALL. EXCEPT AT THE PROJECTIONS. Two prisoners are locked in an Argentinia…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:35AMTuesday, March 20, 2018
IT’S THAT MAN AGAIN… It is awkward that two major new productions of the Scottish Play, by two determinedly auteurish directors, open in the same month. Rufus Norris’ bleak …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:16PMGUEST CRITIC JENNIFER-JANE BENJAMIN FINDS WHAT MATTERS Lights up. A confederate statue. A blackout. And it disappears. It’s November 1963 and we’re in Lake Charles, Louisiana. JFK…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:43PMSunday, March 18, 2018
SILENT, SIGNIFICANT CREATURES The candlelit Wanamaker has proved its worth as a music-room, notably with All The Angels and the divine Farinelli. This takes it further with the first …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:13PMFriday, March 16, 2018
DANGEROUS DAYS AND COURAGEOUS SCIENCE This terrific meteorological thriller, set in the crucial days before D-Day, is written by – and stars – David Haig. In 2014…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:52AMWednesday, March 14, 2018
FREE HANKY WITH EVERY PROGRAMME (honest..!) Ten years ago Emma Rice and her Kneehigh group brought this adaptation of Noel Coward’s heartrending film to the stage – to a c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:15AMTuesday, March 13, 2018
A DARK SEASIDE PARABLE If there is one stumbling block for lovers of Graham Greene’s darkly thrilling gangster novel, it is the elegance of Gloria Onitiri. She is Ida; and Gr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:40AMSaturday, March 10, 2018
DICKENS EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS Putting great literary masterpieces onstage is an erratic business. Within the same week we see the Artistic Director of the National Theatre b…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:41AMThursday, March 8, 2018
SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE Is love a Gothic Cathedral, a yearning for a permanent, holy, respectful connection to the best in our nature? Or is it lust and fun, animal attraction,…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:19PMWednesday, March 7, 2018
THE SCOTTISH PLAY, DARK AND DANK You don’t expect robes and battlements these days. This is a shaven-head-and-machete Macbeth, its theme an indeterminate, timeless squalor: p…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:32PMTuesday, March 6, 2018
LOVE AND THE NOT-FOR-MARRYING MAN Love stories take many forms. Here – electric, understated, unmistakeable and timeless – the erotic connection is between Ben Batt’s Ge…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:06PMSaturday, March 3, 2018
MA’AM , THE MINION AND THE MACHO MAN “I never boasted an education. I learned tricks” says Princess Margaret, bitterly, at a late point in Richard Stirling’s interestin…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:03AMFriday, March 2, 2018
SIN OR SYMPTOM? A HUMAN TURNED TO A HORROR Last time I encountered a monologue written for a paedophile abuser, it was by Alan Bennett in a remarkable – and I think unrep…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 10:48AMThursday, March 1, 2018
FAIRY DUST AND PHYSICAL COMEDY I am happy to say that in the second act there is some inappropriate sexual harassment. By garishly clad fairies, deploying weaponized soprano trills an…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:08AMThursday, February 15, 2018
A CITY’S MEMORY Two girls on the Downs in 1940 giggle over a spot of rabbit-poaching on Lady Cooper’s land. A roar, Junkers overhead. Figures emerge from smoke and darkness as a c…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:25AMThursday, February 8, 2018
A WATCHFUL SORROW There are some evenings when, as the cast take their bow with that half-relaxed half-smile, you are shocked: you feel you have not been watching a performance…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:08AMWednesday, February 7, 2018
CELEBRATION FOR A CITY Right place, right time, a last flurry of fireworks by the Humber. The hottest of young playwrights, James Graham, lovingly teases the city where he was a stude…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:47AMSaturday, February 3, 2018
BANKERS AS LIBERATORS The first recitative line in this one-act musical, as the little band sounds curfew, is chilling: a Town Crier from the 1760’s : “Jews and aliens of…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:36PMThursday, February 1, 2018
YOU HAVE TO LAUGH OR YOU WOULD WEEP.. The most arresting new character I’ve met this year is the magnificent Hayley Atwell as Jenny; star of a New York private equity investm…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:39PMWednesday, January 31, 2018
AVE HYTNER IMPERATOR! THE BRIDGE AS ARENA Before the start, singing along with Eye of the Tiger in the melée and enjoying the red flags, baseball hats and beercans, we …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:47AMTuesday, January 30, 2018
AVE HYTNER IMPERATOR! THE BRIDGE AS ARENA Before the start, singing along with Eye of the Tiger in the melée and enjoying the red flags, baseball hats and beercans, we …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:50PMMonday, January 29, 2018
TWO QUEENS, TWO FATES Who shall be whom? In Robert Icke’s arresting adaptation of Schiller’s play, the scene opens with a sober-suited group of men watching two women in identical…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:06PMFriday, January 26, 2018
A WILDE RIDE WITH A BOLTER Beneath the artful fan-shapes of the set, gloriously coloured bustles and ruffles flit between black tailcoats and epigrams ping around the room like…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:06AMTuesday, January 23, 2018
CLAMBERING TOWARDS LOVE You don’t often, in romances, get lines like “Tomato ketchup’s always been my Achilles heel”. Or indeed proper consideration being given to the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:29PMMonday, January 22, 2018
PEGGY GUGGENHEIM WALKS AGAIN You cross the stage floor to the toilets and a warning sign on the little set alerts you to the danger of tripping over a “solid stone” bench. …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:30AMWednesday, January 17, 2018
SULTRY HEAT AND SEXUAL DREAD… Our age is beginning, once more, to appreciate E.M.Forster properly: the recent TV Howards’s End caught his wit as well as the social indignat…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:52AMMy principal review from the Old Vic is here (http://tinyurl.com/y8u2na24) . But now it transfers (with glorious irony to the Noel Coward Theatre..it’s the least Cowardy of all plays e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:30AMMonday, January 15, 2018
VILLAIN VAUDEVILLE Everyone loves the film. Something in the nostalgic British psyche likes to think of a gang of ruthless desperadoes lodging with a dear old lady, pretendin…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:51AMFriday, January 12, 2018
TOP FOLK ON THE ROAD There are boxes , planks, a rope; around and upon them, singly and severally, still or moving, the aristocracy of modern folk music. Strings, accordion, guitars…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:54AMThursday, January 11, 2018
GIRLS ON THE EDGE Honour to the Royal Court for two things. First for the initial wobble, then for executing a rapid u-turn over Andrea Dunbar’ s rather wonderful play . So after …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:24PM 
