1,401 stories from theatrecat.com
WHEN THE BOOMERS WERE ROCKIN' ALL OVER THE WORLD... Â Â "We were there!" cry the cast of John O'Farrell's jukebox tribute to the 1985 Live Aid concert. Memories undimmed nearly forty y…
FAIRYTALE AS FESTIVAL    "The lunatic, the lover and the poet" are all served in any Midsummer Night's dream.  Here the first two get most traction, the poetry least (…
   LYRICAL, FARCICAL, PERFECT Figaro, rascally wigmaker and foam-flinging wet-shaver, is basically the first rapper, isnt he? Staccato eloquence at speed, braggart confidence i…
 AMERICAN DREAMS IN FADING BLACKPOOL   Suddenly within a fortnight come two very classy new plays, funny and thoughtful and moving beyond the ordinary. Moreover, in a tiny rev…
THAT OL'TIME WESTERN DREAM OF 1979 I have a weakness for this little theatre under the arches and its Players' Bar. Honouring a music-hall history, and with some of the cheapest stal…
SMALL PEOPLE,  BIG PLAY      A hot summer wedding-day. The bride Sylvia is a bag of nerves, big sister Hazel competently combing and marshalling her teenage…
UNFROGGETTABLE MOMENTS IN THE UNDERWORLD   Aitor Basauri does not need to be framed in a 20ft-high giant puppet frog in order to be funny, but blissful overkill is part of the ple…
A DANCE AROUND AUSTEN'S LEGACY The book is known and loved enough: Jane Austen's first full novel, written with satirical youthful wit but long laid aside unpublished. It gleefully shows…
LEST ANYONE FORGET..   Storytime! Before a tangled treescape Samantha Spiro sits with a book on her lap.  Across the simple stage a few notes from Gemma Rosefield's 'cello…
BORDERS AND BRUTALITIES, Maybe I shouldnt review what is essentially physical-theatre. I have no dance-cred, and I was pleased to be warned years ago by the great Benedict Nightingale, when …
WAR'S LONG SHADOW       I have a taste for "Forgotten" plays of well-made realism, illustrating how it actually felt to live in Britain through now-distant…
BEFORE THE SALEM TERROR    This week, to little acclaim, the Ambassadors opened Tbe Enfield Haunting, a play centred on the spooky hysteria of troubled teenage girls..…
GRIEF, CLASS, AND THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT Â Â Â Â Â Press night having moved about and gone incommunicado, this is from when I bought a preview ticket at Richmond..sa…
JAPAN MEETS THE NOISY WEST     This is exquisite, and not only in Paul Farnsworth's dreamy set and Ayako Maeda's costumes, from peasant fishermen to Shogun magnificence. T…
BRAINS AND HOW TO MAKE THEM USEFUL    Clearly it is the mission of Hampstead Downstairs to broaden our education, no bad ambition. Not long ago I learned a lot about the l…
A BLAST FROM THE PAST TO INSPIRE OR IRRITATE Â Â Â By the interval I was mournfully unconvinced that there was any point at all in reviving Tom Stoppard's 17-year-old play , about C…
 CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SPIRIT   Can this really be the first Jewish pantomime? Oy vay, surely this culture with its musical genius, ironic jokes , family warmth,  …
ANOTHER KIND OF INQUIRYÂ Â I suppose we will have to wait a few years for the dust to settle and James Graham to write a nuanced play about the Boris-Covid-Tory-pocalypse. Meanwhile th…
DICKENS IN RIOTOUS RHYME AND BAGPIPES " ON TOUR Â Â Â Wouldn't be right to get through December without Dickens, would it? Â But I have seen the magnificent Old Vic adaptation by …
  I don't usually record anything that's two-nights-only, but this one I think will flower and fly, so watch out for it. It's already looking like turning up in March at TR Haymar…
BEWARE OF GREEKS BRINGING GAGS   Where does Kylie get her kebabs? From Jason's doner van!  If that makes you scuttle away in fright, you have not yet achieved the correct seas…
DARK BEFORE THE DAWN     To emerge with any redemptive sense from Joe Hill-Gibbins' spare, scorching rather brilliant production, it helps to remember that Henrik …
ANY TOIL AND TROUBLE WAS WELL WORTH IT Everything a child could want is here:  the dark thrill of imagined orphanhood, a quest, baddies , jeopardy and jokes, bouncy musical spectacle…
GOLDSMITH BEATEN LIGHT AS AIR Â Â Â Nice symmetry in Tom Littler's decision to set Oliver Goldsmith's 1773 comedy in the Wodehousian Jazz Age:Â the Georgians, with their boozy mon…
FLAT WHITE AND WOEFUL Â Â Â Â If you're going to splash out on a visually arresting finale of assassination, a vivId fire destroying a Norman tower and a lyrical monologue about L…
