Category: Reviews

REVIEW: BROKEN WINGS (Original Concept Album) ★★★★★

I had very low expectations for the Musical Concept Album, Broken Wings. A musical about the life of a Lebanese poet who I had never heard of before? Sounded like a snooze to me on paper and not the kind of thing I’d be interested in but as it had West End performer Nadim Naaman […]

REVIEW: The Tiger Lillies: Devil’s Fairground (Wilton’s Music Hall) ★★★★

The violence and vulnerability of the darkly appealing songs of cult cabaret trio the Tiger Lillies are evocatively set off among the faded glamour of Wilton’s Music Hall. In a two-week residency, the group is performing a mixture of favourites from their long career and their new album Devil’s Fairground. These stories of sordidness and […]

REVIEW: FLEABAG (Curve Leicester) ★★★★

Following the BAFTA award-winning BBC series, DryWrite and Soho Theatre brings the acclaimed stage production of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s cult hit, Fleabag, to Curve Leicester this week. Fleabag is stumbling through her twenties in the Big Smoke. She’s just lost her mum, her sister is anorexic, her best friend and business partner recently killed herself and […]

REVIEW: Crazy for You (New Victoria Theatre) ★★★★

The plot – New York banker Bobby Child is being sent to the outback’s of Deadrock, Nevada to close its rundown and ramshackle theatre but instead finds himself falling in love with local lass Polly – The only girl in town. Child tries to win Polly’s affections by trying to arrange a big musical show […]

REVIEW: A Sockful of Custard (Pleasance Theatre) ★★★

Spike Milligan (1918-2002) was a complex genius driven by a mania forever on the edge of collapsing into darkness. On the centenary of the comedy legend’s birth, this new two-hander by Chris Larner and Jeremy Stockwell follows the same tense line. A Sockful of Custard is an affecting, warm, heartfelt tribute, at times uncomfortable, edgy […]

REVIEW: SOAP (Underbelly festival) ★★★

Sudsy puns abound in the previous round of reviews for SOAP – a bathtub-based cabaret show taking place as part of the Southbank’s Underbelly festival. Apparently it’s already ‘made a splash’ internationally, and it is brought to the capital in its current guise by the German ensemble Base Berlin. The cast is prodigiously talented – […]

REVIEW: MAYFLY (Orange Tree Theatre) ★★★★

Whilst back in London last week, I went along to the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond (a lovely theatre I’d not been to before) to check out West End Wilma Award Winner Evelyn Hoskins in a new play by Joe White, Mayfly. It’s a tale we can all relate to, grief. I spent the majority […]

REVIEW: MATILDA (Sunderland Empire) ★★★★★

Fresh from the award winning and sell out run in the West End, Tim Minchin’s musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s tale is a wonderful family treat guaranteed to leave everyone wishing they too were 5 again. Produced by The Royal Shakespeare Company, the story about a little girl’s discovery of her super powers and the […]

REVIEW: Nightfall (Bridge Theatre) ★★★

Nightfall, a new play by Barney Norris, is the latest production at The Bridge, a 900-seat theatre space near Tower Bridge. Founded by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr after leaving the National Theatre; The Bridge aims to focus on commissioning and producing new shows. Nightfall tells the tale of four characters over four evenings in […]