REVIEW: 9 TO 5 (Savoy Theatre) ★★★★
Replacing Dream Girls at the Savoy Theatre, Dolly Parton’s flashy musical 9 to 5 takes over as the new resident in London’s West End. The show is based on the 1980’s movie written by Patricia Resnik and starred the country queen herself. West End stars Bonnie Langford, Natalie McQueen and Caroline Sheen (standing in for an […]
REVIEW: RIP IT UP – THE 60s (Garrick Theatre) ★★
RIP IT UP have embarked on an ambitious plan to build on the success on the TV show Strictly Come Dancing and the recent trend of jukebox music shows. After Rip it up – the fifties, they have brought the sixties music to the West End for a four month stay and are already promising […]
REVIEW: Pinter Seven (Harold Pinter Theatre) ★★★★★
Short of a few rehearsed readings to come, Pinter Seven completes the Jamie Lloyd Company’s 24-week season turning the spotlight on Pinter’s one-act plays: a fascinating critical reappraisal of the late Nobel Prize winning playwright’s lifework a decade after his death. Jamie Lloyd has personally directed the bulk of them with a superb creative command […]
REVIEW: THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW (New Wimbledon Theatre) ★★★★★
When discussing the creation of his trail blazing musical The Rocky Horror Show, Richard O’Brien once said “glam rock allowed me to be myself more.” Since it’s initial London production at the Royal Court Theatre (Upstairs) in 1973, The Rocky Horror Show has seen various international productions spanning across six continents, West End and Broadway […]
REVIEW: Everybody’s talking about Jamie (Apollo Theatre) ★★★★
Layton Williams lights up the West End stage, as he steps in to the red high heels of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Based on the story of Jamie Campbell, who was featured in the documentary Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie opened at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield in February 2017. The […]
REVIEW: I Would Like to Get to Know You (Vaults festival) ★★
I Would Like to Get to Know You, like most – arguably, all theatre – is seeking the meaning of love. The L word, hand in hand with sex, affection, rejection, jealousy and heartbreak, has taken on a new meaning in the age of technology – a fact which is frankly mundane in its blatancy […]
REVIEW: TOKENS OF AFFECTION (Waterloo East Theatre) ★★★★
Tokens of Affection, written by award winning playwright Maureen Lawrence, has its London premiere at Waterloo East Theatre right now. Lawrence’s play is based on her experience of working in a unit for violent adolescent girls in Bradford in the 1980s and the scenes are borne from situations she encountered daily. The Tokens in the […]
REVIEW: DRACULA (The London Library) ★★
For the first time since its founding in 1841 The London Library uses its reading rooms for the staging of a play. The choice of Bram Stoker’s enduring horror tale is a fitting one because a recent discovery of particular books on the library shelves, matched with Stoker’s Notes on Dracula, proves pretty conclusively that […]
REVIEW: JENNA RUSSELL with SETH RUDETSKY (Leicester Square Theatre) ★★★★
Jenna Russel, the voice behind the Red Dwarf theme tune, first launched her theatrical career as Fantine in Les Misérables in the early 1990s. Following this, success only grew for the Dundee-raised actress, as she then went on to play young Sally in Follies, Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls, and won an Olivier Award […]
REVIEW: AVENUE Q (New Wimbledon Theatre) ★★★★
Guess Q’s back, and attended the Gala night for Avenue Q at New Wimbledon Theatre? Yup, Me! Now, this was a first time watch of the show, and since it’s been over a decade since the show was introduced to the West End, obviously I had heard many of the songs, but nothing would quite […]