Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: If you thought pantomime season was over for another year, think again. Southwark Playhouse’s latest musical Bananaman, based on the DC Thompson comic strip that now resides in the Beano after life in the now-defunct stablemates Nutty and the Dandy, is firmly in the over-the-top, child-friendly silly comedy vein. The…
Category: Musicals
13 shows you shouldn’t have missed in 2017
Out of the 140+ shows I saw this year, here are 13 I hope you saw too
Hamilton: An American Musical, Victoria Palace Theatre, London ★★★★★
A musical which looks and sounds unlike anything else on Broadway or in the West End
Dick Whittington, London Palladium ★★★★★
Be upstanding for Julian Clary’s masterful handling of Dick jokes
Pinocchio, National Theatre, London ★★★
While full of technical craft, this large-scale adaptation of the classic tale lacks heart
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury ★★★½
Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: It is a recurring thread in many modern pantomimes that the titular heroines, from Sleeping Beauty to Cinderella, are among the least served in terms of scripted character. That’s certainly the case with Aylesbury’s version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, where the characters of Muddles, Dolly the Nurse…
The Woman in White, Charing Cross Theatre, London ★★
A Lloyd Webber revival that, for all its Gothic gloom, is decidedly grey
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Apollo Theatre, London ★★★★
A modern fairytale in which John McCrea’s Jamie is a force of nature
Privates on Parade, Union Theatre, London ★★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: Those of us who grew up in the 1970s will remember the BBC sitcom It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft about a group of Second World War entertainers getting up to all sorts deep in India and Burma. Peter Nichols’ 1977 play Privates on…
Flashdance, Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury ★★
Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: In the pantheon of 1980s movies, Flashdance has achieved cult status far exceeding its own gaudy ambitions. The tale of a welding apprentice who supplements her meagre wages from a Pittsburgh steel firm by dancing in a local club, but who has ambitions to enrol at the local ballet school, mines every…
Big Fish, The Other Palace, London ★★★★★
Andrew Lippa’s musical about father-son relations and the power of myth warms the heart
Hairspray, Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury ★★★½
Perhaps the most sweet-natured take on a John Waters film one could possibly imagine
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