1,401 stories from theatrecat.com
THE 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…
ABDUCTION, 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, …
WHEN THEY PUT THE FUN " AND THE FUNDS " INTO FUNDAMENTALISM..     Rarely in the history of Islington playgoing have so many first-nighters whooped so enthusiastically atÂ…
DODD-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: agle…
OLD 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, …
THE 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 p…
A 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…
RETURN 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…
A WARNING FOR ALL TIMES   This is the big one. It's the National Theatre at its strongest:  unapologetic, classic, unsparing, gripping, impassioned.  Here's t…
THERAPISTS 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 theatric…
A 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 reported…
A 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 Poe,…
AMBITION , DISGRACE, RUIN, WOMEN Heavy footfalls pace overhead, enervating, raising anxiety. Anna Fleischle's galleried grey set is half Scandi-minimo-chic, half penitentiary. Downstairs…
GLORIOUS 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 p…
WISHFUL 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 pamph…
LORD, WHAT FOOLS WE LIBERALS BE…    In a beanbagged, bright-coloured primary school in Berkeley, California, its executive committee of five seek consensus over reclassifyin…
REFINED 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…
A 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 t…
EVEN 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 idea…
SAYERS, 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 pla…
GUEST 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. unfinishe…
A 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 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,  wi…
GUEST 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 thea…
VOICES FROM THE GRAVE AND THE CELLAR, UNIGNORABLE     Timely, enterprising, emotionally shattering, politically shaming.  These two plays were both  both first born at …
