A wall-climbing, visually beautiful performance in a gender-defying allegory
Category: Off-West End/London Fringe
Salad Days, Union Theatre, London ★★★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: The 1950s musical Salad Days is, let’s face it, an odd one. Ostensibly the story of two Oxbridge graduates who rebel against their parents in the most genteel of ways – by marrying and getting a job without their mothers’ influence – the story quickly goes in directions that makes…
Pageant, London Irish Centre, London ★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: Back in 1991, when Pageant opened Off-Broadway, the concept of a beauty pageant populated by drag queens may have seemed novel. That novelty may also have sustained it into its 2000 run at the Vaudeville Theatre, which netted it two Olivier Awards. But this is 2017. The West End has…
The Marriage of Kim K, Arcola Theatre, London ★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: Marrying classical opera buffo to 21st century pop culture will always be a risky task. The Marriage of Kim K, which opens the Arcola’s 2017 Grimeborn season, takes The Marriage of Figaro and butts it against the world of reality TV star Kim Kardashian, creating a sung-through musical which is…
The Hired Man, Union Theatre, London ★★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: Melvyn Bragg’s 1969 novel The Hired Man was the first of three novels to chart the lives of the Cumbrian Tallentire family. Starting at the turn of the 20th century, the name derives from the head of the family, John Tallentire (Ifan Gwilym-Jones) who must endure the “hired market”, the…
Twilight Song, Park Theatre, London ★★★★
Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: Best known for his play My Night With Reg, Kevin Elyot’s writing for the stage was dominated by a sense of yearning, and the deleterious effects of love. Completed before his death in 2014, Twilight Song illustrates, in its premiere production at the Park Theatre, an echoing of the same…
Superhero, Southwark Playhouse, London ★★★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: Not every superhero wears a cape, and not everyone who wears a cape is a superhero. In the Southwark Playhouse’s new one-man musical Superhero, directed by Adam Lenson, Michael Rouse plays a man who struggles to be either. Rouse narrates the story of Colin predominantly in flashback, as he pleas…
Blondel, Union Theatre, London ★★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: The knowledge that Blondel was Tim Rice’s first musical after his split with Andrew Lloyd Webber adds an extra piquancy to some of its knowing lines. Who needs lyrics, muses the show’s eponymous troubadour Blondel, when it’s the music that really makes people take notice? In this comic rock take…
18-22, Attractive, Insecure, Courtyard Theatre, London ★★★★
Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: There is a website called Casting Call Woe that catalogues all the ridiculous casting breakdowns for acting roles looking for young women. Such roles are usually underwritten, with any characterisation junked as quickly as the creators want their actresses to shed their clothes. Such indignities provide a title and jumping-off…
Aeonian, Etcetera Theatre, London ★½
Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: Imogen is a ghost, of sorts. In the opening monologue in Vesna Hauschild’s new one-act play, Kat Boart implies that she was the mother to a famous Spanish artist – and her cries of “Salvador!” suggests which surrealist provides the inspiration here. Then again, Imogen also implies that she has…
Ordinary Days, London Theatre Workshop ★★★★
New York-based romantic comedies may be less popular in the cinema and on stage than they once were, but they are so plentiful that each needs to be distinctive to succeed. At first, Adam Gwon’s Ordinary Days seems to revel in its titular ordinariness. The cast comprises solely of a struggling artist, a similarly struggling…
The Color Purple in Concert, Cadogan Hall, London ★★★★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: There are some musicals which grow in stature the more they get stripped back. The Color Purple is one such musical. The recent Broadway revival – a transfer of the Menier Chocolate Factory’s 2013 London production – shrugged off the original production’s cinematic look (designed to evoke memories of Steven…
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