REVIEW: SHREK (New Wimbledon Theatre)
Musicals based on films are a dime a dozen these days, but Shrek the Musical proves itself to be a great night out for all the family. After being impressed with the West end production, I had feared that a scaled down touring production may be less impressive, but I didn’t feel like I was […]
REVIEW: PRIVATE LIVES (Churchill Theatre Bromley)
Private Lives is my absolute favourite Noël Coward play, full camp humour, frivolous behaviour and heaps of flamboyance, it is quintessentially Coward. However after seeing Jonathan Kent’s sensational revival several years ago with the charming Toby Stephen’s and fabulous Anna Chancellor, the bar was set pretty high for Tom Chambers and Laura Rogers in this […]
REVIEW: The Long Road South (King’s Head Theatre)
Set in Indiana in 1965 during the summer of the civil rights marches in the South, Paul Minx’s Offie-nominated drama takes us to the home of a white middle-class family and their two black domestic workers. Grace and Andre are planning to head South the next day to support the voting rights movement as soon […]
REVIEW: THIS WILL END BADLY (Southwark Playhouse)
This Will End Badly is breathtakingly ambitious in scope and expertly executed. Clive Judd’s gripping one-man play had a critically acclaimed run at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe before transferring to the Southwark Playhouse. It begins with actor Ben Whybrow alone on a sparse stage; vulnerable and isolated from the audience. He plays three men, […]
REVIEW: Big Brother Blitzkrieg (King’s Head Theatre)
Germany, 1908. A naïve young man receives a letter rejecting his application to study life drawing – again. Distraught, he reaches for his revolver and places it to his head…and so begins a bizarre piece of theatre following Adolf Hitler’s rise from outsider to charismatic demagogue. The Adolf in Big Brother Blitzkrieg wakes up in […]
REVIEW: JEKYLL AND HYDE (Cockpit Theatre)
The dark gothic tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is set in a 1930s jazz club with a live pianist and singers. This new version of the well-known story is brought to the Cockpit by Blue Orange Theatre for a four week run. The play is ‘based on’ the novel by Robert […]
REVIEW: THRILL ME (Jermyn Street Theatre)
It is ironic that the Jermyn Street Theatre took the first option on the multi-award winning musical thriller by Stephen Dolginoff in 1999. Seventeen years and 125 productions later, Dolginoff’s musical about the “thrill killers” has finally arrived at the JST. One of Clarence Darrow’s most notorious cases, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb stood trial […]
REVIEW: GUYS AND DOLLS (Savoy Theatre)
Following a successful run at the Chichester festival theatre, Gordon Greenberg’s revival of the classic musical Guys and Dolls has joyfully danced its way into the Savoy Theatre. The show which follows a group of gamblers and their molls was made famous by the 1955 film which starred a veritable plethora of Hollywood royalty including […]
REVIEW: Vanity Fair (Middle Temple Hall)
William Makepeace Thackeray embarked on a legal career in the Middle Temple before he became a novelist. To honour this connection, the Inn presents a production of his most important work in aid of the Middle Temple Scholarship Fund. Middle Temple Hall has always had a close relationship with the arts. The first recorded production […]
REVIEW: GREY GARDENS (Southwark Playhouse)
The 1975 documentary, Grey Gardens, seems to have a cult following, or at least that is what the tremendous applause and standing ovation at last nights European Premiere of the 2006 Broadway musical led me to believe. Telling the story of Jackie Kennedy’s (wife of US President JFK) aunt and cousin, who lived together in […]