REVIEW: Hey Old Friends, Theatre Royal Drury Lane ✭✭✭✭

Millicent Martin in Hey Old Friends

There was a charming mix of reverence and irreverence as well, making the audience feel specially entertained and complicit with the in-jokes. The warm up prelude, People Who Like Sondheim (performed with zing by Kit and McConnel) was good fun and the duo appeared throughout as a kind of Sondheim Statler and Waldorf with witty and barbed repartee. In the second Act though, one of the unarguable surprise sensations of the evening was a five minute romp through 33 Sondheim compositions, “Ladies and gentlemen may we have your attention please…” presented with real style and panache by Martin Milnes and Dominic Ferris. These cabaret contributions provided some much needed innovative content.

REVIEW: The Humans, Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre ✭✭✭

The Humans. Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre

There are two ways in which Karam’s work steps up to the mark: the dialogue is believable and genuine, splendidly touching in places; the narrative is uncompromising, as families so often are. There are no pat solutions or happy endings here – just a slice of suburban transitional life. This has the result that if the play is to achieve any momentum or purpose, it is the cast which must embellish the material with remarkable, penetrating and utterly believable performances. Happily, the cast with which Mantello animates Karam’s work is, without exception, first rate.

REVIEW: Dames At Sea, Helen Hayes Theatre ✭✭✭✭

Dames At Sea at the Helen Hayes Theatre

Dames at Sea, the work of George Haimsohn and Robin Miller (Book and Lyrics) and Jim Wise (Score), is well known as the off-Broadway hit from 1968 which launched the star of one Bernadette Peters into the Broadway stratosphere. It has been surprisingly absent from Broadway stages and this revival is a timely one, coming, as it does, amongst a season where Broadway houses are playing host to very serious and intense works (plays and musicals).

REVIEW: The Black Book, Sargent Theatre ✭✭✭✭

The Black Book at the Sargent Theatre

This is a dynamic, challenging and gripping piece of dramatic theatre. It’s confronting in a number of ways, especially if you have known someone who took their own life. There are sections full of lyrical beauty, others dripping with trenchant scepticism. Sometimes it is easiest to listen to the actors rather than watch them, because the subject matter is so close to the bone.

REVIEW: First Daughter Suite, Anspacher Theatre, The Public ✭✭✭✭✭

First Daughter Suite at the Public Theatre

It would be unsurprising if First Daughter Suite constituted a significant hat-trick for the Public, following, as it does, in the footsteps of Fun Home (which won the Tony Award for Best Musical) and Hamilton (which surely will win that Tony Award this year). It is a mature, sophisticated, joyful and challenging musical work, hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measure. It’s a triumph, unquestionably.

REVIEW: Plaques and Tangles, Jerwood Theatre Upstairs ✭✭✭

Plaques and Tangles at Jerwood Theatre Upstairs

As Young Megan, whom we first meet when she is recovering from the one-night-stand night before, is brought to complex, life-embracing realisation in a startlingly good performance by Rosalind Eleazar. Eleazar makes every moment sing with honesty, and sets up beautifully the challenges Megan will face/ignore/be overcome by in her life. Her scenes with Robert Lonsdale’s Young Jez are far and away the most involving of the production.

REVIEW: The Gin Game, Golden Theatre ✭✭✭

The Gin Game on Braodway

Both actors here are doing something quite different from a drawing room comedy. They are trying to make a point and, bravely, one that extends beyond the Caucasian community. Ill-treatment of women is everywhere and it must be stopped – that is what this version of The Gin Game screams. It’s just that no one seems to be listening.

REVIEW: Ripcord, New York City Centre Stage 1 ✭✭✭

Ripcord at New York City Centre Stages

Holland Taylor is in exceptional form as the coiled, steely Abby. She manages to humanise a thoroughly inhuman creature, making her likeable despite Abby’s more loathsome attributes. This is a real testament to Taylor’s finely honed skills – she truly makes something out of nothing. In particular, in one key scene, late in the play, she is marvellously unsentimental when the text (and the audience the night I was there) seems to beg for maudlin excess.