Theatre
The Years, Almeida Theatre review - matchless acting quintet makes for a must-seeThursday, 08 August 2024
The title sounds as if we ought to be in for an evening of Virginia Woolf, and, indeed, one of the astonishing women on view (Deborah Findlay) was in fact a co-star of the recent West End version of Orlando. In fact, this late-summer offering is a... Read more... |
Fiddler on the Roof, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - dazzling gem of a production marks its diamond anniversaryThursday, 08 August 2024
If I were a rich man, I'd be inclined to put together a touring production of Fiddler on the Roof and send it around the world, a week here, a week there, to educate and entertain. But, like Tevye, I also have to sell a little milk to put... Read more... |
A Chorus Line, Sadler's Wells review - high-kicking fun that's low on pathosTuesday, 06 August 2024
A Chorus Line reigned supreme on Broadway from 1975 to 1990, a bold, bare-bones piece that for once put musical theatre’s hoofers in the spotlight. “As welcome as a rainbow after a thunderstorm” was Clive Barnes’s summation in the New York Times.It... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: The Mosinee Project / Gwyneth Goes SkiingTuesday, 06 August 2024
The Mosinee Project, Underbelly Cowgate ★★★★In May 1950, a small US town awoke to hammer-and-sickle flags hanging from lamp-posts, its local newspaper transformed into a Soviet propaganda journal, its citizens’ firearms confiscated and handed... Read more... |
Frankie Goes To Bollywood, Southbank Centre review - lots of lights, but a dull showMonday, 05 August 2024
In the 1960s, Cilla Black was rescued from hat check duties at The Cavern and made a star. In the 1980s, Rick Astley was whisked away from tea-making at the Stock-Aitken-Waterman studios to launch, 30 years later. a billion RickRolls. In the 2020s,... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: Heartbreak Hotel / The Gummy Bears' Great War / The CeremonySaturday, 03 August 2024
Heartbreak Hotel, Summerhall ★★★★ If the show’s title leaves you expecting schmaltz and dodgy Elvis impressions – well, you might be disappointed, and possibly pleasantly surprised. This quietly powerful two-hander from New Zealand-based... Read more... |
Red Speedo, Orange Tree Theatre review - two versions of American values slug it outMonday, 22 July 2024
Before Lucas Hnath wrote Red Speedo, he had heard a 2004 speech at a hearing investigating baseball doping that declared the practice “un-American”. That started him thinking about the concept of fairness. After the play had been produced in New... Read more... |
ECHO, LIFT 2024, Royal Court review - enriching journey into the mind of an exileSaturday, 20 July 2024
The Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour is many things, some seemingly contradictory: a) a clever, poetic playwright who uses high-tech elements in his work to inventive effect; b) a mischievous presence who likes to appear in his own highly... Read more... |
The Hot Wing King, National Theatre review - high kitchen-stove comedy, with sides of dramaSaturday, 20 July 2024
There’s an exuberant comedy from the start in Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King, which comes to London after an initial Covid-truncated Off Broadway run which brought her a Pulitzer prize in 2021. Roy Alexander Weise’s production puts in all the... Read more... |
Hello, Dolly!, London Palladium review - Imelda Staunton makes every line a deal-brokerFriday, 19 July 2024
Jerry Herman is the king of pep. Way too much of it in the first 20 minutes of the recent revue Jerry’s Girls had me screaming for a breather, but here the opening cavalcade, gorgeous overture included, intoxicates thanks to Dominic Cooke‘s razor-... Read more... |
The Baker's Wife, Menier Chocolate Factory review - loving reappraisal doesn't entirely, well, riseFriday, 19 July 2024
The Baker's Wife closed on the way to Broadway in 1976, since which time Stephen Schwartz's stubbornly resistent if sweetly scored musical has been revived and reworked all over the map, not least by Gordon Greenberg. The American director has... Read more... |
More Than One Story review - nine helpings of provocative political theatreMonday, 15 July 2024
A stark end-title at the end of this collection of short films sums up the dire situation the UK is in: one in five people,14 million Britons, are now living in poverty. This shocking statistic is one the enterprising people of the Cardboard... Read more... |
