1,405 stories from theatrecat.com
AN AGED ELEGANCE Beau Brummel is back in Jermyn Street, a century on from his decline, bankruptcy, royal disfavour and exile to a Calais convent madhouse. Down the road from his statu…
YOUNG, CONFLICTED AND GAY: VOICES FROM 1968 It feels dated now: the shrieking queenery, the preening Jules-and Sandy camp, the insider camaraderie. Oh and the angs: the misery of self…
THE WATERS RISE ROUND Â TOKSVIG ISLAND… There's a bit of conflicted-critic syndrome here. Sandi Toksvig is one of the most amiable wits of today: fun, sharp, humane, sensible,…
MORTIFICATION AND MERRIMENT ON TOUR Â Â It was a young Jane Austen who wrote this wonderful squib of a novel, and its delight is in the absurdities and agonies of youth: credulo…
THE LITERARY LIFE,  AS SHAGFEST Those still wondering why on earth 42% of women voted for Donald Trump may feel enlightened by the way in which – in this successful Americ…
CORPSES BY CANDLELIGHT "Dost thou imagine thou canst slide on blood, and not be tainted in a shameful fall?" asks Cardinal Monticello of the murderous Lodovico, a man who tends…
A DAFT DETECTIVE DOUBLE-ACT Retro clutter round a piano: files, a hatstand, model house, gun, notebook, handcuffs. We are in the territory of smalltown detective fiction, a touch of the Poir…
DAFT, Â DIRTY, Â BUT GREAT I remember it at Edinburgh a few years ago : a sly, elegant witty refreshment on an arid Fringe day. Poet-actors Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna deployed…
RIBBIT! RIBBIT! FROGS, FOOLS, FABULOUS Here's a tonic for theis flat , glum season! Divinely tasteless, bracingly cynical , hootingly funny (jokes from subtle to silly) and directed with pac…
MOCK TUDOR, RIOTOUS BUT NOT RUFF It's described by its creator Pat Whymark as "a sort of Tudor/Muppets mash-up with a respectful nod to Blackadder and DIY SOS". To which I would add e…
AN AFGHAN EPIC TO REMEMBER Khaled Hosseini's novel is an intimate epic: a flawed, damaged, remorseful man's journey through thirty years of turbulent history. Amir is the privileged P…
THE MAID OF ORLEANS AND HER TORMENTORS For fifteen minutes as the audience troops in Gemma Arterton, in chainmail and breastplate, kneels on a dais in rapt contemplation: mouthing pra…
FRESH AS PAINT, Â THE OLD STORY "Marley was dead…". Oh how we need Dickens' story every year. You can do it panto or earnest, screen or stage, Tommy Steele or Alistair Sim,…
OH YES IT IS, IT REALLY IS… Want to see Julian Clary in a feather headdress and spangles, looping the loop on a flying Vespa over the front stalls.? Course you do! Hungry for pumpki…
LIVES IN LIMBO At the Connection at St Martin's they say that none of us is more than two bad decisions away from the pavement. The street homeless we know, a little. Less plainly lai…
A COLD-BURNING BRILLIANCE A century ago Henrik Ibsen saw, with more clarity than the strait bourgeois world around him, that it wouldn’t do. Not the hypocrisies, not the …
BETTER TO RANT IN HELL.. Magnificent in military jacket as he lectures the College of Tempters, then at ease in his study in fine brocade against a marvellous backdrop of skulls and b…
LUKE JONES BUZZES HAPPILY ROUND THE HONEY Where Ivanov, The Seagull and Uncle Vanya mull, the youthfully fresh and fashionably unfinished Platonov rattles along like the TGV. Michael …
O THE PRETTINESS, O THE JOKES… Our heroine gets a job as sales clerk in Maraczek's perfumery by selling a customer ia gorgeous hand-painted musical candy box. Which sums …
HURRAH FOR HOLLYWOOD, AND LONG LIVE FOOLS 'Tis the season to be silly, and the Young Vic's revival of a screwball 1930's Hollywood satire hit the spot triumphantly with this theatre's…
PULLING THE FAIRY STRINGS IN AN URBAN NEVERLAND Wendy is grown up now, earthbound , with her own child to tell about the wonder and danger of Neverland and Pan. She can't leave the gr…
IN WHICH LUKE JONES TRIES AND FAILS TO DISINTER DEEP TRUTHS As in  all slow-burning plays there moments where you tune out for a second and ask yourself 'is this a masterpiece o…
THE BLEAK AND THE BOUNCY…RICE COOKS UP A CHRISTMAS PUD Emma Rice's warm, candelit take on Hans Christian Andersen, inventive and full-hearted as ever, raises a certain anxiety: I wo…
DIVISIONS…DIVISIONS…DIVISIONS…. The Parliamentary chaos of the 1970's – hung parliaments, fragile alliances and lost divisions which predated the dawn of Mrs Thatc…
THE 1930’S SPEAK TO US AGAIN… It's 1937, hard times for the just-managing family. The Monkhams are broke, dreading creditors and bailiffs. The great hope is that the son C…
