Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: A half century before the US military service policy ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, relationships between gay men in the US Armed Forces were, if not exactly tolerated, tacitly acknowledged. In the mix of adrenaline and testosterone, frustrated men occasionally turned to each other for relief – the crime was to…
Category: West End
Certain Young Men, National Theatre, London ★★★
Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: Part of the National Theatre’s Queer Theatre season of rehearsed readings, Peter Gill’s Certain Young Men is a collection of scenes, some related but many not, about the lives of four gay male couples. Written at the end of the 1990s, some five years before the Civil Partnerships Act gave the first…
Shit-faced Showtime: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Leicester Square Theatre, London ★★★½
Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: Anybody who has been sober in the presence of drunk friends knows that, far from being the masters of wit they imagine themselves to be, the inebriated rarely make for the most entertaining of people. So the very concept of Shit-Faced Showtime – a musical offshoot of Magnificent Bastard Productions’ long-running Shit-Faced Shakespeare –…
Wind in the Willows, London Palladium ★★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: Appearing at last weekend’s benefit concert for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, composers George Stiles and Anthony Drewe introduced themselves as: “the chaps with two musicals in the West End at the moment – and it’s the only time in our lives when we’ll be able to say…
Taj Express, Sadler’s Wells, London ★★★½
Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: It is not usual, one must admit, for a stage show to start with a voiceover warning that anybody expecting great theatre should leave. There are certainly some shows that could benefit from such a management of expectations. Taj Express, the latest Bollywood-inspired work from the Merchant family, is at…
La Strada, The Other Palace, London ★★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: Federico Fellini’s 1954 film La Strada (‘The Road’) chronicles the story of Gelsomina, a plaintive young girl who is sold by her poverty-stricken mother into servitude to the brutal strongman Zampanò. Their journey across the Italian landscape, including formative encounters with more circus folk, are brought to the stage by…
Judy!, Arts Theatre, London ★★★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: Last year, Southwark Playhouse played host to Through the Mill, a loving warts-and-all tribute to the life of Judy Garland told through re-creations of her life at three crucial points. There are few Fringe productions for which a transfer to a larger, more central venue has seemed more appropriate. Writer/director…
Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, Duke of York’s Theatre, London ★★★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: Anybody looking for a West End musical involving singing and dancing schoolchildren has a third choice supplementing those of Matilda and School of Rock. But even with a script by Lee Hall, the book writer of Billy Elliot, any parents choosing to take the children to see Our Ladies of…
Maria Friedman: Lenny and Steve, The Crazy Coqs, London ★★★★★
Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: Maria Friedman has come to be regarded as one of Britain’s foremost interpreters of Stephen Sondheim – both as actor and, more recently, a director, with her revival of Merrily We Roll Along. Her directing career – continuing with Stepping Out at the Vaudeville Theatre and a forthcoming musical by…
The Whisper House, The Other Palace, London ★★
Reviewed for Musical Theatre Review: For its second major staging in its new rebranded guise as the home for new musical writing, The Other Palace has chosen curiously. Whisper House is a 2009 piece with music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik, whose Spring Awakening and, to a lesser extent, American Psycho marked him out as…
After You, The Crazy Coqs, London ★★★½
Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: Over recent months, Brasserie Zedél’s live cabaret space, The Crazy Coqs, has been spreading its wings with comedy performers and plays complementing the more traditional cabaret. Now, it has a commissioned musical, written for and set in the venue by Alex Parker and Katie Lam. Apart from raising one of…
Audra McDonald, Leicester Square Theatre, London ★★★★★
Reviewed for The Reviews Hub: If your knowledge of Audra McDonald is limited to her role as the opera singer-cum-wardrobe, Madame de Garderobe, in Disney’s recent live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, you have so much more to learn. McDonald has won six Tony Awards – more than any other actor – and is…
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