musicals
Pygmalion, Chichester Festival TheatreTuesday, 20 July 2010
Revivals of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion are generally too busy making an artistic case for the play over the My Fair Lady musical to worry about listening out for contemporary resonances. But in many ways Simon Cowell is the Henry Higgins of our... Read more... |
Aspects of Love, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 15 July 2010
The Menier Chocolate Factory could scarcely be on mightier form, or so it seems, punching far beyond its weight as a small, out-of-the-way south London playhouse that is nonetheless responsible at the moment for five commercial transfers between... Read more... |
The Bernstein Project - Mass, Royal Festival HallMonday, 12 July 2010
It's been quite a week for youth and the vernacular in the world of so-called “classical” music. Multiply by four the seven fledgling stage animals currently firing up John Adams’s “earthquake-romance” in London's East End, add an orchestra of 13-to... Read more... |
Whoopi for youWednesday, 07 July 2010She starred in the original film, not to mention the low-rent sequel, as a counterfeit nun on the run from criminal psychopaths. She became involved in the stage version as a cheerleading producer. Now Whoopi Goldberg is getting back in the habit... Read more... |
The Fantasticks, Duchess TheatreThursday, 10 June 2010
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the musical theatre (Paradise Found, anyone?), along comes The Fantasticks, and we are returned to square one. How can this be, I hear you asking, given the record book entries clocked up by a Tom... Read more... |
Gleeful: The Real Show Choirs of America, E4Monday, 07 June 2010
My excuse is that I was comfortably settled on the sofa next to my wife when the first episode of Glee aired, and I just got drawn in. I know, it’s not much of an excuse - and it hardly explains the fact that I then went on to watch the next 20... Read more... |
Paradise Found, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 27 May 2010
There's bizarre, and then there's Paradise Found, a new musical that falls so short of the not always clearly defined mark that audiences may likely be mulling over what went wrong for years. What do the two acts have to do with one another? What in... Read more... |
Leonard Bernstein: West Side StoryTuesday, 25 May 2010
Nigel Simeone’s engaging study of Bernstein’s score of West Side Story could almost be entitled “Collaboration: The Manual”, so deftly does it interweave Bernstein’s originality with the contributions of his stellar team-mates. Jerome Robbins... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Composer Alan MenkenSunday, 16 May 2010
For many years the composer who made his name with Little Shop of Horrors abandoned the theatre to work in Hollywood. He returned to Broadway in 2008 with an enlarged songbook for The Little Mermaid, but it closed within a year. Later came the... Read more... |
theartsdesk in New York: Sondheim On Sondheim On BroadwaySunday, 16 May 2010
Broadway tends to go into overdrive in May, that time of the theatrical year when New York stages are at their buzziest in the run-up to the Tony Awards (to be awarded on 13 June). Heavyweight star vehicles (Denzel Washington back on Broadway after... Read more... |
Henze attends his own ElegyTuesday, 11 May 2010
Many of us younger opera-goers have never had a chance until now to see Hans Werner Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers in action. Opinions have been divided on its status as one of the great operas of the last half-century, but it certainly brought out... Read more... |
2010 Tony Awards: La Cage leads the packTuesday, 04 May 2010
Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman didn't make the cut; Denzel Washington and Broadway neophyte Douglas Hodge did. And so the race is on for the 2010 Tony Awards, heralding the best of the 39 shows that opened on Broadway across the past season. As... Read more... |
