West End
Shopgirls: the True Story of Life Behind the Counter, BBC TwoWednesday, 25 June 2014
We last saw Dr Pamela Cox presenting BBC Two's Servants: the True Story of Life Below Stairs. Having done the academic's-eye-view of Upstairs Downstairs, she has now moved on to the world of Mr Selfridge in this three-part survey of the rise of the... Read more... |
Miss Saigon, Prince Edward TheatreThursday, 22 May 2014
The heat is on in Saigon, and 25 years after its world premiere, Cameron Mackintosh has just turned up the thermostat. Boublil and Schönberg's celebrated take on Puccini's Madam Butterfly has always been my favourite of their collaborations (though... Read more... |
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Savoy TheatreThursday, 03 April 2014
The “fantasy” Riviera conjured by designer Peter McKintosh for the West End premiere of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - the Musical is pretty much an extension of the Savoy Theatre’s shining Art Deco auditorium, its sleek angular segments gliding into... Read more... |
Arise, Sir Michael CodronTuesday, 31 December 2013
The fledgling career of Michael Codron, who has been knighted in the New Year's Honours list at the age of 75, might have ended almost as soon as it began. He embarked on a career as a solo impresario in 1956 and had staged three shows, none of... Read more... |
Sonia Prina, Wigmore HallTuesday, 31 December 2013
The great Marilyn Horne used to joke that she was going to release an album entitled “Chestnuts for Chest Nuts”. She never did, but that leaves the door wide open for Sonia Prina whose dark, thrillingly low sound marks her out as the real deal, a... Read more... |
The Sound of Musicals, Channel 4Wednesday, 20 November 2013
No one ever said putting on a show was easy, least of all the names (a lot of them famous, quite a few not) on compulsively watchable view in The Sound of Musicals. Channel 4's reality-TV probe into the world of art, commerce, and high kicks is sure... Read more... |
Perfect Nonsense: adapting Jeeves and WoosterFriday, 08 November 2013
“She paused and heaved a sigh of relief that seemed to come straight from the cami-knickers.” Recounted our brother Andy, many years ago……. "A silence ensued." This was not his own observation, but a quote from P.G. Wodehouse, whom neither Bobby nor... Read more... |
Desperately Seeking the Exit: The Story of a West End DisasterTuesday, 30 April 2013
If this native New Yorker were in a relationship with the city of London, our Facebook status would read: “It’s complicated.” We’ve been through hell together. London is one of my favourite cities. I blissfully cross the pond several times a year to... Read more... |
Desperate: How a disaster was bornTuesday, 30 April 2013
In recent years theatre has sought assistance from a pair of popular art forms. Shows based either on movies, or on pop groups’ back catalogues, have become mainstays of the theatrical economy. So the latest musical to open in the West End has the... Read more... |
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Apollo TheatreWednesday, 13 March 2013
Without wishing to get all Kirstie and Phil about this, theatre, more often than you’d imagine, is about location, location, location. One of the reasons why the National Theatre’s knockout The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time... Read more... |
10 Questions for Choreographer Bob AvianWednesday, 20 February 2013
A Chorus Line is one of the great American musicals. It opened off Broadway in 1975, rapidly barged a path to a larger Broadway house and proceeded to run for over 6,000 performances, breaking records along the way. Chicago, which opened in the same... Read more... |
At Your Service: The Birth of Privates on ParadeSaturday, 01 December 2012
It was in Singapore in 1947 that my real education began. For the first time I read Lawrence, Forster, Virginia Woolf, Melville, Graham Greene and Bernard Shaw’s political works, becoming a lifelong Leftie. When Stanley Baxter explained... Read more... |
