The mixed fortunes of musical theatre writers have rarely been thrown into sharper relief than in the case of Stephen Schwartz over the past couple of months. While the second instalment of the film version of his blockbuster Wicked opened worldwide to great fanfare (with the original stage production continuing its lengthy runs on both […]
Busy, and unapologetically smutty, Sleeping Beauty at The London Palladium knows exactly how it wants to entertain you. This is a family pantomime which pays little homage to the familiar fairy tale, and freely acknowledges that in the opening when leading man Julian Clary (playing King Julian) tells the audience the plot is just a […]
The Grim at Southwark Playhouse Borough is a sharp, uneven night in the mortuary. When it works, it is very funny and properly frightening; when it wobbles, you can feel the stitches straining. Edmund Morris writes and stars as Shaun, a world-weary undertaker in 1964 East End London, with Louis Davison as jittery assistant Robert […]
The solo performance Jobsworth at the Park Theatre makes a crackling entry and leaves you both laughing and uneasy. Written and performed by the immensely talented Libby Rodliffe (co-written with Isley Lynn), it stands as a dark-comic portrait of everyday survival in the cost-of-living era. Rodliffe plays Bea, a manic, red-suited woman juggling three full-time jobs: she […]
Wendy & Peter Pan at the Barbican Theatre is a fairytale full of sword-play, flying figures and glittering waves of light. By and large it delivers what you might reasonably expect of a festive adventure, but the emotional ground it tries to cover proves uneven. It thrills, it jolts, but it never quite soars. This […]
The latest production of The Maids at the Donmar Warehouse is a sharp, deliberately off-kilter take on Genet’s psychological drama, but its strangeness and relentless pacing make it feel uneven and, at points, a little dull. Directed and newly adapted by Kip Williams, and starring Lydia Wilson, Phia Saban and Yerin Ha, it interrogates power, identity and […]
This show is a slapstick-mobster ride set in 1945 when the Sicilian emigrant Don Lambrini accidentally boards a cruise ship bound not for America but for Blackpool. From there he builds a dodgy waste-management empire and soon his sons Jack Lambrini and Al Dente squabble over succession. After a bullet-rich funeral moment the action shifts […]
It’s hard to walk out of Every Brilliant Thing at Soho Place without feeling that something unsparingly true, somehow, has been laid bare. In this West-End staging of a one-person play, the premise is deceptively simple and the effect quietly powerful. Written by Duncan Macmillan (with original co-creator Jonny Donahoe) and directed by Macmillan alongside […]
The premise of this show is the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society attempting to perform a 1920s murder mystery called ‘The Murder at Haversham Manor’. Everything that can go wrong does, starting with missing props and mis-built scenery then escalating into mis-timed cues, doors that refuse to open, actors knocked unconscious, understudies shoved on who do […]
Reviewing this a year on, with a new cast, Operation Mincemeat at the Fortune Theatre is a smart, high-energy musical comedy-spy thriller that fully delivers on its clever promise. Directed by Robert Hastie, with book, music and lyrics by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson and Zoë Roberts (written by the troupe SpitLip), and starring […]