1,401 stories from theatrecat.com
THE NEW ERA BEGINS…   Here's a vulnerable Hamlet: a lonely lad in proper tearful grief and disappointment at his mother's remarriage.  A Hamlet who, in feigning …
BOW, BOW! THEY'RE ON THE ROAD AGAIN.. It must be nearly five years since Sasha Regan's all-male Iolanthe at Wiltons' caused me to break a lifelong resistance and enjoy …
SCHLOCK-HORRORWITZ  AND HURRAH FOR THE SKELETON   Gotta love the buccaneering quality of west end theatres: the Small Faces musical at the little Ambassadors off Cam…
THE SHINE AND THE TERROR It is no bad thing to have your stage hero effectively co-designing the set. Christopher Oram's recreation of Mark Rothko's 1950's studio is a bleak bo…
CLEAR YOUNG VOICES FROM A DISTANT PAST   Three children in the 1540's play in a hay-barn, built fragrant and real in the tiny theatre.  One has found a pilgr…
ROUGH, RURAL, A NEGLECTED ALBION An immense intrusive pipe bisects the stage, a rusty oil tank below it with part of a tractor one side and a cheerless Victorian brick farmhous…
OSCAR AT HIS MOST EARNEST Worth going to Jonathan Church's latest Wilde "Classic Spring"revival if only for a feast of Foxes: patriarch Edward as old Lord Caversham and his re…
CREATIVES, C***TS AND CONTRACTS  The theatrical repertoire has a new monster:  Bernard, created by Joe Penhall and brought to scorchingly memorable, sociopathicall…
FAST, FINE  STREETWISE SHAKESPEARE     Running and scuffling, a crowd of kids in black scatter across the stark stage under an open-sided, distressedly concr…
GUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR  FINDS  KINSHIP IN  A FAMILY SORROW Well, this is timely. In the shadow of Windrush, a play  immerses us in the colourful traditions …
COWARD GOES FARCEO-FORTISSIMO      In the final outburst from our hero Gary Essendine – silk-dressing-gowned philanderer, arrogantly insecure d…
A WAR OVER, A WORLD ADRIFT It's a great tapestry of a play: Rodney Ackland's portrait of a Soho nightclub as WW2 ended. Socialites and slobs, black-marketeers and failing artists, una…
REBEL WITHOUT AN ARGUMENT It is a curiosity of the age that young British women seem to be far angrier about The Patriarchy than their mothers , even though law, language, women's acc…
GOLDEN SANDS AND GRIEVANCES Nicola Werenowska has certainly found fertile ground for the setting of her play: the decline of English seaside towns (in this case Clacton) from t…
Part 1: SECRET HEARTS (and an explanation) This is a fabulously quixotic enterprise directed by Tom Littler: a revival of all nine of Noel Coward's one-act plays, written in 1935 as a…
MORE THAN A PICNIC Â I could tell you that it is worth going up West for the transfer of Hampstead's fine play just to see Roger Allam (his fine quiff sadly suppressed under…
BAT'S BACK…    In a remarkably quick return after its Coliseum outing , Jim Steinman's barmy musical is storming onto the Tottenham Court Road, rocking on. Few cast c…
A LATE NIGHT TO REMEMBER      At twenty to midnight, 106 years to the day after the collision, an audience gathered in this big theatre to mark and remember…
SCI-FI AND SORROW We begin with a tiny proscenium box, an almost Punch-and-Judy window, framing Harry and his wife Max: nice middle-aged people, evoked to sitcom perfection by a beard…
  THE JOINT IS JUMPING! AGAIN…   Openings are running in themed  sets – three Restoration comedies coming along like No.11 buses, and now two …
SWOTS OR SWINDLERS, VILLAINS OR VICTIMS? Sometimes a West End transfer serves a play royally. At Chichester last year I enjoyed James Graham's playful, thoughtfully mischievous…
CATHY, STILL NOT HOME AFTER FIFTY YEARS Homeless charities like to remind us of the mantra: we are all just two bad decisions away from the pavement. The trajectory of our heroine Cat…
SHORT, SHARP, STIMULATING    The INK new writing festival (http://inkfestival.org) is a phenomenon: a space where writers of any experience or none can submit short plays …
FROTHING OVER WITH FEMALE HILARITY A pre-curtain ensemble of one harpsichord and a quartet of periwigged lady saxophonists, playing Mozart with a touch of oompah, is always…
IT'S THAT SHOW AGAIN, AND VERY WELCOME TOO It's WW2 themed. Gas masks, posters, programmes in an ARP fire-bucket and rude songs to cheer the troops on leave and show Hitler that Brita…
