Wednesday, July 30, 2025
LA COMMEDIA E FINITA! (oh no it’s not) The title is the first line, delivered by a furious Leoncavallo in 1893 Milan. It is a time of wild flowering in opera , old Verdi’s gr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:28AMSaturday, July 26, 2025
A WILD YOUNG PRINCE OF DENMARK IN THE DUSK Easy to forget, after decades of prestige-casting and its torrent of ringing, over-quoted lines, how much HAMLET is a play about bein…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:41AMThursday, July 24, 2025
MUM-POLE OF THE BAILEY….? I paused overnight before writing this, to see if a bout of two-star irritation might fade. After all, lawyer-playwright Suzie Miller gave us the a…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:28PMWednesday, July 23, 2025
FAITH LOST, AND WAKENED This is a moody, cloudy production shot through with streaks of mad rage, deliberately unsettling. Autolycus, spirit of Time the thief and occasional narr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:06AMFriday, July 18, 2025
WESTMINSTER , A WILL, A WICKED WRANGLE This excellent play is the first by Shaan Sahota, a doctor by profession: but goodness, she (and the NT Studio, and director Daniel Ragget…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:06AMThursday, July 17, 2025
MEDIEVAL MODERNITY There’s a nice irony in opening, this week, a tale of an aristocratically bred heiress, seized first by evangelical Christian faith and then by a charismatic man, re…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:06PMThursday, July 10, 2025
SMOOTH AS VELVET, SHOT WITH GILT AND GUILT Ahhh I do love a well-made play from the 1920s (remember The Deep Blue Sea , just lately!). This one too deals with adultery and hidden pain…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:27AMWednesday, July 9, 2025
GRACE PERVADES Theatre Royal Bath Theatre is fond of sending itself love letters, albeit – from Sheridan’s The Critic to Frayn’s Noises Off – often prudently laced…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:43AMSaturday, June 14, 2025
A WILD NIGHT WITH COUNT TOLSTOY Even those who haven’t read Tolstoy’s great novel know about the train under which the despairing Anna will die. So it dominates from the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:37AMFriday, June 13, 2025
PHYSICAL, PIRATICAL, PLAYFUL All aboard the Jolly Todger, where Long John Silver’s parrot Alexa (she comes from the Amazon, get it?) keeps accidentally ordering unwanted Chinese…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:46AMMonday, June 9, 2025
DREAM ON! Five years on, beyond Covid lockdowns and its magnificent Guys and Dolls, here again is the Bridge’s irresistible multi-mouse take on Shakespeare’s sunniest comedy of…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:44AMWednesday, June 4, 2025
WHY RATTIGAN COUNTS Quite a rare outing for this very late Terence Rattigan play, written after his star had fallen under the assault of mouthy Osborne, Amis and the “angry young men” …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:26AMSaturday, May 31, 2025
BROWN BRITISH LIVES, FROM ENOCH TO SUNAK Sathnam Sanghera’s novel drew on his own life, partly homage to Arnold Bennett and with some echoes of Priestley too, joined the fine chronicle…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:23AMThursday, May 29, 2025
It is indeed PLUTO not Apollo who rules the Underworld. Was tired. Apologies to all classicists.
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:53AMSONDHEIM AND THE STYX I last saw this 405BC Greek classic in Spymonkey’s version and found it – sorry – unfroggettable. Giant puppetry, a community chorus tap-dancing as frogs w…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:19AMThursday, May 15, 2025
DROWNING PASSION, TIMELESS RESCUE Marvellous play, this: wrenches the heart out of you , patches it up and sets it back on the hard road of life and love. It wrenched Terence Rattigan h…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:13AMI said it all at the Royal Court – https://theatrecat.com/2024/11/09/giant-royal-court-theatre/ – and it is an event not to miss, especially the way the world is in 2025. Everythi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:19AMWednesday, May 14, 2025
WELL WORTH THE MONEYPENNY This is glorious: just what we all needed. In the company’s spirit of never wasting a terrible joke, I absolutely Bond-ed to it. Following Mischi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:36AMTuesday, May 13, 2025
HOME AND FAMILY, BEAUTY AND SADNESS Few days late to the party with this , poor old theatrecat having seemed to fall off the press list; but very well worth the ticket (Old Vic pricing i…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:59AMFriday, May 9, 2025
AFFLUENZA APOCALYPSE As Aubrey de Mandeville puts it in the great Antrobus books, “God, here’s a strange lozenge-shaped affair!” Buñuel meets Monty Python, courtesy of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:57AMThursday, May 8, 2025
A MODERN CLASSIC DONE WITH VIGOUR Michael Frayn’s play-about-actors is always welcome: a comic masterpiece and loving study in theatre’s own absurdity. The first act shows a final l…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:03AMFriday, May 2, 2025
A SATIRICAL WARNING FROM OLD UKRAINE Not long ago a rompingly funny version of Gogol’s satire on official incompetence ran at Marylebone ( https://theatrecat.com/2024/05/…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:23AMWednesday, April 30, 2025
MATHILDE AND THE BUILDER (can he fix it? Probably not) The set is glassand towering, city-chic backed by reeds and seashore; the figures before us NYC glamorous, even when th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:53AMTuesday, April 22, 2025
WINNERS, WAGS AND WRONGS Well, here’s a summer romp. Hot on the heels of Tom Hiddleston in a disco version up Drury Lane, here’s the RSC take on one of the sunniest Shakespeare …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:17PMFriday, April 11, 2025
TWO WOMEN, LONG YEARS ACROSS HALF A CONTINENT 1935: below projected headlines about Communists executed in Shanghai and the war between Japan and Red China comes an audition call fo…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:18AMThursday, April 10, 2025
A HAMLET THAT STANDS ALONE “is it not monstrous that this player here,But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,Could force his soul so to his own conceitThat from her working all his visage…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 11:38AMRIEN TO REGRET! This is a terrific, impassioned production: not only does Kimberley Sykes’ direction and Michele Meazza’ s movement work keep it watchably, startlingly vigorous, …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:25AMWednesday, April 9, 2025
TRAGEDY WITHOUT A MORAL Raoul Moat used steroids and bulking-powder to armour himself in muscle, nourished a bottomless well of grievance and self-pity , and imposed his needy will…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:08AMSaturday, April 5, 2025
THE DEPTHS BELOW THE WIT The plays, ever revived, we know well; the wit is often cited, the old injustice of his downfall recreated in plays and films: most recently we’ve seen…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:30AMThursday, April 3, 2025
VENEZIANA ! Buongiorno to Venice 1730, a city stage topped with the golden winged lion of St Mark, arched and curtained and lit with candelabras . Overhead a twelve-piece orchest…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:43AMTuesday, April 1, 2025
DARK FANGTASY IN A SCAFFOLDING CITY For this compact and creepy little atmospheric treat, John Donnelly turns to vampires. That’s not a spoiler: the programme is full of learned stuf…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:59AM 
