So farewell, St James Theatre. Hello, The Other Palace – Victoria’s third theatre being rebranded after its purchase by Andrew Lloyd Webber and repositioned as a home for the nurturing of new musicals. To help launch the venue’s new name and purpose, artistic director Paul Taylor-Mills has chosen Michael John LaChiusa’s interpretation of The Wild…
Category: Off-West End/London Fringe
Getting Dressed, Sadler’s Wells Lilian Baylis Studio, London ★★★★½
The sort of playtime that would make even the oldest and most cynical of grown-ups regress to a childhood of play
Prom Kween, The Vaults, London ★★★
Originally reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: Every Fringe festival has its shambolic musicals – those shows where the zero budget aesthetic is fully embraced, which like to project an air of being put together at the very last minute and every rough edge is displayed with pride. For this year’s Vaults Festival, Prom Kween fills…
Stegosaurus, Etcetera Theatre, London ★★★
The complicated psychological life of a woman with multiple eating disorders is explored in Greek playwright Ersi Niaoti’s one woman play Stegosaurus, receiving its English language premiere.
The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, Theatre Royal Stratford East ★★★
Originally reviewed for The Reviews Hub: The maxim “be true to yourself” forms the basis of many a musical. And so it is with Kirsten Childs’s The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, a 2000 off-Broadway hit that follows the “protagonist learns not to succumb to others’ desires” trope so closely it is right…
Dubailand, Finborough Theatre, London ★★★★
Light shines on a world that embodies modern-day colonialism in the heart of the desert, in Carmen Nasr’s new play
German Cornejo’s Tango Fire, Peacock Theatre, London ★★★★
Ganchos galore and ochos aplenty
An Audience with Bob and Barry Cryer, Tara Arts, London ★★★★★
Have you heard the one about…?
The Unlikely Life of Leonard Langley, Courtyard Theatre, London ★★★
Lacuna Theatre’s one-act play seeks to raise awareness of multiple sclerosis, although at times it feels as if it is doing the opposite
January, Live at Zédel, London ★★★
TS Eliot was three months too late. The cruellest month is not April, but January – when the post-Christmas comedown collides with hard-to-maintain resolutions, topped off by grotty weather. Such is the premise of this nascent new cabaret show, with a variety of comedy songs by Patrick Stockbridge set in the first month of every year.
In the Depths of Dead Love, The Print Room, London ★½
Seeing the play itself, it appears that, while the objections to a wider lack of roles for East Asian actors are certainly valid, and the thought of white actors further reducing those meagre casting availabilities equally so, targeting this production for those reasons feels misplaced.
Promises Promises, Southwark Playhouse, London ★★
Is Promises, Promises really only three hours long? It feels longer, and not in a good way. Based on Billy Wilder’s film The Apartment, this musical has some serious creative welly behind it, with a book by Neil Simon and songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. But to be blinded by such prestige would be to ignore a skewed sense of 1960s sexual politics that struggles to be counterbalanced by much warmth and heart, and takes an age to tell its story.
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