West End
42nd Street, Theatre Royal Drury Lane, review - 'sheer synchronised splendour'Wednesday, 05 April 2017
Can London support two dance musicals, each one dazzling in a different way? We're about to find out, now that the mother of all toe-tappers, 42nd Street, has set up shop a jeté or two away from where An American in Paris is achieving... Read more... |
The Wipers Times, Arts Theatre review - 'dark comedy from the trenches'Wednesday, 29 March 2017
You may be having a moment of déjà vu, as Ian Hislop and Nick Newman’s new play (which lands in the West End after a UK tour) was previously a BBC film (shown in 2013), and a very fine one too, covering as it does a true story from the First World... Read more... |
The Miser, Garrick TheatreMonday, 13 March 2017
Trimmings, trimmings. They prove the final straw for Molière’s Harpagon in this new adaptation of the classic French comedy-farce. The menu for his wedding banquet – which he doesn’t want to spend a centime more on than he has to – is being... Read more... |
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Harold Pinter TheatreFriday, 10 March 2017
Martha is described in the script of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as "a large, boisterous woman...ample but not fleshy". Imelda Staunton is petite, neat and trim, not obvious casting for the female lead in Edward Albee's most famous play. But she... Read more... |
The Girls, Phoenix TheatreThursday, 23 February 2017
Why? That's the abiding question that hangs over The Girls, the sluggish and entirely pro forma Tim Firth-Gary Barlow musical that goes where Firth's film and stage play of Calendar Girls have already led. Telling of a charitable impulse that... Read more... |
Travesties, Apollo TheatreThursday, 16 February 2017
Tom Stoppard’s humungously funny play Travesties was born out of a piece of James Joyce doggerel about how a British diplomat sued him for the cost of two pairs of trousers. It’s like this. Joyce was organising an expat amateur production of Wilde’s... Read more... |
The Glass Menagerie, Duke of York'sFriday, 03 February 2017
The writing of Tennessee Williams, said his contemporary Arthur Miller, planted “the flag of beauty on the shores of commercial theatre”. This American production of Williams’s breakthrough play – a hit on Broadway and at the Edinburgh Festival last... Read more... |
Death Takes A Holiday, Charing Cross TheatreTuesday, 24 January 2017
“I’m Death.” “And you’re on holiday?” Well, there’s really no way to disguise the preposterousness of this musical’s premise, nor to reconcile its winking humour and self-serious grand romance. Thus, Thom Southerland’s London premiere wisely diverts... Read more... |
The Kite Runner, Wyndhams TheatreWednesday, 11 January 2017
Khaled Hosseini's 2003 bestseller ticks all the boxes as an A-level text. A personal story with epic sweep, it interweaves the bloody recent history of Afghanistan with a gripping family saga. Its treatment of racism and radicalism is timely. Other... Read more... |
Love's Labour's Lost/Much Ado About Nothing, RSC, Theatre Royal HaymarketFriday, 16 December 2016
“The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.” A sudden cold breeze blows through the endless summer afternoon of Love’s Labour's Lost in the play’s final moments. Death enters Shakespeare’s Edenic garden and innocence is lost. But what... Read more... |
Dreamgirls, Savoy TheatreThursday, 15 December 2016
It’s taken almost four nail-biting decades for Dreamgirls to evolve from the germ of an idea to the most anticipated musical never to have quite made it, lock, stock, and smoking barrel across the Atlantic. The germ of an idea – the tale of a... Read more... |
Cinderella, London PalladiumThursday, 15 December 2016
What a joy it is to have pantomime back at the Palladium, the first at this glorious theatre in 29 years. And the producers of Cinderella have pulled out the stops; a star-studded cast, a large ensemble, fabulous costumes and a live orchestra make... Read more... |
