musicals
Les Misérables, BarbicanFriday, 24 September 2010
It's the Mousetrap of musicals, the wholly unstoppable show and, to mark its 25th anniversary this year (the 30th, if you date it back to the initial French concept album and Paris production), it will be staged in London at three different venues.... Read more... |
Passion, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 22 September 2010
A vital theatrical partnership gets renewed, and then some, in Jamie Lloyd's revival of Passion, a transforming production that not only marks the start of various Donmar-related tributes to Stephen Sondheim in his 80th birthday year but also... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Director Des McAnuffTuesday, 14 September 2010
In the 1960s Des McAnuff played guitar and wrote songs to meet girls. Subsequently life became a little more complicated for the multi-talented writer/ director. His long-standing commitment to the Shakespeare Festival Theatre at the other Stratford... Read more... |
The Human Comedy, Young VicTuesday, 14 September 2010
It takes a brave company to revive a notorious Broadway flop. It takes an even braver one to supplement a small cast with an amateur, community chorus of over 60 people, onstage for almost the entire duration. The Young Vic can rarely be accused of... Read more... |
Shoes, Sadler's Wells TheatreTuesday, 07 September 2010
Every time I go to Sadler’s Wells now I come out wondering if there’s something wrong with my hearing, so loud and numbing are their speakers. It’s a blight on a lot of shows, but on none more so than Shoes, because this is the first major London... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Writer-composer Richard ThomasTuesday, 07 September 2010
Richard Thomas wrote Jerry Springer, The Opera, as everyone knows - and he is soon to unveil Anna Nicole, the opera. Can this be the same Richard Thomas who’s written a dance show at Sadler’s Wells, with a cheesy poster, called Shoes? It hardly... Read more... |
theartsdesk MOT: Dirty Dancing, Aldwych TheatreSunday, 05 September 2010
I suspect that more than half the audience that goes to see Dirty Dancing on stage has seen the 1987 movie, and that quite a few of them have seen the stage version more than once. There’s a strange feeling of being at a party where everyone knows... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe: Bo Burnham/ Ovid's Metamorphoses/ Tony Tanner's CharlatanSaturday, 28 August 2010
Bo Burnham says he doesn’t like the terms musical comic, internet sensation or teenage wonder. Well he’s all three, save the last now, as he turned 20 during this year’s Fringe - and anyway he prefers the term prodigy, he tells us in deadpan tones... Read more... |
theartsdesk MOT: Wicked, Apollo Victoria TheatreFriday, 27 August 2010
Wicked is that rare Broadway musical transplant to London that has recouped its costs - and how. Part paean to female empowerment, part parable of life in Bush-era America or any land on the desperate look-out for an enemy, the show also offers... Read more... |
A Celebration of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Royal Albert HallMonday, 23 August 2010
It may have been the glossy, Labrador-like abandon of John Wilson and his fabulous orchestra, but barely two bars of the Oklahoma! overture had passed before I caught myself grinning and drifting into critical neutral. Richard Rodgers’ scores are... Read more... |
theartsdesk MOT: Chicago, Cambridge TheatreSaturday, 21 August 2010
Chicago, in some ways, remains the great musical theatre surprise success of modern times. Bob Fosse's dissection of sex and violence in the Windy City had a respectable Broadway run back in the 1970s (898 performances in all), featuring a... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe: Kevin Eldon/ Lovelace: A Rock Musical/ Jeremy Lion/ Susan CalmanSaturday, 21 August 2010
He may call it Titting About, but Kevin Eldon’s show, his first as a solo performer (at the grand age of 49), should be made compulsory viewing for young comics. For this is a man who has learned his craft, the value of good writing, of stage... Read more... |
