REVIEW: SALOME (Hoxton Hall) ★★★★★
Salome is beautifully staged with an amazing multinational cast. The story is transferred from biblical times to the bohemian atmosphere of 1930’s Europe, with music and costumes from that period. It all begins at King Herod’s birthday feast. The table, which runs the length of the auditorium, is covered with the best foods and wine. […]
REVIEW: Cautionary Tales for Daughters (Jermyn Street Theatre) ★★★★
Presented by Tanya Holt and pianist Birgitta Kenyon (aka A Girl Called Fred) this song cycle is meant as advice and warning from mothers to their daughters. The show began as a personal project for Holt’s daughter Dotty, who is now 11 years old, and has evolved into a 90-minute cabaret with ideas and suggestions […]
REVIEW: HENRY V (Southwark Cathedral) ★★★★★
This is an exciting but original production, sometimes brutal, sometimes funny but always enthralling. The awesome Southwark Cathedral surroundings alone are worth the trip and the accompanying music is a delight. Marking the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt Along with the hundredth anniversary of the First World War this production is one to […]
REVIEW: ONLY BONES (Soho Theatre) ★★★★★
The late, great Gregory Hines apparently used to say that that you should be able to dance in a space about a metre square. It’s a captivating idea: that precision and technique are all-important and that wafting about in the luxury of space is somehow cheating. There are another couple of good reasons to confine […]
REVIEW: The Glass Menagerie (Duke of York’s Theatre) ★★★★
“When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.” The Glass Menagerie is the first major work of Tennessee Williams’s golden period in the 1940s and 50s that included A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot […]
REVIEW: NECESSITY (Bread & Roses Theatre) ★★★
Necessity is a new play written and directed by Paul Macauley. Following a sell-out run at the Brighton Fringe in May 2016, it gets a London premiere at Bread and Roses Theatre in Clapham, produced by Broken Silence Theatre, Brighton’s leading new writing theatre company. Inspired by true events, Necessity is set against the backdrop […]
REVIEW: THEY BUILT IT. NO ONE CAME (Greenwich Theatre) ★★★★
They Built It. No One Came is a new play from Fledgling Theatre Company, written by Callum Cameron. It’s inspired by the true story of two men, Christian and Johannes, who felt disillusioned with their lives in Salt Lake City and founded a brand new commune out in the wilderness. They waited patiently for their […]
REVIEW: WONDERLAND (Sunderland Empire) ★★★
It’s not everyday you get to see a brand new musical but Wonderland has arrived in Sunderland in only the second week of its tour and it’s really rather good. On her 40th birthday Alice (Kerry Ellis) has received a letter from her ex husband to say he’s got remarried. Her car has been stolen […]
REVIEW: WAYWARD (The Vaults) ★★★★★
Cat Loud’s blend of storytelling and song is comic, warm, sharp edged and broadly political but never bitter. She tells her surreal story interspersed with a wonderful selection of contemporary and classic, multi genre songs, sung beautifully. This is political, feminist, cabaret with a bite, featuring Cat Loud who is a London-based writer and performer […]
REVIEW: BARE ESSENTIALS (Seven Dials Club) ★★★★★
Encompass Productions present Bare Essentials, an evening of six new short plays in a small room in the Seven Dials Club in Covent Garden. It was so full on the evening I attended that extra chairs were needed. This is pared down theatre with minimal set; it’s all about the writing here. Encompass Productions select […]