Stephen Collins

With years of experience on both sides of the curtain, Stephen Collins has worked as an actor, singer, director, producer and casting consultant, indulging his passion for live theatre. For balance, he is also a media lawyer who has worked in-house for the likes of Channel 4 and The Sunday Times. In his ‘spare’ time, he can usually be found in an audience. He thinks the West End and London is the centre of the theatrical universe (sorry Broadway!), but fears it's not possible to see absolutely everything that’s on there. He doesn’t stop trying though. Cocktails help when it all gets too much.

REVIEW: The Bandstand, Papermill Playhouse ✭✭✭✭✭

Broadway, Reviews
The Bandstand at Papermill Playhouse

Director Andy Blankenbuehler has achieved something remarkable and electrifying here. Together with David Korins (Scenic design), Jeff Croiter (Lighting design) and Paloma Young (Costume design), Blankenbuehler creates a theatrical language and feel which is seductive and powerful. At most times, the sense of theatre, music and war co-exist, permanently reminding of the scars of battle borne by the musicians whose story lies at the heart of the musical. Occasionally scenes or vignettes jolt you from the happy place of clubs and nightspots swinging and evoke a world of dog tags and distress. It’s smoothly and smartly done; perfectly executed.

REVIEW: Club Gelbe Stern, Laurie Beechman Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭

Broadway, Reviews
Club Gelbe Stern at the Laurie Beecham Theatre

Now playing at the Laurie Beecham Theatre is a remarkable piece of musical theatre, Club Gelbe Stern, written by Alexis Fishman and James Miller, and directed by Sharone Havely. It delves directly into the fear and horror of being Jewish and talented just as the Swatsika began its control of German breath. Through song, chutzpah and gritty, poignant narrative, Club Gelbe Stern weaves a hard-hitting tapestry: sex, joy, heart-break, grim reality, defiance and, ultimately, hope.

REVIEW: Amazing Grace, Nederlander Theatre ✭✭

Broadway, Reviews
Amazing Grace at the Nederlander Theatre

While the tunes and harmonies for the new material might not be memorable, the orchestrations and playing is first rate. Kenny Seymour and Joseph Church, together with the 13 piece orchestra led by Aaron Jodoin, make great, evocative and stirring sounds. And when the title tune finally comes, the fusion of its simple majesty, the brilliant harmonisations of the cast and the clever arrangements, see the whole musical end on an intensely satisfying note.

REVIEW: Old Times, American Airlines Theatre ✭✭✭✭

Broadway, Reviews
Old Times at the American Airlines Theatre

Where Hodge does elect for difference is in the manner of playing. No low-key, slow boil quiet broiling here. No, the parts are played with vigour, brasher than you would expect to see on an English stage or one that thought Pinter was wrapped in mothballs. The result is the sexy edge is more angular, the stakes are higher, the comedy quite a bit funnier. All deliberately so. It reaps rewards often, but perhaps best of all in the sequence where the theft of underwear is discussed, or the body in the bed is remembered or the show tunes are so badly serviced. This is brave on Hodge’s part looked at one way; looked at another, it is simply just doing it.

REVIEW: Fool For Love, Samuel J Friedman Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭

Broadway, Reviews
Fool For Love On Broadway

Central to the power of the the production is the exquisite casting of the two doomed lovers, Eddie and May. Nina Arianda, a fan of this play since her very youngest days, is utterly superb as Eddie. Powerfully sensual, impossibly attractive, but just as impossibly earthy and ordinary, Arianda presents a deeply physiological performance which plays out through intense physical theatre. Remarkably, Sam Rockwell matches Arianda’s intensity and notches it up a level. He exudes a sexual intensity which is overwhelming, laces it with pain and indecision and then overlays that with testosterone cowboy tropes which somehow seem utterly fresh, real and dangerous.

REVIEW: Pure Imagination: A Sorta-Biography by Leslie Bricusse ✭✭✭✭✭

Book, Reviews
Leslie Bricusse

The book is laid out like a sorta-score. There is an Overture, large chapters which form ‘the key changes of (Bricusse’s) life’ – from A Minor to G Undiminished and a Coda. The sense of musicality is all pervading, as it should be for the man responsible for tunes such as Goldfinger, The Candy Man, Feeling Good and Talk To The Animals. As Elton John puts it in one of 6 Superstar forewords: “Anyone who has written What Kind Of Fool Am I? and My Old Man’s A Dustman should be revered forever.”

REVIEW: The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey, Westside Theatre ✭✭✭✭

Broadway, Reviews
The Absolute Brightness Of Leonard Pelkey

Lecesne has a winning charm and a cast-iron technique, so his spinning wheel presentation of a myriad of small town character types is absolutely engaging and subtly preaching. You never lose track of which character is speaking. He tells the tale in a beguiling way, never down-playing the atrocity at its heart but also, more fairly than is perhaps necessary, showing the humanity and humour in the positions of the other characters.