Cilla The Musical (Curve Leicester) ★★
Following the death of the nation’s sweetheart in 2015, a critically acclaimed ITV biographical mini-series aired, which depicted Cilla Black’s rise to fame and her relationship with Bobby Willis. Kenwright’s stage production then followed suit, as an adaptation of aforementioned TV series. Rather than a morbid retelling of a person’s life after their death, Cilla […]
REVIEW: THE INHERITANCE (Noel Coward Theatre) ★★★★★
Following an acclaimed run at the Young Vic, Matthew Lopez’s two-part epic, The Inheritance, is entertaining a new, much larger audience at the Noel Coward Theatre. Set a generation after the peak of the AIDS crisis, Matthew Lopez’s, The Inheritance explores profound themes through the turbulent and often comical experiences of a group of young, […]
REVIEW: Mythic (Charing Cross Theatre) ★★★★★
I recently reviewed Eugenius. Mythic is everything that Eugenius thinks it is, but actually is not. Mythic is charming, has great songs and well written strong characters. It does not take itself too seriously and as a result is very funny. It is also rather touching and quite moving in parts. The show programme tells […]
REVIEW: Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual (Curve Leicester) ★★★★
“Cos we’re Leicester. We’re all Leicester. Start the music.” As someone who can barely explain the off side rule, let alone what a ‘football casual’ is, I did wonder whether Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual might go slightly over my head. Nevertheless, the beauty of having ‘Made at Curve’ stamped on the front of […]
REVIEW: CAMELOT (London Palladium) ★★★★★
Enchanting. Passionate. Rousing. The London Musical Theatre Orchestra’s concert version of Camelot is all of these things and more. I can scarcely think of a better way to spend a cold autumn evening than listening to Lerner and Loewe’s moving score played by an orchestra and company as marvellous as this. Most famous for the […]
REVIEW: Northern Ballet: The Three Musketeers (Nottingham Theatre Royal) ★★★
Nothern Ballet’s production of The Three Musketeers pirouetted its way into Theatre Royal Nottingham last week. Watching The Three Musketeers felt a little bit like reading a novel that’s had every other page torn out, creating several plot holes and unexplained scenarios. I once read another reviewer’s comment that the plot “falls over itself”, and […]
REVIEW: Mrs Dalloway (Arcola Theatre) ★★★★
Virgina Woolf was one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century. Best known for Mrs Dalloway (1925) and Lighthouse (1927), her diary entries, essays, letters, biographies and novels are canonised for reflecting the rapidly changing world she lived in. Documenting transformations in technology, sexuality, class and gender roles, Woolf’s style of modernist literature, […]
REVIEW: Rock of Ages (Wycombe Swan) ★★
The tale of two halves…. It was only my commitment to this review that stopped me from walking out of this performance at the interval. As the lights went up at the end of the first act, a teenage boy behind me, part of a school party, sniggered “I didn’t know I was coming to […]
REVIEW: Pinter One / Pinter Two (Harold Pinter Theatre) ★★★★
The Jamie Lloyd Company’s epochal season Pinter At The Pinter is making a lot of noise for a writer famed for his silences. Ten years on from Pinter’s death, the first two of seven servings of his complete one-act plays gave us a direct sense of his anger and shock value, and his under-regarded humour. […]
REVIEW: WICKED (Apollo Victoria Theatre) ★★★★★ (2018)
Wicked, based on the American novel ‘Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West’ by Gregory Maguire, is not, in fact, a prequel as everyone deems. The musical, utilising the same themes and characters as The Wizard of Oz, is described by the author as ‘a re-imagining of the same world’, […]