REVIEW: Swifties, TheatreN16 ✭✭
It’s a very clever idea, and writer Tom Stenton is to be congratulated for having formulated it and brought it thus far along the road to taking theatrical shape.
Julian Eaves
REVIEW: Roundelay, Southwark Playhouse ✭
If you like simple – very simple – soap-operas about nice middle-class people, who drink lots of prosecco and talk at inordinate length and to no great purpose about their very ordinary relationships, then this is the play for you! If not, give it a miss.
REVIEW: La Poule Plombee, Live At Zedel ✭✭✭✭
By the time the reprise of the title song reappeared as ‘Your Voice’ and then led us into the finale ultimo of ‘Encore!’, we were ready to leave the cabaret with fond feelings in our hearts, and a copy of the CD in our pockets.
UPCOMING: Cases at The Phoenix Artists Club
Cases Phoenix Artist Club Sunday 12th February 2017 A new work by the breathtakingly talented Dominic Powell (who is barely into his third decade) is always a cause for celebration, and there was plenty of that in the below-stairs cabaret beside the Phoenix Theatre a few weekends ago, when he unveiled his latest festival of song. On hand to deliver this cycle of musical moments from his newest show were the terrific voices of Bobbie Little, Christina Matavu, Nicholas McLean, Jordan Shaw and ‘narrator’ Brandon Lee Henry. The band was made up of Powell on keyboard, one Powell senior on guitar, and another on kahoon. Typically for Dominic, it was a neat, well thought-out and very effective presentation. Cultivating a very commercial ‘American’ sound, the opening number – the title song – seemed to have emerged via any number of drama school productions of ‘Rent’. But it was more artful, … Read more
REVIEW: Lizzie, Greenwich Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭
This is the greatest American musical since ‘Sweeney Todd’. I have seen it twice this week, in the wonderful production by the American director, Victoria Bussert, that is now playing for just three weeks at Greenwich Theatre, and I do not make that claim lightly.
REVIEW: The Sorrows Of Satan, Tristan Bates Theatre ✭✭✭✭
This delicious new musical is the wittiest, most elegant and most extraordinary new show on offer in town right now.
REVIEW: That’s Jewish Entertainment, Upstairs At The Gatehouse ✭✭✭✭
The wonder of Aria Entertainments’ revues is their simplicity and coherence: two qualities easy to strive for, but easy to miss in this deceptively simple form.
UPCOMING: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The Ambassadors Theatre
Julian Eaves attended a preview presentation of new musical The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Ben Frost and Richard Hough. The wonderfully gifted songwriting team of Ben Frost (music) and Richard Hough (lyrics) are making their way steadily up the ladder of new talent in the world of musical theatre, and with this – their most recent project – they score a number of important successes. Seen just twice, in workshop ‘concert’ performances (although Ryan McBryde’d direction gave us nearly a whole production, at least as far as the six principals and narrator – the forces available here – were concerned), first in Letchworth and then at The Ambassador’s with an industry-heavy audience, this was a fascinating insight into the development of a new musical entertainment. Commissioned by James Seabright, the pair have devised and elaborated their own libretto, inspired by – rather than based on – the brief, rollickingly funny poetic … Read more
