1,405 stories from theatrecat.com
GUEST REVIEWER MICHAEL ADAIR ROCKS ALONG WITH RICE AT THE GLOBE… "In Love We Trust" – is the motto of the SS Unity, the ship that swiftly sinks moments into Emma Rice's ta…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS LOVE, PITY AND HORROR IN EQUAL MEASURE AT THE OLD VIC Jack Thorne's explosive new Woyzeck brings Büchner's unfinished working class tragedy to B…
LOOK INTO THE DARK AND SMILE ALL TOUR LONG   This cheerfully macabre celebration of Charles Addams' famous 1930's cartoon is off on tour: link below. I saw one of the last shows in i…
TWISTEDLY IRRESISTIBLE I would not like you to think that I stalk Greg Hicks (though obviously I do: aaah, that odd strong Caesar, that agonized Leontes, that bonkers newspaper ed…
ENLARGE, ENLIGHTEN , ENLIVEN…ENTERTAIN! Expatiating on the Grand Staircase of a dreary Tudor stately home (built with ironic love by designer Robert Jones) our tour guide Let…
LET THERE BE LIGHT! The year 1632 : we are halfway through the epic conflict between Galileo Galilei and the Holy Roman Church, an authority in its day quite as ruthless as Stalin and…
IN WHICH MICHAEL ADAIR LOSES HIS THEATRE-CRITIC VIRGINITY TO A PACK OF SCOTTISH MINXES A few years ago, when High School Musical and Glee were in their pomp, we were forever se…
BLEACH, BLUES, AND BLACK AMERICA RISING Here's a pocket musical with huge themes, a blues opera of historic seriousness but with a singing washing-machine in a bubbled minidress. A ti…
FRESH AS A (VIOLENT) DAISY AFTER 376 YEARS What wonders, sir, are these? How beauteous fringe theatre is! We Tuesday matinee-goers, paying peanuts for the smaller space in an Ã…
A CRIME, A CARDINAL, A CONFLICT It is Twelfth Night, the feast of the Epiphany, 1941. In the Jermyn's tight intimacy we are sitting in the clinical director’s office of a home f…
AFTER SADDAM: WHAT’S LEFT WHEN YOU TAKE AWAY A TYRANT? An electrifying moment in this sharp, riveting play sees two bitter rivals, in a moment of stillness between blood-f…
REAGAN, RELIGION, AND REMEMBERING… Direct comparisons are dangerous, even when – as this week – two consecutive days see major works opening in London, both set in the 1…
IRELAND OF THE SORROWS: THE KIDS, THE  CRAIC AND THE KILLING It is 1982 in  County Armagh. Not a good time to be Irish, not there. Not with internees still in the H blocks and t…
NOBILITY AND THE NOSE  on tour  You've hardly sat down before there's a jolly mass drinking-song in pantaloons, leather breastplates and hat-feathers being romped through in fr…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI FINDS THE DONMAR'S NEW VERSION OF BRECHT CRIMINALLY IRRESISTIBLE How do you get, keep and wield power? What do you use it for, and why? And, if you will stop …
BILIOUS BUT BRACING: THE METROPOLIS AND THE MOVIES Simon may be from the wrong side of New York, a roughneck who ties his wife Anne to a chair and tapes her mouth for being “critica…
GUEST REVIEWER CHARLOTTE VALORI SEES ANCIENT GRUDGE BREAK TO NEW MUTINY AT THE GLOBE The recent spats at the Globe, between the now outgoing Artistic Director Emma Rice and The Powers That B…
1918..1968..AND NOW.. ALAN BENNETT'S ENGLAND In his 1994 diaries Alan Bennett described the funeral of a Dunkirk veteran in a village church. "crammed with the men who won the war. Yo…
VAN HOVE, VISCONTI, AND OUR JUDE London is  getting used to Ivo van Hove of Toneelgroep Amsterdam. But his tremendous A View from The Bridge (in a bleak arena)  and his striking…
A WINDOW ON AN IVORY TOWER…  Full disclosure: I bought a ticket for an early preview, because press night was my husband's birthday but I couldn't resist checking out Chr…
GHOSTS OF WAR AND SHIPWRECK "When all the world's at war, it's better to be dead". Pallid pessimistic ghosts roam around a lonely Maine lighthouse in WW2, with heaving sepia seas behi…
A JOURNEY THROUGH A PLAGUE YEAR With the horror of Syria fresh on us, and Africa's travails with Ebola still haunting, this sombre, unforgettable treatment of Albert Camus' LA PESTE f…
A CANUTE FOR THE AGE OF ANYWHERES This substantial début play by Tallulah Brown hits an intriguing syncope with David Goodhart's much-discussed definition of the UK tribes. Not le…
A WILD TALE FROM HELL'S BORDERS  – on the road This enterprising regional touring company generally focuses on the East, whether John Clare or Arthur Ransome, Viking …
BEVERLEY ON THE ROAD AGAIN This a fascinating play, not least because forty years on we can't seem to get enough of it. Cherished by am-dram, revived by excellent casts and theatres, …
