musicals
Year Out/Year In: Theatre Raises the Bar, From Old to NewSunday, 02 January 2011
One expects Shakespeare to be rediscovered afresh on the British stage (if not here, where?), and it was gratifying during 2010 to find the Royal Court - a venue all about the new - raising the authorial bar ever higher via an (almost) unbroken... Read more... |
BurlesqueFriday, 17 December 2010
“Show a little more, show a little less. Add a little smoke – welcome to burlesque.” The coy, wittier sister of stripping, and first cousin to musical theatre, the 19th-century art of burlesque is currently enjoying a revival. With comely champions... Read more... |
Matilda the Musical, RSC/Stratford-upon-AvonFriday, 10 December 2010
A lot of ink gets spilled about the quest for the next great new British musical, which results in pedestrian endeavours - you know who you are - being elevated beyond all common sense. And now, along comes Matilda, a holiday entertainment about a... Read more... |
Swallows and Amazons, Bristol Old VicThursday, 09 December 2010
Swallows and Amazons is a quintessentially English story: a heart-warming hymn to decent values, the codes of sailing and the youthful spirit of adventure. Set in 1929, at a time when the country faced financial meltdown, it is perhaps not... Read more... |
Love Story, Duchess TheatreMonday, 06 December 2010
It's not easy these days to stay the course on stage, with one leading female character after another of late failing to make it to the final curtain. I'm thinking of such otherwise diverse heroines as Shakespeare's Juliet and Andrew Lloyd Webber's... Read more... |
The Cradle Will Rock, Arcola TheatreFriday, 26 November 2010
Events surrounding the birth of the unrepentantly "un-American" Marc Blitzstein's early (1936-7) shot at socially aware music-theatre prove much more interesting than the show itself. Heck, I got more out of reading the programme than I did sitting... Read more... |
End of the Rainbow, Trafalgar Studios 1Monday, 22 November 2010
"Can't go on, ev'ry thing I had is gone". Hear Judy Garland deliver those lines from Arlen's "Stormy Weather" live at Carnegie Hall in 1961 and you'll know that no singer, not even Callas, could go further turning heartbreak into art and serving up... Read more... |
Fela!, National TheatreWednesday, 17 November 2010
For me there is a trinity of black musicians, visionaries who reshaped music in the last half-century: James Brown, Miles Davis and Fela Kuti. And just as it’s hard to imagine a biographical musical of James Brown or Miles Davis coming off - because... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Composer Dario MarianelliSaturday, 06 November 2010
Dario Marianelli won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his score for the movie Atonement, and his return to the theatre after a long absence as composer for the Young Vic's new production of Tennessee Williams's first big Broadway success, The Glass... Read more... |
Songs from a Hotel Bedroom, Linbury StudioFriday, 05 November 2010
Where has this idea come from that Kurt Weill somehow lost his edge or, worse yet, sold out when he headed Stateside? Have the people who perpetrate this nonsense actually heard the Broadway shows? The diversity of subject matter, the individuality... Read more... |
Flashdance The Musical, Shaftesbury TheatreThursday, 14 October 2010
They keep on coming, these screen-to-stage musical adaptations, noisy, bombastic, as unsubtle as juggernauts. The best of them offer up their uncomplicated entertainment with some pizazz; but Flashdance is a particularly vacuous example of the genre... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Comedian Ben EltonSaturday, 09 October 2010
Ten years ago Ben Elton (b 1959) would have needed no introduction. When still very young he became the mouth of a bolshy new generation of alternative comedians, as they were then known. Saturday Live - later Friday Night Live - was consciously... Read more... |
