CLEVER, CLOWNING, CLASSIC What could be more seasonal than Flaubert’s tale of wifely frustration, romantic illusions, disastrous adulteries and ruinous shopaholic debt? This adapt…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:57AMA DAUGHTER OF DISREPUTE 1893, and here’s George Bernard Shaw passing the Bechdel Test with flying colours by centring the action on two women at odds , with surrounding men remarkably d…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:28PMPURE PLEASURE AT HER MAJESTY’S It seemed worth the money – these were not press tickets – to check out how good old Fanty is getting on after 36 years at Her Majesty’s The…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:21AMDRUNKENNESS AND THE DARK The studio at Hampstead has been on a roll recently, with intelligent and emotionally honest plays : FOLK, RAVENSCOURT, THE ANIMAL KINGDOM et al. It nurt…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:00AMTHE IMPORTANCE OF NOT BEING TOO TRADITIONAL ABOUT IT This cheerfully exuberant rendering of Oscar Wilde’s witty rom-com is also a sort of political act. In the foyer a gorgeous selection…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:34AMBy Libby Purves Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves reviews Rona Munro's play Mary at Hampstead Theatre. This post REVIEW: Mary, Hampstead Theatre ✭✭✭ first appeared on British Theatr…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 06:17AMABDUCTION, ASSAULT, ABDICATION For four hundred years the reputation of Mary, Queen of Scots, has been battled over: she has been called victim and whore, murderess and heroine, flight…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:39PMWHEN THEY PUT THE FUN – AND THE FUNDS – INTO FUNDAMENTALISM.. Rarely in the history of Islington playgoing have so many first-nighters whooped so enthusiastically at Gospe…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:00PMDODD-LEVEL HAPPINESS IN SOHO Hard, on its first night ever, not to review the theatre itself. Nica Burns and Nimax open the first new West End theatre in fifty years: agleam with …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:17AMOLD MEN DO NOT FORGET Peter Gill’s new play has a melancholy beauty about it; it’s a sort of poem as the veteran playwright and director engages with age, regret and m…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 04:21PMTHE PROFESSORIAL ROAD TO HELL David Tennant is a fastidious actor. That sounds negative, prim perhaps, but in fact expresses why his performance in C.P.Taylor’s extraordinary play …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:04PMA HARLEM TRAVIATA Three in the morning and Angel the showgirl is raring , glitterimg drunk “if you caint be drunk in Harlem..” she slurs furiously. Her friend Guy brought her home, an…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 03:31AMRETURN OF A WILD AND QUESTIONING PLAY This is the return of Robert Icke’s modern version of Schnitzler’s 1912 play – details below, as laid out in part of my original Almeida r…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:07AMA WARNING FOR ALL TIMES This is the big one. It’s the National Theatre at its strongest: unapologetic, classic, unsparing, gripping, impassioned. Here’s the heavy art…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:17AMTHERAPISTS AS HUMANS Georgina Burns is a trained and experienced NHS therapist, now with Hampstead support a playwright. So, unlike most other writers tempted by the theatricality of…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 01:34PMA MODEST AND REMORSEFUL SELF-REBUKE There’s a curious outbreak of reparations going on. The Old Vic, which binned Into the Woods in outrage at Terry Gilliam’s reportedly inc…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:48PMA GOTHIC SORROW IN OLD BOSTON When you say you’re off to a Suffolk village hall to see a tiny company – best known for its mini-pantos – doing a dramatised tribute to Edgar Allan Po…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 09:23AMAMBITION , DISGRACE, RUIN, WOMEN Heavy footfalls pace overhead, enervating, raising anxiety. Anna Fleischle’s galleried grey set is half Scandi-minimo-chic, half penitentiary. Downstairs…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 02:44AMGLORIOUS AS EVER Millions know it by now, but in case like my enthralled companions last night you aren’t among them, grant me a moment or skip the the penultimate paragraph…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:08AMWISHFUL DELUSIONS IN A MIDDLE AGED DOLDRUM Susan finds herself in mid-life with a dull clerical husband (Nigel Lindsay really enjoying it) , obsessed with his dreary parish history pamphle…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:23PMBy Libby Purves Our very own theatreCat Libby Purves reviews Helen Hunt in Jonathan Spector's comedy Eureka day at London's old Vic Theatre. This post REVIEW: Eureka Day, Old Vic Theatre Lon…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 11:49AMLORD, WHAT FOOLS WE LIBERALS BE… In a beanbagged, bright-coloured primary school in Berkeley, California, its executive committee of five seek consensus over reclassifying the dr…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:37PMREFINED AND FEATHER-DUSTED: CRUELTY IN THE SUBURBS We are in a suburban drawing-room in 1926, which some characters will still call the “parlour”. Near the front, close enough to t…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:03AMA CENTURY SURVIVED It is no bad week to be contemplating the Jewish custom of sitting shiva: spending seven days on a hard wooden bench when “you laugh, you cry, you argue” in tri…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:22PMEVEN A SNAIL WILL REACH ITS HOME That’s a Nigerian saying, apparently. But shiny though the shell is, Richard Eyre’s play becomes a frustrating stew of ideas, attitud…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:39PMSAYERS, SAYING IT FOR WORKING WOMEN Here’s a treat: first half in Venice (with a glorious Canaletto backdrop) and the second, after some elegant Jermyn set-changing, in a London playw…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:50PMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS SOME INTERESTING THREADS SLIGHTLY UNRAVELLED AT GRIMEBORN Fringe opera festivals sometimes give us a chance to see new work in progress – i.e. unfinis…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 06:15AMA SPIKY AND SPECTACULAR DELIGHT Humanity in every century has needed to plunge into the dark forests, questing or fleeing, finding wonders or wolves: it’s in Dan…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:04PMIT’S BACK: A NEW DIRECTION HOME This humbly immense, uniquely created show threw me for a loop five summers ago. It’s back on tour, via Oliviers and Broadway awards, with its…
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:47AMGUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GETS SWEPT UP IN THE MAGIC, THE MUSIC AND THE META Opera Alegria’s vivacious foray into Mozart’s Magic Flute for Grimeborn takes its inspiration from the …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 07:00AMVOICES FROM THE GRAVE AND THE CELLAR, UNIGNORABLE Timely, enterprising, emotionally shattering, politically shaming. These two plays were both both first born at the time of …
SOURCE: theatrecat.com at 05:20PM