1,406 stories from theatrecat.com
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…
HERE'S THEÂ PLAICE TO BE… Ah ,universal truths! We are all living on thin ice, knocking up inadequate shelters, fishing hopefully down holes into the chilly truth beneath, accepti…
GUEST CRITIC LUKE JONES CHEERSÂ KIRKWOOD AT THE COURT The Children are the focus of this play, Â in their absence. Instead we have The Pensioners. Parents and a non-parent …
O BRAVE NEW WORLD, IN BRAVE CAPTIVITY Three years ago the Donmar's all-woman Julius Caesar, set in prison, left me feeling that something genuinely new had happened: a revolution, a s…
O BRAVE NEW WORLD…. The talking-point is Ariel: a daring innovation for live theatre. Motion-capture technology sensors on Mark Quartley's graceful body – skintight…
THEY’RE BACK.  OH YES.  INCLUDING URSULA. There comes a time in the year when the spirit yearns for a stiff drink and a whoop-along night in a mirrored tent, watching …
TRUTH, BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSEÂ Nearly 25 years on from its first outing at the National, Stephen Daldry's interpretation of the old JB Priestley standard – not least due to …
LUKE JONES ON THE RSC’s NEW LEAR.. (interesting contrast of response with LP’s Stratford review  , here on http://tinyurl.com/gnu73zq . We both love Essiedu’s Edmu…
TWO LORDS A-ROCKING… Now we know why Lord Lloyd Webber got so grumpy about being summoned back from the US to vote. Been head-down and happy, revelling in his first Broadway hit sin…
COMEDY AS PAIN, PAIN AS COMEDY A late catch-up, this: I was away on press night, so it seemed a good wheeze to dive into the Vaudeville for a matinee on Trumpageddon day. And here ind…
THE AGE OF ECSTASY AND AFFRONT It's not the first time that the idea of a family "intervention" has tempted a dramatist. Why wouldn't it? You've got one character out of contro…
A DIFFERENT AND (ALMOST) GREAT LEAR… This is, of course, “event theatre". Glenda Jackson, aged 80 , after 25 years off the stagedourly battling as a Labour MP, returns to the …
LUKE JONESÂ CONTEMPLATESÂ THE RSC’S ANCIENT BRITONS The first impression of this RSC import to London is messiness. The staging; nipped and tucked from the RSC thrust to the…
A MIRTHFUL MORALITY If Lucy Bailey's wickedly funny interpretation of Milton's moralising work gets another run (make it so!) anyone auditioning should make sure they are one of the parts wh…
AMERICA'S STORY, EVERYBODY'S SONG America's twentieth century belongs to all of us, and its events and themes echo round the world: the rise of corporate power, the racial and …
This is an unusual post, not about any current production, Â and far too long. Â And the latest current reviews are available below, AMADEUS at the top and well worth it. Â Â But t…
ONE OF THE GREAT NIGHTS The old man’s eye is unforgiving, his squat wrecked strength of will cows the vast room as he invokes us – “ghosts of the future" – to …
TUMOURS, RUMOURS, Â A BIT OF HUMOUR The cancer thing finished off another old friend at the weekend, the call coming between the official press night and my getting to Bryony Kimmin…
AN AFRICAN ODYSSEY Not all refugees are in Calais or aiming for here. This enthralling piece from Mark Dornford-May's Isango Ensemble of Cape Town tells another story, an African epic…
NOT A BARNSTORMER. NOT THIS TIME.. About 65 minutes in, the willowy monotone Mona sighingly asks her lover "Don't you get tired of your character? I think I do". So civil is the Natio…
CO-CRITIC Â LUKE JONES, Â VIRTUOUSLY UNLUBRICATED, Â DEPLOYSÂ THE DIPSTICK OF JUDGEMENT.. What I like about the Almeida is that is that the audience smells as if they've bee…
A DEVOTED DIGNITY I was a little wary of this, the last two productions I saw (including the TV one) having left me mildly irritated and almost bored. For all its skill and wit, there…
AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS, 1964 When Teresa May at the Tory Conference quoted the Sam Cooke lyric "A change is gonna come" , many on the left suffered, not unreasonably, a violent conni…
LIVES IN A LUNCHTIMEÂ Having swerved going to the Edinburgh Fringe this year (costs, personal issues, exhaustion , don't ask) I felt I was owed some hour-long daytime sessio…
AFTER THE WAR WAS OVER…SOUTHERN ACCIDIE.. Lilian Hellman – tough, personally unconventional, a liberal ahead of her time – counted this as one of her favourite works. Most …
