1,401 stories from theatrecat.com
 THE RACE WHERE NOBODY WINS    This feels like a howl of baffled frustration, from a millennial generation ( writer and director, and all four characters) unable to deal wi…
THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH.    Almeida, N1 THE SCOTTISH PLAY WE NEEDED  Say what you like about star-casting and auteur-ish directors messing with Shakespeare, but sometimes …
AN OLD STORY OF YOUNG MEN   Balliol College Oxford, 1910. Confident young Etonians are hurling crockery downstairs, yelling "I'm a bastard, I'm a bastard, rather be a bastard than a …
EAST IS EAST, IN EAST ANGLIA    Shamser Sinha " who is on the National Theatre Connections project " relished the idea of writing a play about a South-Asian working-class fami…
AN EVER-MORPHING PROTEAN TEXT…RENEWS AGAIN BEFORE OUR EYES    Every Hamlet should give us something new. The play is a philosophical and psychological labyrinth, its jew…
 FOUR WIVES LATER, MANTEL AND MILES COMPLETE THE JOURNEY It was rising eight years ago that the first two parts of Hilary Mantel's majestic Wolf Hall trilogy came to the stage…
NOT QUITE A REVIEW, MORE A TRIP DOWN A SIDE ALLEY I was on the early train up when news came that poor old Southwark had ,for the second time, been forced by illness to cancel two performanc…
WHO NEEDS PANTO? A CLASSY FLIGHT OF FANCY ON THE ROAD    This show, which I had the joy of seeing in a packed Theatre Royal Norwich alongside many small thrilled children, …
THE LAST GREAT PLAGUE     If you lived as an adult alongside the onset of AIDS forty years ago you don't forget it: the lost friends and workmates , the rumours of ignorance w…
A POCKET JEWEL    We always knew that among the first sproutings of recovery would be a few Alan Ayckbourns, popping up as welcome as snowdrops. I am always fond of this early…
AN ARCATI MORE THAN MEDIUM I once took a student nephew to this Coward masterpiece, and the thrill for me was that he didn't know there was a g"". Until there was. Therefore for a rising gen…
A SHAGGY-DOG TALE IN CRUMBLING SPLENDOUR     Sometimes the building upstages the play. I had not explored the late-Victorian, half-restored glory of the Coronet before,…
AN EPIC OF PASSION AND PERFORMANCE     Here is life, history, theatrical passion, great migrations and lyrical romance in the rain. Here's anger and humour and…
A HISTORIC HIT BACK, BETTER THAN EVER   This portrait of three bickering sisters, trading memories and revelations in the days before a mother's funeral in a snowy Yorkshire …
LOVE, GRIEF, AND A BRAD PITT ALBATROSS  With loving detail, right down a glimpse of coat-racks beyond the far door, the downstairs studio serving Tom Wells' new play has become a…
ICE WORK IF YOU GET IT…     Phew. The Broadway-rooted, Disneylicious, long-awaited red-carpet premiere night featured (of course) an ice -blue carpet. And the th…
ARTHUR SMITH CONJURES UP HIS DAD   These days our Arfur comes complete with an overture! It takes the form of Kirsty Newton at the piano (artfully disguised as an upright 1940's …
THEATRE'S FAIRY GODFATHER DOES IT AGAIN We needed this. The return of the big classic shows to packed houses  in the Barbican, Chichester and Sadlers Wells has been invigorating, but Lloy…
   Occupied France, 1944. Two teenagers newly in love meet in an empty house.  Elodie is French, Otto a German soldier. They are both endearing and annoying, as b…
NOT A REVIEW BUT MIGHT SEND YOU THERE… Take this as a report not a review, because actual work commitments made me skip at the interval. But I was persuaded to the long 70 minute first…
     This is the Mercury rising, rebuilt over two years with a cool café and dance studio, modern eco-glazing and, to respect the town's history, a solemn archae…
WONDERFUL OLD COBBLERS ON ABDICATION STREET (longer version of review done for Mail)    You know you're in safe hands when a stagestruck Prince Edward, diffident and exci…
FLOODS OF RELIEF Ten years have passed since, in a Times Chief Theatre Critic hat, I last saw a former principal of the Royal Ballet leaping in puddles , singing his great heart out,…
A VOICE FROM THE 90's PREFIGURES THE FUTURE…   This is a grand intellectual teaser of a show, and under Lucy Bailey's almost mischievous direction does a good job of shaking up fas…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS MORE SMOKE THAN FIRE ON THE HACKNEY STAGE Grimeborn are following up their fantastic 2019 Das Rheingold (see my previous review) with Die Walküre this …
