Menier Chocolate Factory
edward.seckerson
It's hard not to invoke the B word - Barbra, that is, not Brice - and I speak as one who bunked off school to catch her at a midweek matinee when Funny Girl first played London almost 50 years ago. It was standing room only at the Prince of Wales Theatre but by then she was pretty much phoning in her performance, and only the thrill of that voice (smaller than one expected but laser-intense) carried her through. It's quite the reverse with the very talented Sheridan Smith, who is a funny girl and probably closer in spirit to the real Fanny Brice than Streisand could ever be. And with Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Writer Anthony Horowitz is a busy man. Having written more than 40 books, he has also worked in many media. One year, he’s penning another series of the ever-popular Foyle’s War; the next he’s reviving the world of Sherlock Holmes in novels such as Moriarty; then it’s onto James Bond with Trigger Mortis. Now he casts his eagle eye on Saddam Hussein and shows how the blood-thirsty Iraqi dictator, who was paranoid about being assassinated, used to call in at the homes of private citizens, asking to eat and to stay. So what’s it like when the most powerful bully in the country rings your Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Burt Bacharach, existentialist? That's among the surprising thoughts prompted by the searchingly titled What's It All About?, the altogether delightful but also touching musical revue that trawls Bacharach's back catalogue – and that on opening night found the 87-year-old tunesmith tinkling the ivories for a moment or two during the curtain call.First seen Off Broadway 18 months ago, director Steven Hoggett's jukebox musical-with-a-twist proves even more winning on a second viewiing. The material may well be a bit too sincere – that's to say, in-your-face earnest – for more Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Genre mixing is a perilous business. Successful hybrids use duelling forms to re-contextualise or revolutionise; others wind up fatally diluting their disparate elements. Ayckbourn’s 1994 sci-fi comedy thriller – featuring, at its nadir, a farcical defenestration mistaken for a lesbian sex romp – falls into the latter camp.Dying magnate Reece (Robert Portal) suffers an attack of conscience after discovering the murderous methods of business partner Julian (David Bamber) for securing their financial success, and urges dominatrix for hire Poopay (Rachel Tucker, pictured below with Imogen Stubbs Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Normally comedy critics tell people not to sit in the front row, lest they're picked on by a particularly boorish comic. No such problem for audiences at James Freedman's interesting and unusual show about the art of pickpocketing and more modern crimes; nobody is safe from being volunteered and, in the evening's memorable finale, the subject wasn't actually in the audience when one of Freedman's tricks made him the star of the show.Freedman, whose hands are insured for a million pounds, is as adept at relieving people of their valuables as he is at delivering corny but interesting patter Read more ...
Marianka Swain
This is, stresses our guide, a work of pure (read: non-libellous) fiction, except that its “preposterous” premise is rooted in even more preposterous truth. In 2010, diva extraordinaire Barbra Streisand produced wildly narcissistic coffee-table book My Passion for Design chronicling the creation of her gaudy Malibu dream estate, which – gloriously – includes a basement storing her extravagant collections in fully-fledged “shoppes”. What, pondered writer Jonathan Tolins, would it be like if someone had to work in this absurd consumerist utopia?The result is a screamingly funny one-man Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Santa Claus does make it to the Menier Chocolate Factory this Christmas but his name is Sam Byck and he plans to fly a 747 into the White House and “incinerate Dick Nixon”. So not the Christmas show, not in any traditional sense, actually not in any sense, but a hymn to the disenchanted and disenfranchised of America and in particular the infamous few for whom the Dream finally died when they exercised their right to bear arms and “moved their little finger” around the trigger. Hail to the Chief. Bang.Stephen Sondheim’s bitterest, blackest, musical theatre piece Assassins was ground-breaking Read more ...
Marianka Swain
If Chiltern Firehouse is any indication, power in our society lies not in bank balance, postcode or job title, but in being seen nibbling crab doughnuts at the hottest restaurant in town. Becky Mode’s merciless skewering of that particular ego trip first delighted the discerning palates of Menier Chocolate Factory audiences in 2004 and makes a welcome return for the theatre’s 10th anniversary, now directed by original star and creative collaborator Mark Setlock. He and Mode both did time in pretentious Big Apple eateries, Setlock answering phones and Mode waiting tables – hellish experiences Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Since 1982 it’s been open season on the great and the good of Broadway musicals. It was in that very year that a chap called Gerard Alessandrini created Forbidden Broadway and from the hitherto innocuous sidelines of the fringe set out to cut any and everything with ideas above its station down to size. No show, no star was off limits. It was all good clean fun (sort of) but a sense of humour among those targeted was certainly recommended. They tried in vain not to recognise themselves but eventually learned to smile through the pain.On opening night of this now familiar British incarnation Read more ...
Veronica Lee
David Baddiel last did solo stand-up in 2004, when he walked out of a corporate gig after calling a bunch of bankers the c-word. Since then, he's spent his time mostly writing novels and doing some television and radio projects. It's his general absence from TV, he tells us in Fame: Not the Musical - an intelligent, witty and thoughtful examination of modern celebrity - that arouses pity in some members of the public who recognise him. If he's not on the telly, his career must be on the skids, right?Baddiel first became famous as one half of two immensely successful double acts, firstly with Read more ...
David Benedict
How do you solve a problem like...no, not Maria, Candide? Musicals are loved for their scores – and Leonard Bernstein’s one for this really is a cracker – but they’re held together by their books, i.e. the script/dramatic context that makes audiences care about the characters and plot. Filled to bursting with good intentions, Matthew White’s exuberantly rough’n’tumble new Menier production does its damnedest but there’s no disguising the fact that Lillian Hellman’s adaptation of Voltaire’s satire of inexhaustible optimism remains tension-free. The gulf between the score’s strength and Read more ...
Matt Wolf
That slice of Broadway-upon-Southwark that is the Menier Chocolate Factory has a toxic treat in The Lyons, Nicky Silver's pitch-black and quintessentially New York comedy about a family so in love with truth-telling that they've all but forgotten how to live. Small wonder the cancer-ridden Lyons père (Nicholas Day, in blistering form) swears up a storm throughout the first act as he lies in hospital preparing to die. Why go gently into the good night, the play's characters all in their own way ask, when you can exit in rampaging style, dragging everyone through the rancorous muck with Read more ...