Friday, October 27, 2017
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI LOSES HER HEART TO HOODLUMS Even ruthless, psychotic gangsters have to fall in love sometimes. And Rodelinda is all about what happens when the people at the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:16AMThursday, October 26, 2017
ROISTERING AND REVOLUTION There is a nice contrarian quality about Nicholas Hytner’s choice for his first production, in the dramatically beautiful new theatre he founded with N…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:29PMTuesday, October 24, 2017
SHADOWS OF WAR AND LOSS Not a good week for AA Milne. That “Goodbye Christopher Robin” film about his WW1 trauma comes out – then Philip Pullman sounds off scornfully about …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:24PMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS HALF-TERM HEAVEN AT NORWICH PUPPET THEATRE “Have you ever wondered where dreams come from? Or how they get into your head?” A thought-provok…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:50AMMonday, October 23, 2017
THE SCIENTIST AND THE SEX SYMBOL, IN A PARANOID WORLD The uneasy 1950s: Albert Einstein is exiled in America and called to appear before the unAmerican Activities committee for…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:24PMSunday, October 22, 2017
CLUNTERING FLAPPYSKETS ! DON’T SMITTLE AND SKRYKE , IT’S BARRIE AGAIN… By ‘eck, luv! They Northern Broadsides, they weren’t hid behind t’mangle when they wer…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 12:38PMFriday, October 20, 2017
A LESSON IN POLITICS, HUMANITY AND LOVE The joyful thing about James Graham is that for all the playwright’s youth, diamond wit and forensic insight, there is a deep humankin…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:17AMThursday, October 19, 2017
AFTER THE WARS WERE OVER… This is a lovely rediscovery, the kind of thing Two’s Company has repeatedly offered us in this enterprising theatre (we owe them those extraordin…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:58PMGUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR ENCOUNTERS IBSEN’S BRACING RAGE Ibsen’s 1889 work, The Lady From the Sea has washed ashore at the Donmar in a new version written by Elinor Cook…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:24AMTuesday, October 17, 2017
O ENGLAND IS A GARDEN… There’s a lawn and a vast magnificent tree. In dim moonlight before the start a figure in khaki – could be any war – kneels to feel the eart…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:06PMMonday, October 16, 2017
OSCAR’S BACK! IN THE VERY WEEK OF HIS BIRTHDAY… A theatrical phenomenon of the 20th century is the way that some of the most perceptive parts for women were written by g…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:32PMFriday, October 13, 2017
LUKE JONES RELISHES ELDRIDGE ON MIDLIFE CHAOS When the music stops and the lights click on, your first thought is ‘sweet Jesus what the hell went down at this party”? �…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:20AMTuesday, October 10, 2017
A TRANSYLVANIAN TRANSPORT OF DELIGHT Sometimes you just want a bit of fun. That is the moment to turn to Mel Brooks, master of daft parody. At 91, the master strode onstage ton…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:13PMA FINE ROMANCE? A quick quantum-mechanics lesson (though this is not a play about science). The Heisenberg principle asserts that there is a limit to knowing what will happen to the p…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:47AMSunday, October 8, 2017
FAITHFUL TO UNFAITHFULNESS, ZELLER SPARKLES AGAIN This is a companion-piece to the stormingly funny, cruelly witty THE TRUTH: Florian Zeller, translated from the French with ve…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:08PMTuesday, October 3, 2017
A JOYFUL JIGSAW: TABLE MANNERS, LIVING TOGETHER, ROUND AND ROUND THE GARDEN In more rigorous technical times there was an art school exercise: “draw an imagined street-scene in pers…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:12PMFriday, September 29, 2017
A FAMILY SITCOM UPS ITS GAME… I didn’t much rate its premiere at the National in 2015, despite the achingly chic set I felt was “a kitchen-diner so huge and smart it makes David…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:19AMMonday, September 25, 2017
ON SEEING IT AGAIN…THE LATE EDITION IS BETTER STILL… Nipping late into the Almedia after the opening, I concurred with every word of Luke Jones’ review on theatrec…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:36PMFriday, September 22, 2017
CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS HERE, TOO, ARE TEARS FOR THE MISFORTUNES OF TROY While there are many excellent reasons to read Virgil’s Aeneid from cover to cover, more than once, the fourth book …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:28AMThursday, September 21, 2017
CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS CLASS CIVIL WAR AT THE RSC Coriolanus doesn’t often hit the modern stage: its plot, a hymn to the necessary evil of educated patrician privilege in order to provide …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:48PMMonday, September 18, 2017
PEACE IN THEIR TIME…HOW TO DO IT This is a three-hour historical political play about Middle East negotiations in the 1990s: and it is absolutely thrilling. Pins you to your seat wi…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:45PMFriday, September 15, 2017
CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS DREAMS COMING TRUE IN MEDIEVAL NORFOLK In Norfolk, we tend to be quietly, fondly proud of our surroundings – with an emphasis on ‘quietly.’ The tradition of Norf…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:50PMTuesday, September 12, 2017
A PSYCHOTIC SAMSON AND HIS WOMEN “There is no such thing as the imagination” says August Strindberg indignantly. “Things are real or they are not.”. Right now, holed up in a s…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:54PMTHE CABMAN’S PROGRESS It couldn’t be better placed, here in the arches below Charing Cross station. Under the venerable rules of London licensed cabs – dating back to th…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:56AMFriday, September 8, 2017
HARRIDAN OR HEROINE..? The feminist “Bechdel Test” for fiction says that there must be conversations between two women which are not about men. John Patrick Shanley’s tig…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:22PMSaturday, August 26, 2017
THE BAD BOY WE NEEDED ONCE , AND STILL DO The corpse is the talking point and to some extent the star. Certainly Anah Ruddin, hopping out of the coffin spry as a fox for…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:48AMThursday, August 24, 2017
SUICIDE, SADNESS, SNIPING AND SUPPER It often puzzles me why sharp little stage gems like this don’t get pounced on by TV, – notably the BBC – instead of commissio…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 08:11PMTuesday, August 22, 2017
A PRIMITIVE AWAKENING It is dark. An earth floor, plank stable door , murky pond. Sometimes a candle is lit, but Soutra Gilmour’s set remains tenebrous , primitive. A wom…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:13PMSaturday, August 19, 2017
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES HUNGERS BUT DOESN’T GET A BYTE I’ll give them this; it’s timely. After the violence in Charlottesville, we’ve all been asking what on e…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:20AMFriday, August 18, 2017
A DELICATE TREASURE Rarely seen, half-forgotten, Githa Sowerby’s 1924 play is sharp, entertaining, truthful and elegant: Richard Eyre’s direction respects it with delicate …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:11AMThursday, August 17, 2017
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI MARVELS AT MARIANNE VIDAL Aylin Bozok’s productions of French opera for Grimeborn have all been marked by their elegance, restraint and psychological intens…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:02PM 
