REVIEW: RAGTIME (Charing Cross Theatre) ★★★★★
RAGTIME is a show which has been revived time and time again over the last twenty years, however Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens has given a new breath of life in Thom Southerland’s production. Thom Southerland uses the actor musician element fantastically from start to end. It keeps the stage lively and busy and […]
REVIEW HOTEL FOR CRIMINALS (New Wimbledon Studio Theatre) ★★★★
When I was a kid in the 1970s, the French films about the brilliant criminal Fantômas, starring Jean Marais as the fearless journalist Fandor and the great comedian Louis de Funès as Inspector Juve were cult. Little did I know that they were actually preceded by Louis Feuillade’s silent movies, an espionage series set in […]
REVIEW: SAFE (London Theatre Workshop) ★★★★
The struggles and challenges faced by young gay people are by no means new themes for contemporary playwrights. For the last few decades, we’ve seen the mistreatment, prejudice and rejection that is all too real and familiar for many members of the LGBTQ+ community. However, the tendency has often been to focus on young gay […]
REVIEW: A PACIFIST’S GUIDE TO WAR ON CANCER (National Theatre) ★★★★★
How would you even start to put the horrific experience of cancer into a performance? It shouldn’t work. Nothing about a musical comedy about cancer should work… But this does. Bryony Kimmings’ ground breaking roller-coaster follows the story of single mother Emma, (Amanda Hadingue), as she experiences a hospital cancer unit for the first time, […]
REVIEW: MOBY DICK! THE MUSICAL (Union Theatre) ★★★
When Cameron Mackintosh produced Robert Longden and Hereward Kaye’s Moby Dick! The Musical in 1992, the production became his first flop. A West End theatre was obviously not the right choice for this anarchic musical. Still Andrew Wright saw its potential and now presents a brand new production for the show’s 25th Anniversary at the […]
REVIEW: LUNCH and ‘THE BOW OF ULYSSES (Trafalgar Studios) ★★★★★
LUNCH and THE BOW OF ULYSSES are deftly directed by Nigel Harman and mark a very welcome return to the West End of one of Britan’s most creative and acclaimed playwrights, Stephen Berkoff. The plays concerns the emotional journey of two lovers, ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’. LUNCH explores their first meeting and THE BOW OF ULYSSES shows us the […]
REVIEW: FIVE GUYS CHILLIN’ (Kings Head Theatre) ★★★★
FIVE GUYS CHILLIN’ at the Kings Head theatre, conjures up images of dancing, 1960’s singers in fluorescent silk suits, however when a bare bottom is presented to the audience within 30 seconds of the action beginning, it becomes evidently clear that it certainly isn’t that type of a show. This verbatim ode to Grindr (written and […]
REVIEW: POKER FACE (Kings Head Theatre) ★★★★
POKER FACE is a skilfully written and very funny play, set in Prague in 2011. The action all takes place in the apartment of Jana, a wealthy, hard headed, independent woman and her daughter Pavlina. The feeling is more Woody Allen Hollywood rather than cold European reality. It is literate, even in translated form. The story […]
REVIEW: THE RED BARN (National Theatre) ★★★★
On a winter’s night in 1960s Connecticut, a man disappears into a snowstorm. The man is Ray Sanders (Nigel Whitmey), husband of the impossibly glamorous Mona (Elizabeth Debicki) and best friend of Donald Dodd (Mark Strong). Mona, Donald and his wife Ingrid (Hope Davis) are snowed in at their comfortable Lakeville home and must wait […]
REVIEW: MUSICAL OF THE YEAR (Lost Theatre) ★★★★★
Let me say, at the outset, that this is the most entertaining production I have seen in many years. It is original, in a kind of deliberately unoriginal way. It is incredibly funny, fantastically well produced, acted and sung. I loved it from the beginning to the end. Superficially it is about an unsuccessful American […]