musicals
Pretty Woman: The Musical, Piccadilly Theatre review - not so pretty, actuallyTuesday, 03 March 2020![]() It’s not so much that Pretty Woman: The Musical isn’t much good, which it isn’t. More to the point is that this West End replica of the recent Broadway musical of the 1990 film feels utterly superfluous: a gloss on a popular romcom that... Read more... |
The Prince of Egypt, Dominion Theatre review - Moses musical goes big and broadWednesday, 26 February 2020![]() The theatre gods rained down not fire and pestilence, but a 45-minute technical delay on opening night of this substantially revised musical – a stage adaptation of the 1998 DreamWorks animated movie. But nothing could entirely halt this juggernaut... Read more... |
Be More Chill, The Other Palace review - more exhausting than enlighteningMonday, 24 February 2020![]() This latest musical theatre exercise in “geek chic” has been an American phenomenon: a show propelled by social media that developed a rabid fan base taking it all the way to Broadway last year. And here Be More Chill now is in London at The Other... Read more... |
Rags: The Musical, Park Theatre review - a timely, if predictable, immigrant taleMonday, 20 January 2020![]() “Take our country back!” is the rallying cry of the self-identified “real” Americans gathered to protest the arrival of immigrants. It could be a contemporary Trump rally – or, indeed, the nastier side of current British political discourse – but in... Read more... |
Les Misérables, Sondheim Theatre review - join in our crusadeFriday, 17 January 2020![]() Do you hear the people sing? In recent months, you're more likely to have heard news stories about the longest running West End musical than the actual music. Stephen Sondheim – who celebrates his 90th birthday in March – missed the gala opening of... Read more... |
Celebrating the musicals of Jerry Herman (1931-2019)Friday, 03 January 2020![]() How is it that, in the nearly 900 pages of Sondheim's collected lyrics with extensive comments Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat, with numerous special boxes celebrating other composers and lyricists, he managed to mention Jerry Herman only... Read more... |
Girl From The North Country, Gielgud Theatre review – poignant collaboration between Conor McPherson and Bob DylanMonday, 23 December 2019![]() Despair hangs like mildew over the small iron-ore mining town of Duluth, Minnesota, where dreams go to die, and the living haunt the clapped-out buildings like lost souls. This poignant collaboration between playwright Conor McPherson and Bob Dylan... Read more... |
Cats review - feline freakinessThursday, 19 December 2019![]() Tom Hooper’s freakily phantasmagoric visualisation of an already strange West End smash is a high-wire act risking the sniggers which greeted its trailer. And yet it never falls, sustaining a subtly hallucinatory, wholly theatrical reality. Doubling... Read more... |
Curtains, Wyndham's Theatre review - unexpectedly giddy funWednesday, 18 December 2019![]() Who knew? This West End premiere of the 2007 Broadway entry from the legendary songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret) secured a prime holiday-season slot at the last minute when this playhouse's previous entry, The Man... Read more... |
The Boy Friend, Menier Chocolate Factory review - fun but featherweightWednesday, 04 December 2019![]() There’s slight (White Christmas, to name but one) and then there’s The Boy Friend, a period musical so unabashedly vaporous that if you sneeze, it might blow away. All credit then to the Menier Chocolate Factory for anchoring Sandy Wilson’s... Read more... |
White Christmas, Dominion Theatre review - breezy but blandThursday, 28 November 2019![]() Nostalgia for things that probably never were is an animating theme in politics these days. Much the same feeling displaced to the realm of showbiz, lends a vaguely dampening air to White Christmas, this latest stage retread of the 1954 Bing... Read more... |
Frozen II review - the allure cools offThursday, 21 November 2019![]() Frozen is possibly the most beloved Disney movie since the studio rediscovered its mojo in the 1990s. While picking up a couple of Oscars and laying waste to box office records, it had young girls immersing themselves in favourite characters... Read more... |
