846 stories by "Friends"
POWER, MAJESTY AND JUSTICE      Very good to see this intense three-hander by Ryan Calais Cameron (who gave us "For Black Boys.." ) migrating to Shaftesbury Avenue wit…
THE 1660's AND ALL THAT:  THEATRE REBORN     Oddly, for theatrecat it's the second day running of enliveningly energetic female history. After six women told the story…
A ROUSING RACKET TO HONOUR A LIFE   Mary Wollstonecraft was a pearl of the 18c Age of Reason, even more treasurable for having " as a woman " a harder time of it than all the Loc…
THE UNSERIOUS UNDEAD  "You will be horrified!" The five players announce, "- one way or another". And with a flourish they hurl Bram Stoker's book behind them into Tijana Bjelajac'sÅ
A STRANGE WARTIME FABLE OF LIFE, BIRTH AND JEWELLERY  In a little Jeweller's shop in 1942 Paris Joseph Haffmann is making a deal with his young assistant Pierre.  He is Jewish, a…
AN ANCIENT BRUTALITY, RIGHT HERE     Five women from the past mount the stage, candlelit, to enact theterrible story of the 17c Suffolk witch-trials.  First there…
BRUTAL, VIOLENT AND TENDER   Around a King's coffin surge personalities and politics , power plays and lineage . A royal bier is loaded with crown and jewelled cross, around …
 HEROIC STORY, NEAR MISS   It could hardly be a better theme and story for this terrific little theatre, which since its opening has explored the darkness of Nazism and the heroism…
A TROUSER-LEG TSUNAMI AND A COATHANGER DREAM     They came off the boats: a Windrush generation, wanting to work and live in cold strange Britain.  In an upper…
HEART AND HUMOUR, REALPOLITIK AND GOD     This is a wonderful play, all you could want: philosophy, history prefiguring the present moment, humour and character , …
A RAVE IN MESSINA Get da kids into Shakespeare! The world worries about it. So Jamie Lloyd hits a formula hard to beat with one of the sunniest comedies (only one pretend death). So …
MOTHERHOOD, FOR LIFE     Had there been trigger warnings they might add "extreme nursing" alongside the usual alerts about sickness, death, abortion and conflict. Believe …
A THREAT CALLED AGGIE . Good when the news feeds theatre-moments. This week, AI solved in two days a medical conundrum which had baffled humans for a decade. On the other hand,Â…
VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED ON SS ELSINORE Last time the ever-inventive Rupert Goold directed here it was the Merchant of Venice, set in a casino so we could all write "merchant of Vegas"…
RICHARD II     Bridge Theatre, SE1  A THRILLING DANCE AROUND A CROWN    This is one of the most lyrically lovely, metaphorically rich of Shakespeare's…
A TRICYCLE MADE FOR THREE?   After Mike Bartlett's COCK " where one of a gay male couple falls for a girl " I wrote that the poor sap of a hero thinks he he choosing a sexuality …
A BRITISH BASTARD STALKS THROUGH HISTORY   What's to be done about truly awful people: amoral, selfishly irresponsible, arrogant and greedy? A time-honoured British appr…
  A GREAT TURNING POINT, CAUGHT IN ASPIC  It is 1942.  Prime minister Churchill has travelled to Moscow to meet Stalin. Each side has a problem at home with voices wanting …
WILD SHORES IN WARTIME   Risk taking a gap between seeing David Greig plays and you forget how downright louche things are likely to turn out. (I had lately revelled in Prudencia…
A FEMALE EVOLUTION, FRANK AND FINE First salute the cast: Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindraand Harmony Rose-Bremner, for an unpretentiously powerful tour de force. Ea…
   ABSURDITY AND SUBLIMITY After the glorious Parisian detail of the revived Rigoletto here , Johannes Schutz' spare bland box with only four flat doors is an opposite take…
A FEMALE EVOLUTION, FRANK AND FINE First salute the cast: Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner, for an unpretentiously powerful tour de …
FUNNY ABOUT THE UNFUNNY     Billy Bash,  rated the third most offensive comedian in Britain, was once the dominant partner in Biddle and Bash. He's still on tour,…
A DARKER THOMAS CROMWELL     Edward Bennett as Thomas Cromwell is a proper thug: everyone's memory of the HR-outplacement weasel who starts the sacking meeting wi…
 SUBURBAN ANGST IN THE NEW SA There's nothing like a tight, awkward comedy of neighbourhood strife, where neighbourly differences reveal unexpected fissures within the couples, and tiny p…
