Menier Chocolate Factory
Buyer & Cellar, Menier Chocolate FactoryFriday, 20 March 2015
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... Read more... |
Assassins, Menier Chocolate FactoryTuesday, 02 December 2014
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... Read more... |
Fully Committed, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 11 September 2014
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... Read more... |
Forbidden Broadway, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 03 July 2014
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... Read more... |
David Baddiel, Menier Chocolate FactorySaturday, 03 May 2014
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... Read more... |
Candide, Menier Chocolate FactoryTuesday, 03 December 2013
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... Read more... |
The Lyons, Menier Chocolate FactorySaturday, 28 September 2013
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... Read more... |
The Color Purple, Menier Chocolate FactoryTuesday, 16 July 2013
A joyful noise? Hell, yes. Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-winning 1982 feminist novel set in Georgia and spanning more than 30 years is crammed with suffering, injustice and cruelty. But in its characters’ journeys towards a realisation of identity –... Read more... |
Proof, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 21 March 2013
Mathematicians are a breed apart, bandying numbers about in a way that few outside their magic circle can fully understand. David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play uses this exclusiveness to investigate the complex relationship between a father... Read more... |
Merrily We Roll Along, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 29 November 2012
On Broadway, Merrily We Roll Along remains forever scarred as the Stephen Sondheim musical that ground to an abrupt halt, closing after two weeks in 1981. But New York's theatrical failures often exist to be discovered anew across the Atlantic, and... Read more... |
Charley's Aunt, Menier Chocolate FactoryWednesday, 03 October 2012
A revival of an old play with a broad sense of fun and a turbo-charged role for a co-star of hit sitcom Gavin & Stacey? No, not One Man, Two Guvnors, but this well-dressed production of the classy 1892 farce by Brandon Thomas starring Mathew... Read more... |
Torch Song Trilogy, Menier Chocolate FactoryWednesday, 13 June 2012
If it's possible for a piece of writing to remain significant, even important, without necessarily being great, that would describe the status of the epoch-defining Torch Song Trilogy 29 years after the triptych won Tony Awards for Harvey Fierstein... Read more... |
