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 08:28AMA 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 09:41AMMUM-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 02:28PMFAITH 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 03:06AMWESTMINSTER , 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 07:06AMMEDIEVAL 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 01:06PMSMOOTH 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 11:27AMGRACE 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 04:43AMA 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 11:37AMPHYSICAL, 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 07:46AMDREAM 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 05:44AMWHY 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 07:26AMBROWN 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 11:23AMIt 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 05:19AMDROWNING 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 04:19AMWELL 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 06:36AMHOME 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 05:59AMAFFLUENZA 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 04:57AMA 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 08:03AMA 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 04:23AMMATHILDE 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 03:53AMWINNERS, 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 06:17PMTWO 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 03:18AMA 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 03:25AMTRAGEDY 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 05:08AMTHE 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 08:30AMVENEZIANA ! 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 05:43AMDARK 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