Beirut, Park Theatre ★★★

Alan Bowne’s 1987 play imagines a future where anti-HIV prejudice has become law

The Crystal Egg, The Vaults, London ★★★

Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: HG Wells’s short story The Crystal Egg, first published in 1897 as his better-known work The War of the Worlds was being serialised, can be thought of as a companion work to the author’s novel of Martian invasion. Its tale of a device which offers visions of life on Mars…

Bananaman: The Musical, Southwark Playhouse, London ★★½

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…

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…

Lucky Stiff, Union Theatre, London ★★★

Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: If there’s one adjective which, when applied to musical theatre, fills one with a sense of trepidation, it’s “zany”. But that’s the only way to describe the first professionally produced collaboration between book writer and lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, who would go on to create Once On…