West End
Helen Hawkins
Mischief Theatre set themselves a big challenge when they evolved their brand of knowing slapstick. And not just about how to destroy the scenery without maiming themselves.More crucially, they have to pull off the Janus-faced trick of playing the amateur actors of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, indicated below in quotation marks, while getting the audience to applaud their brilliance. Mostly they succeed.Peter Pan Goes Wrong, their second show, was a West End hit in 2014, followed by transfers to Broadway and Los Angeles with guest stars on board` (Neil Patrick Harris joined the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Rarely has a play's opening been so opportune. Just when it looked as if the West End was slipping into decline, along comes the smart, shrewd Backstairs Billy to allay mounting fears of late that the commercial theatre had lost all sense of quality control. (The offending titles know who they are.)It helps, of course, that Marcelo Dos Santos's royalty-themed play is getting a luxuriant production whose visual allure is evident from our first sight of designer Christopher Oram's spare-no-floral-arrangement recreation of the Garden Room of Clarence House. But just when you think you've heard Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
It was interesting, in the same week that the England football team trounced Italy 3-1 in a Euros qualifier, to see Dear England again, the National Theatre smash that has just embarked on a West End run at the Prince Edward Theatre.One of the three goals was a penalty scored by captain Harry Kane. England manager Gareth Southgate’s task of fixing the England team's woeful record on that score seems to be complete: England have overcome their fear of penalties. No England fan would be that confident, however, and James Graham’s play, among other things, spells out why. Buried under all Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Unbelievable is a strange title for a slightly strange show, the brainchild of Derren Brown, Andrew O’Connor and Andy Nyman, a trio with an impeccable pedigree in creating successful magic-based events. It’s a strange title because suspension of disbelief lies at the heart of the bargain the performers make with the audience. Nobody wants to be sitting next to the unbelieving sceptic cynically informing us that it’s all done with mirrors or that she’s no longer in the box and that it's just a dummy hand in the glove. The thrill of believing it’s actually happening, however much cognitive Read more ...
Paul Vale
It's rare that a new musical or play opens in the West End with as much positive word-of-mouth as The Little Big Things. Social media has been ablaze over the last few weeks, with critics and bloggers sneaking into previews and authoritative big names hailing a new hit long before the official press night.Fortunately much of the hype is well-founded, as this uproariously crowd-pleasing musical showcases not only a burgeoning new writing talent, but also flexes the muscles of @sohoplace as a truly accessible theatre space.In the summer of 2009, a 17-year-old Henry Fraser joined his rugger- Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
As an actor, Mark Rylance specialises in outsiders and eccentrics, outliers of one kind or another. He identified and developed his latest character himself, based on the real-life, mid-19th century Hungarian doctor whose pioneering, lifesaving discoveries were long ignored by the medical Establishment – who in his lifetime was a tragic pariah rather than the hero he should have been. A perfect fit, perhaps. And yet the challenge of dramatising Semmelweis’s story is a tricky one, given a central character who was his own worse enemy and appears to have lacked anything like Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Who says you can't go home again? As proof that you can, and to giddy and gorgeous results, along comes the current West End revival of Crazy for You, which reunites Broadway name Susan Stroman with the Gershwin-inspired title that launched this singular talent on her career ascent more than 30 years ago. I saw that production in New York, as I saw its London original with Ruthie Henshall and also the (unrelated, in creative terms) Regent's Park revival that followed, and can report without hesitation that this current iteration is very much the best of them all. Back at the show's Read more ...
Jane Edwardes
Whining Donald Trump and snivelling Boris Johnson claim that they are victims of witch-hunts, although all the evidence suggests otherwise. In 1953, haunted by the iniquitous McCarthy trials that were designed to purge the US of communism, Arthur Miller turned to a real travesty, that of the Salem witch-hunt of 1692.Loosely based on an event which saw 14 women, five men and, yes, two dogs hanged, the play is an attack on the disastrous consequences when a community becomes fanatically gripped by a lie and descends into a post-truth world of false accusations, vengeance, and torture.Miller’s Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There are a few perils to saying supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, as Janette Manrara discovered on this opening night of Disney’s anniversary arena jaunt. Trying to divide the Glasgow crowd into sections to sing the song, Manrara tripped over who was to sing what, something only notable because the rest of the evening was possessed of an almost overpowering slickness.Although the opening overture went all the way back to Steamboat Willie, nearly all of the set, which featured a full orchestra, a rotating array of singers supplied from the West End and a likeable, cheerful hostess in Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Love may change everything, as we're reminded multiple times during Andrew Lloyd Webber's rabidly polyamorous Aspects of Love, but certain things about this 1989 London hit (and subsequent Broadway flop) are fixed.The sexual shenanigans tracked across this adaptation of David Garnett's 1955 romantic novel are destined to remain a challenge to playgoers to varying degrees, especially amid a current climate of properly heightened sensitivities. But it seems equally true, at least to me, that this score is one of its composer's most beautiful - not so much because of the earworm, "Love Changes Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Can lightning strike twice? Very much so, when it comes to Shirley Valentine, Willy Russell's much-revived solo play which I saw back in the day with its London and Broadway originator, Pauline Collins, who went on to receive a 1990 Oscar nomination for the film. Now along comes Sheridan Smith, who is very nearly the same age as the unhappy Liverpudlian housewife and mother who, age 42, reluctantly travels to Greece and into a new life. And, remarkably, Smith not only stands alongside fond memories of Collins in the role but quite often surpasses them. For years, Smith's emotional Read more ...
The Great British Bake Off Musical, Noel Coward Theatre review - blue-chip cast lift daft confection
Helen Hawkins
If you are hoping for some harmless fun at The Great British Bake Off Musical, probably with a few dodgy jokes about soggy bottoms mixed in, you won’t be disappointed. But what you might not expect is that the show will liberally ladle on the innuendo and is so filthy at times that it’s like being at an adult panto. The audience on opening night certainly seemed a primed one, aahing when a contestant was sent home, booing when one resorted to sabotage. What else can the writers do, though, other than step up the smut when their subject is a storyless TV show set almost entirely in a Read more ...