REVIEW: SID (Arts Theatre) ★★★★★
Before the play begins, we are serenaded by a backing audio of Jeremy Kyle’s YouTube channel excerpts that are confrontational, amusing, but also rather tragic too – it later becomes clear that this audio is purposefully setting the tone for the play. ‘Sid’, written by acclaimed playwright Leon Fleming, is based on the infamous punk […]
REVIEW: BOY STROKE GIRL (Etcetera Theatre) ★★★★
Can you fall in love with someone if you don’t know their gender? That’s the question posed in Boy Stroke Girl when Peter meets the sexually ambiguous Blue. The play is written and directed by Ian Dixon Potter and has been performed at Brighton Fringe and Tristan Bates Theatre before coming to Etcetera Theatre in […]
REVIEW: THE WOMAN IN BLACK (Richmond Theatre) ★★★
The Woman in Black is a quintessential gothic horror featuring all the usual tropes of the genre – a bleak rural location, a haunted house, engulfing mist, a funeral, a graveyard, a mysterious family tragedy, an empty, self perpetuating rocking chair and the obligatory haunting chimes of an old music box, set into motion by […]
REVIEW: SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD (Courtyard Theatre) ★★★★
Songs for a New World is City Academy’s first performance from their Concert Company, and what an impressive debut it is. Originally written and composed by Jason Robert Brown in 1995, Songs for a New World has been described as an ‘abstract musical’, due to its song cycle structure. Reconfigured for The Courtyard Theatre by […]
REVIEW: KRISTIN CHENOWETH – THE ART OF ELEGANCE ★★★★
Whether it’s storming around as ‘Sally’ in You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown, coming and going by bubble as the formerly known “Ga-linda” in Wicked, belting Hopelessly Devoted To You to a pie maker in Pushing Daisies, playing Nicole Kidman’s best friend in the film Bewitched or joyously singing P!NK’s Raise Your Glass in international […]
REVIEW: 1984 (Playhouse Theatre) ★★★★
The first comment I’ll make is this; 1984 is best appreciated from one of the following means of preparation: a) read the book before seeing the play, b) read up on at least the basic premise of the play before you see it or c) just prepare yourself for the reality that this is not […]
REVIEW: THE GREATER GAME (Southwark Playhouse) ★★★★★
I am not a cynical person but when I see two, more or less, identical stories in one week, I feel that I should question it. A short time ago I watched (and thoroughly enjoyed) Brass about a group of men, all part of a Northern brass band, deciding to volunteer, as a group, to […]
REVIEW: CHRISTINA BIANCO – ME, MYSELF AND EVERYONE ELSE (Hippodrome Casino) ★★★★★
YouTube sensation Christina Bianco went viral a few years back when a video of her performing Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart in multiple celebrity voices, broke the Internet. Her YouTube channel has now had more than 23 million video views! Christina was catapulted into the limelight being flown all around the globe to […]
REVIEW: CATS (Sunderland Empire, 2016) ★★★★
Sunderland Empire has been creatively transformed into a great big, beautiful rubbish heap for this faithfully resurrected extravaganza. Based on “Old Possum’s Book of Cats”, the poems of TS Eliot, Cats the Musical is told entirely in song and dance to the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Webber has smartly mined the natural music in […]
REVIEW: NO MAN’S LAND (Wyndhams Theatre) ★★★
Is there a better duo than Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart? Two of the finest British actors, together on stage in Pinter’s absurdist play. It sounds almost too good to be true and indeed the play starts off with exceptional promise. A chance meeting between two men, Spooner (Ian McKellen) and Hirst (Patrick […]