childhood
Owen Richards
Oh how British indies love a road trip. Trekking across the rugged landscape, meeting a colourful cast of characters, realising it’s not the destination but the journey. It takes something special to stand out from the pack. The Runaways, debut feature from Richard Heap, has that something special.Reith (Mark Addy, pictured below with Molly Windsor) and his three kids Angie, Ben and Polly run the donkey rides at Whitby beach. It’s a hardy life, cramped into a hut with a pittance to their name, but they have each other. This existence is turned on its head when Reith’s brother Bryce returns Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
This scary, electrically beautiful adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book about living on the faultline between imagination and reality is a fantastically alternative offering for the festive season. While the parameters of the story are dark, it’s an edgy, stunningly thought through tribute to the wild and wonderful life of the mind, and its ability to help us engage with the horrors that life flings at us. Though there is no shortage of Gothic special effects, the success of the production is due in no small part to Samuel Blenkin’s superb, comically gawky turn as the “Boy” at the Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen is an institution in the States, running on Broadway since 2016 and currently on its second year of a national tour. It also made a star of original leading man Ben Platt, now appearing in Netflix’s The Politician – and this long-awaited West End production could well do the same for the exceedingly talented 21-year-old Sam Tutty.Tutty plays the titular Evan, a 17-year-old high school senior suffering from debilitating social anxiety. His well-meaning, divorcée mother, Heidi (Rebecca Read more ...
Marianka Swain
It’s been 15 years since Cameron Mackintosh’s stage musical version of P. L. Travers’ Mary Poppins made its West End debut. Now, the magical nanny returns to the Prince Edward Theatre, with Zizi Strallen (who also headlined the UK tour) succeeding her sister Scarlett in the title role – all set to capitalise on the recent Emily Blunt-starring film sequel renewing our interest in the adventures of the Banks family.“I fear what’s to happen all happened before,” muses Charlie Stemp’s Bert at the start of the show. Well, yes and no. Fans of the original movie should be warned that the Disney Read more ...
Matt Wolf
If ambition were all, Groan Ups would get an A*. Marking the first of a very welcome three-show residency at the Vaudeville Theatre, this latest from the cheerfully unstoppable Mischief Theatre tethers the japery we have come to expect from the team behind The Play That Goes Wrong – mishaps aplenty, verbal hi-jinks – with a newfound interest in the human psyche. Think of an amalgam of, say, Alan Ayckbourn mixed with Feydeau, and you get somewhere near the landscape of a terrifically likable, if overlong, study of how we got here from there. Or how they got there, that is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
One question springs immediately to mind on hearing that Romesh Ranganathan’s new stand-up show, The Cynic’s Mixtape, is touring: how does he find the time? Ranganathan has overtaken Jack Whitehall as Britain’s most media ubiquitous comic, with a deluge of TV shows and appearances, a column in the Guardian newspaper and even a recent autobiography. However, his TV CV is hit’n’miss, which leads to a second question: can he still cut it in the live arena?In short, yes, he can. With able support from Jake Lambert - who is heckled by that rarest of creatures, a Brighton Brexiteer – Ranganathan is Read more ...
Marianka Swain
William Finn and James Lapine’s musical – which combines two linked one-acts, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, set in late 1970s/early 1980s New York – picked up Tony Awards in 1992 for its book and score, and was nominated again in 2016 for an acclaimed revival. Yet the UK hasn’t sighted this landmark piece until now, with Tara Overfield-Wilkinson directing and choreographing an engaging if somewhat chaotic production.Daniel Boys plays Marvin, who recently left wife Trina (Laura Pitt-Pulford) for lover Whizzer (Oliver Savile, pictured below) – while maintaining close ties for Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Just two years after It Chapter One became the most successful horror film ever made, Pennywise the Dancing Clown is once again giving the American town of Derry absolutely nothing to laugh about. But this time around it’s audiences who may feel unable to enjoy the irony of a killer clown. For Chapter Two feels like a pointless, nay horrific case of déjà vu. Andy Muschietti’s decision to divide his adaptation of Stephen King’s horror novel into two – the first part dealing with the characters as children, the second with their adult selves – initially seemed a strong Read more ...
David Kettle
Physical theatre company Theatre Re are virtually Fringe royalty these days, with a several-year history of fine shows under their belts, plus success internationally and at the London Mime Festival. And judging by their assured and richly resonant Birth this year, they’re just getting better and better – their productions more ambitious, more accomplished and with greater thematic depth.Following last year’s tearjerking take on dementia, The Nature of Forgetting, this year’s offering tackles – well, nothing less than human life itself. Birth follows three generations of women in the same Read more ...
bella.todd
A great hunk of rotting meat hangs centre stage, suspended over a rusty wheelbarrow. A figure in a bloody butcher’s apron picks through the stalls, searching for cans of ‘xxxtra cheap lager’. From the direction of the band, sinister Wurlitzer sounds begin to stir the air. If the words "family musical" fill you with certain wholesome expectations, you are likely to have them gleefully subverted by the National’s new summer show. A musical staging of a cult children’s book, Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear features Gary Wilmot in a flying fat suit singing about snacks, a demented sea captain with a Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
London’s Troubadour White City theatre has got off to a, literally, flying start. Sally Cookson‘s National Theatre-Bristol Old Vic adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic makes an exuberant comeback at this new venue, whose technical possibilities allow for some genuine thrills, not least when its hero soars high over the auditorium. Such standout moments of spectacle are backed up by a bravado performance that overflows with energy, keeping a youthful ensemble of some two dozen nimble from start to finish. With a completely new cast, led by the phenomenal John Pfumojena, who fizzes on his feet Read more ...
stephen.walsh
The famous ambiguity of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw is whether the ghosts that take possession of the two children are real or merely figments of the young Governess’s imagination. Britten’s opera resolves this unequivocally in favour of their reality: they appear alone together, and generally materialise so solidly that it never occurs to you to doubt their real existence. But now Louisa Muller, in her vivid new production for Garsington, casts a fresh and intriguing light on this question. She presents the Governess, the housekeeper Mrs Grose, and the ghostly Miss Jessel as three Read more ...