1,401 stories from theatrecat.com
PLAGUE YEAR Part 2 "  2021  Below, if you care to scroll , I chronicled the shows that met my return from chemo-then-lockdown in 2020.  An enfeebled theatrical year.  …
PART 1: THE ONSET   I set out, in this eerie Twixtmas gap, to chronicle and celebrate the return of live theatre since May 2021. And this will follow. But when I tott…
A SHARP , SERPENTINE, SUPERB PERFORMANCE      Lounging in the small hours on her office couch, under a wall of posters for her many clients' shows " both famous and forgo…
A PRIMA DONNY JOINS THE FEARLESS FOUR   Last year as a family we came to see the doughty quartet doing this variety show, an adult-joking non-panto to fill the fearful gap. I…
1968 AND ALL THAT James Graham's mission might seem unfashionable: trawling 20c history and public culture, looking not for villains and heroes but for the nuances of human behaviour,…
PULLING OUT THE STOPS FOR PULLMAN   First things first: this is the most wonderfully evocative, romantic and dramatic bit of set-projection you will see all year. Bob Crowley, video …
A REVIVING REVIVAL    Do you need to be of a generation to remember Morecambe and Wise, to which this play is a loving tribute-cum-amiable-ripoff? Probably not. They are stamp…
ISLAND OF WONDER AND UNEASE     One of the interesting, rewarding quirks in Tom Littler's small-but-perfectly-formed Tempest is that Tam Williams doubles as Ferdinand, the ul…
GLIMPSES OF ETERNITY (Review first published on D.Mail, in shorter form)     This is wonderful. Sometimes a simple short performance can shake, rouse, even change you.…
worth going again I say.. Just thought I should mention to theatrecat readers how wonderful this show it. Saw it twice before the pandemic, nipped back to a matinee a week or so back…
2021 BRITAIN IN A STATELY STORMY NUTSHELL   Just what we needed, I thought! A good old state-of-the-nation black comedy with a semi-derelict Manor in a howling storm, the sea …
SIX CENTURIES ON, IT'S GEOFFREY CHAUCER'S ROUND     Zadie Smith humbly refers to her first play as more like "homework" than the novelist's usual dread of a blank page. Ch…
A CHEKHQUERED RESPONSE     Vanya and Sonia are siblings " though she is adopted " and have led dull dutiful lives in a remote country house surrounded by cherry trees and…
      ROLL UP! IT'S BACK! Ah, Christmastime!   There's nothing like a buff chap in spike-heeled patent thigh-boots somersaulting in the air to make you feel festive.…
A HUMAN ZOO OF ALPHA MEN There are good plays to be written about white male privilege, and about modern capitalism and its relentless expectation of self-promotion and constant advancement …
THEY DO NOT GROW OLD AS WE IN THE STALLS GROW OLD    May as well tell you, last week I had the ultimate pensioner experience, and it was a blast.  A midweek, senior-price…
TWENTY YEARS AGO, ANOTHER HEALTH CRISIS CHANGED LIVES   Just before the pandemic closed everything down, Emily Jenkins' deft two-hander won a top Edinburgh Fringe award and many p…
FACE THE MUSIC, AND DANCE!     This was a new outing for me.  I have long loved the Watermill some miles west, but I hadn't really registered the Mill at Sonning w…
Reprise: they're still at it, as good as ever    If I were a PR for the Society of London Theatres, I would get these six performers together for a photocall with the five fro…
 THE MYTH AND TERROR THAT CHILDREN KNOW      Sometimes a violent rip occurs in the thin veil of materialism ,commonsense, morality and law.  Children kn…
COULD YOU? WOULD YOU? FOR A MILLION BUCKS? Here's a struggling young couple (well, not that young,  both on second marriages and he has a daughter going to college). Along comes a billion…
UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED TO BE A HOOT      It had to happen: someone had to notice that in the comfortable upper-middle and aristocratic worlds of Jane Austen's novel, …
NOT A REVIEW BUT SOME JOLLY NEWS Not a review, because this was the first performance of a modest weekend testing the water: a script-in-hand, moustaches-falling-off, fresh-o…
 THE HEART STILL FEELS THE BEAT     Everything Bob Marley sings lifts the heart, instructing it to rise and triumph and unite in joy: lively-up yourself!  …
THE DEVIL IN THE DETAIL: scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry  There was a spate of criticism when Richard Norton Taylor's dramatisation of the Grenfell Inquiry was announced, despite it…
