1,405 stories from theatrecat.com
O ENGLAND IS A GARDEN… There’s a lawn and a vast magnificent tree. In dim moonlight before the start a figure in khaki – could be any war – kneels to feel the eart…
OSCAR'S BACK!  IN THE VERY WEEK OF HIS BIRTHDAY… A theatrical phenomenon of the 20th century is the way that some of the most perceptive parts for women were written by g…
LUKE JONES RELISHES ELDRIDGE ON MIDLIFE CHAOS When the music stops and the lights click on, your first thought is 'sweet Jesus what the hell went down at this party”? …
A TRANSYLVANIAN TRANSPORT OF DELIGHT Sometimes you just want a bit of fun. That is the moment to turn to Mel Brooks, master of daft parody. At 91, the master strode onstage ton…
A FINE ROMANCE? A quick quantum-mechanics lesson (though this is not a play about science). The Heisenberg principle asserts that there is a limit to knowing what will happen to the p…
FAITHFUL TO UNFAITHFULNESS, ZELLER SPARKLES AGAIN This is a companion-piece to the stormingly funny, cruelly witty THE TRUTH: Florian Zeller, translated from the French with ve…
A JOYFUL JIGSAW: TABLE MANNERS, LIVING TOGETHER, ROUND AND ROUND THE GARDEN In more rigorous technical times there was an art school exercise: "draw an imagined street-scene in perspe…
A FAMILY SITCOM UPS ITS GAME… I didn't much rate its premiere at the National in 2015, despite the achingly chic set I felt was "a kitchen-diner so huge and smart it makes David Cam…
ON SEEING IT AGAIN…THE LATE EDITION IS BETTER STILL… Nipping late into the Almedia after the opening,  I concurred with every word of Luke Jones' review on theatrec…
CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS HERE, TOO, ARE TEARS FOR THE MISFORTUNES OF TROY While there are many excellent reasons to read Virgil's Aeneid from cover to cover, more than once, the fourth book of…
CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS CLASS CIVIL WAR AT THE RSC Coriolanus doesn't often hit the modern stage: its plot, a hymn to the necessary evil of educated patrician privilege in order to provide fo…
PEACE IN THEIR TIME…HOW TO DO IT This is a three-hour historical political play about Middle East negotiations in the 1990s: and it is absolutely thrilling. Pins you to your seat wi…
CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS DREAMS COMING TRUE IN MEDIEVAL NORFOLK In Norfolk, we tend to be quietly, fondly proud of our surroundings " with an emphasis on 'quietly.' The tradition of Norfolk un…
A PSYCHOTIC SAMSON AND HIS WOMEN "There is no such thing as the imagination" says August Strindberg indignantly. "Things are real or they are not.". Right now, holed up in a shabby ho…
THE CABMAN’S PROGRESS It couldn't be better placed, here in the arches below Charing Cross station. Under the venerable rules of London licensed cabs – dating back to the …
HARRIDAN OR HEROINE..? The feminist "Bechdel Test" for fiction says that there must be conversations between two women which are not about men. John Patrick Shanley's tight Pul…
THE BAD BOY WE NEEDED ONCE , AND STILL DO The corpse is the talking point and to some extent the star. Certainly Anah Ruddin, hopping out of the coffin spry as a fox for…
SUICIDE, SADNESS, SNIPING  AND SUPPER It often puzzles me why sharp little stage gems like this don’t get pounced on by TV, – notably the BBC – instead of commiss…
A PRIMITIVE AWAKENING It is dark. An earth floor, plank stable door ,  murky pond. Sometimes a candle is lit, but Soutra Gilmour's set remains tenebrous , primitive. A w…
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES HUNGERS BUT DOESN’T GET A BYTE I’ll give them this; it’s timely. After the violence in Charlottesville, we’ve all been asking what on e…
A DELICATE TREASURE Rarely seen, half-forgotten, Githa Sowerby's 1924 play is sharp, entertaining, truthful and elegant: Richard Eyre's direction respects it with delicate prec…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI MARVELS AT MARIANNE VIDAL Aylin Bozok's productions of French opera for Grimeborn have all been marked by their elegance, restraint and psychological intensit…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GETS THE ROYAL TREATMENT AT GRIMEBORN If you fancy being entertained like a French king, head to Grimeborn for Lully's Armide. Lully's artistic monopoly over …
GUEST CRITIC TOM HOLLOWAY WISHES FOR AN UPDATE.. Originally debuting eight years ago at the Bush Theatre, Alexi Kaye Campbell's Apologia is a story of intergenerational …
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI GETS NUTTIN’ MUCH FROM GRIMEBORN’S REDUCTION OF GERSHWIN My suspicions should have been aroused by the fact that there was no programme for Porgy …
