REVIEW: GETTING MARRIED TODAY (Phoenix Artist Club) ★★★★
It is just an hour before Kate and Bill are due to be married and Kate is having second thoughts. It falls to her Maid of Honour and good friend, Alice, to bring her round. So begins a charming two act, funny, musical play. Kate is having pre-wedding doubts, questioning why she wants to be […]
REVIEW: THE ENTERTAINER (Garrick Theatre) ★★★
My, how time flies. The Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company’s 13 month long ‘Plays at the Garrick’ season is drawing to a close and most would agree it’s been an artistic and critical success. There have been few wobbles along the way — a stylized but not totally captivating Romeo and Juliet for example. In the […]
REVIEW: MADE IN DAGENHAM (Queens Theatre Hornchurch) ★★
Based on the 2010 movie of the same name, Made In Dagenham the musical (which premiered at the West End’s Adelphi Theatre in 2014) comes home to the Queens Theatre in Hornchurch. The story of the 1968 equal pay strike by female sewing machinists at Ford’s Dagenham factory was a daring choice by the Queens’ […]
REVIEW: THE MISERABLES (Just The Tonic at the Caves) ★★★
We have all had a job that we’ve hated, a job that pays the bills but slowly chips away at your sanity. If you haven’t well then, lucky you (said through gritted teeth). The Miserables is the story of that feeling. Set to the tune of Les Miserablés. The songs are the best bit about […]
REVIEW: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (Selfridges’ reFASHIONed Theatre) ★★★★
As you may or may not know, Sir William Shakespeare fancied himself a bit of a comedian, occasionally taking a break amongst his usual feats of tragedy and historical dramas to create ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, written in (it is believed) about 1598-1599. The title of the play gives clues to the plot, which entails […]
REVIEW: CHILDREN OF EDEN (The Union Theatre) ★★
Children Of Eden is the re-telling of the story of the book of Genesis. The show premiered in the West End twenty five years ago, where is ran for just three months and received little praise. The show is now being staged at the new Union Theatre in the heart of Southwark. The Union Theatre […]
REVIEW: BRASS (Hackney Empire) ★★★★
Sixty years ago my parents used to reminisce nostalgically about the demise of the Hackney Empire music hall and so entering that big, lovely, traditional theatre was exiting for me. I was not disappointed. It is lovely, ornate and has been beautifully restored. The ‘acney ’empire, to quote my parents, is now a long way […]
REVIEW: BEST BOY (Underbelly Cowgate) ★★★★
My first experience at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival ended with me up on stage playing a War Trumpet. To be short, Best Boy is a delight. Charlie Mizon and Dan Smith have fantastic chemistry that doesn’t tire throughout the show. Skipping from sketches to rather impressive magic, the pace of the show is mostly […]
REVIEW: THE ROUNDABOUT (PARK Theatre) ★★★★
J.B.Priestley plays are elegant, literate and funny, if a little dated. The Roundabout (never the most popular of his works) was written in the 1933 when the world was a different place. The play explores the relationships between the varied characters over a single weekend. Priestley threw in a number of diverse characters and looked […]
REVIEW: PAPER HEARTS (Med Quad: Underbelly) ★★★★★
The best piece of advice I was ever given when I started writing was always to find the reason the story needed to be told. Why is this story important for people to see, why do the characters need to be heard. Paper Hearts is this through and through. It is a story that so […]