Thursday, December 27, 2018
NOT YET DEAD CAT BUT… Since I stopped being The Times Chief Theatre Critic it has been five years: on this site there have been 930 posts, over half a million words, all stil…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 12:22PMFriday, December 21, 2018
A HOLLOW CROWN IN MUD AND BLOOD The clue is in the paper hat, worn by a dour-faced Simon Russell Beale on the programme cover. This is not stately, sacred, shockingly regicidal S…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 09:32AMJAMAICA BREEZES UP WEST, WITH GRIEF AND GUSTO Jamaican mourning tradition, longer than the Irish wake and noisier than the Jewish shiva, involves – we learn ̵…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 08:43AMFriday, December 14, 2018
PSYCHOPATHIC LIBERAL MEETS DINOSAUR PARENTS Can we, I wonder, ever learn to deplore past attitudes without being vengeful about it? Hot on the heels of Mike Bartlett’s heartfe…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 07:22AMThursday, December 13, 2018
ONE MORE TIME, WITH FEELING . After two other full cast renderings in a fortnight -David Edgar’s socially angry take at the RSC and Jack Thorne’s warm spectacular at the…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 04:46PMWednesday, December 12, 2018
A GOTHIC EYEFUL In this troublous nation, 2018 seems to be the Christmas of Aaargh! and Eughhh! and hahahahaaa! , as a gross-out gigglefest sweeps London theatre. There’s the …
Linked From theatrecat.com at 06:40PMENERGY, ANGER, HOPE It is 1842: young Charles Dickens, thirty years old and with five novels under his belt, is ranting. The Industrial Revolution is revving up nicely,…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 05:37AMMonday, December 10, 2018
CHRISTMAS, BREXIT, GRIEF, HOPE A few hours after Theresa May postponed the parliamentary vote and spun us down into another layer of Brexi-hell , the little OFS –…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 05:52PM I WENT TO THE PANTO. O YES I DID. The great thing about the proud tradition of Oxford Playhouse panto is that while cannily aware of the audience’s likely cultural uplift, …
Linked From theatrecat.com at 12:42PMSunday, December 9, 2018
A WONDERLAND WINNER “Posh panto”, for wincing parents fleeing the rackety showbiz ’n smut of the season, can be a bit chilly – neither one thing nor the other…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 09:18AMFriday, December 7, 2018
, GEESE CACKLE, LIFE GOES ON I have a friend of Russian heritage who boycotts any Chekhov production which lacks scabby birch-trees, a samovar and some parasols. She’ll do …
Linked From theatrecat.com at 09:17AMThursday, December 6, 2018
L’CHAIM – TO LIFE! A SPECIAL NIGHT We are there, over a century ago, beyond the Caucasus. Designer Robert Jones has wrapped us around in rustic planks and …
Linked From theatrecat.com at 08:33AMGUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR EMPATHISES WITH DEADLINE FEVER.. Here is a tale of two brothers. First, Kit Harrington’s serious, intelligent and moustachioed Austin, Ivy League educated and wi…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 07:42AMWednesday, December 5, 2018
DARK MAGIC, REAL THEATRE Long, long before Harry Potter there was a gallant orphan, a boy dreamer sucked into a world of murderous magic, facing grief and responsibility alike. Tw…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 06:32PMDICKENS UNCHAINED: A SCROOGE FOR OUR TIMES It is , if possible, even finer and more heartfelt and gripping, tuneable and serious and moving than last year. My former r…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 06:31PMFriday, November 30, 2018
DARK DOINGS AND DISSECTION Oyez, Oyez. Let it be known that this suspenseful yet dreary political season has become officially the Year Of Dark Panto. Down at The Bridge we had Ma…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 07:25PMFriday, November 23, 2018
BREAKING THE MOULD…. Our politics is partisan, quarrelsome, dated in its pattern of two-parties-plus-minnows. A nest of weary careerists, pointless betrayals and illogical loya…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 05:28PMMonday, November 19, 2018
DEATH AND THE DIFFICULT WOMAN Those who call Theresa May a ‘bloody difficult woman’ should pop in to the Ambassadors and realise that in the ranks of of BDWs she is the merest d…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 05:22PMThursday, November 15, 2018
THE EMPTY DARKNESS OF THE HEART Third time lucky: after two glumly disappointing 2018 productions steeped in directorial gimmicks – RSC and NT – the candlelit cram…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 04:53AMWednesday, November 14, 2018
THE KNIGHT WINS HIS SPURS AGAIN: A NOBLE DELUSION Need a Christmas outing? Quailing at panto, feel you and the kids need some Euro-culture to counteract Brexidepression? Trust the …
Linked From theatrecat.com at 12:37PMA SWING AND SWIRL THROUGH HELL It’s certainly not family-panto time along the glittering Thames riverbank: what with Martin McDonagh’ grossout-silly Dark Matter downstream at the…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 05:16AMTuesday, November 13, 2018
LIKE A BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED DECADES…. If you’re my age, it’s a time machine. Songs like The Sound Of Silence and Bridge Over Troubled Water (bestselling album 1970,71 and 72…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 07:11AMWednesday, November 7, 2018
THE SAVAGE BEAUTY OF THE FIRST AIR WAR Britain did not stand alone in WW1. As our hero sings in John MacLachlan Gray’s 1982 play: “South Africa and Canada and Australia to …
Linked From theatrecat.com at 04:51AMSunday, November 4, 2018
GUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR LISTENS, AS WE SHOULD A glass box filled with smoke encapsulates the Royal Court stage. Shadowy figures patrol its perimeter, sometimes staring out at th…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 04:04AMWednesday, October 31, 2018
LOVE’S PRECEDENCE AND CRUELTY George is a journalist-intellectual, award-winner, amiably vain and sixtyish.. He twinkles for England, with much black-rimmed-specs…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 08:51AMWednesday, October 24, 2018
NOT SO VERY A wooden box swings, pendulum-regular, in a peerlessly spooky attic of Halloween horror, designed with glee by Anna Fleischle . It is inhabited. Difficult, says its c…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 06:52PMLOVE, LIES AND THE PAIN OF TRUTH Is it better to live in a lie, a happy story, or to admit the messy sinful truth? Should you assume that every person you meet is the w…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 05:45AMSunday, October 21, 2018
ALONE ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA The Rime of the Ancient Mariner may be studded with overfamiliar quotations, but taken in its entirely, has power to disturb . It is about gui…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 01:12PMFriday, October 19, 2018
LECHERY AND TREACHERY, MACHISMO AND METAL… ‘I had forgotten” said a companion as we staggered out, deafened by the final outbreak of crazed metallic drumming, “how syph…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 03:25AMThursday, October 18, 2018
ROMPING FABLE OF A GREASEPAINT CENTURY Twins, three sets of them, in a dynasty of performers from the 1880s onward: a theatrical boarding-house with a heart-of-gold har…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 06:59PMWednesday, October 17, 2018
FOR BETTER FOR WORSE? FOR FIVE MICE ANYWAY If you’re going to mess about with a classic but slightly dated Sondheim musical, be sure to do it brilliantly. Do it like Mar…
Linked From theatrecat.com at 07:24PM 
