Reviews

REVIEW: The Heidi Chronicles, Music Box Theatre ✭✭✭✭

Broadway, Reviews
Heidi Chronicles review Music Box Theatre

This is a play about the inequality women endure every day in almost every aspect of life, the way women treat women badly, viciously even, and the pains, pleasures and pitfalls of enduring friendships. The themes about friendship see the play reach its most acute and passionate apex; few will watch those scenes and not see themselves, their lives, reflected in some aspect of the central relationships that play out across the decades through which the narrative courses.

REVIEW: Something Rotten, St James Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭

Broadway, Reviews
Something Rotten at the St james Theatre

There is noting rotten here. Rather, Something Rotten is firm, juicy, fruity, perfectly cultivated, tart, sweet, and every segment, every layer that is peeled back, is full of life. It is almost an orgasm of enjoyment; an ode to the musical form, one that both satirises it’s subject and treats it with loving affection. Broadway will be hard pressed to find a tighter, more superbly tuned company than this one.

REVIEW: Hamilton, The Public Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭

Broadway, Hamilton The Musical, Reviews
Hamilton The Musical Wins Eelevn 2016 Tony Awards

Directed by Thomas Kail, with astonishing choreography from Andy Blankenbuehler, Hamilton is a remarkable piece of theatrical alchemy; inspiring, packed with historical interest, revelatory about the problems that beset the founding fathers and, yet, intensely human. Lin-Manuel Miranda is electrifying as Hamilton. It’s a real tour de force, full of passion and absolute commitment. Jonathan Groff is blisteringly good as the odious King George.

REVIEW: Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Theatre Royal Drury Lane ✭✭✭✭

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the Musical, Reviews, West End
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory At The Theatre Royal Drury Lane

Sam Mendes’ production of the musical adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is in excellent shape. Nothing indicates that more clearly than the show not missing a beat despite the fact that three understudies were called upon to perform. The company didn’t hiccup. Routines are polished and well-drilled; Mark Thompson’s wonderfully colourful, and sometimes colourless, costumes and sets are in pristine shape and conjure up the requisite sense of magic effortlessly. The tunefulness and sprightly fun of Marc Shaiman’s music remains infectious and sweet.

DVD Review: The Day We Sang

DVD, Reviews
Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball in Victoria Woods The Day We Sang now on DVD

If, like me you had been relaxing over the Christmas break and were tuned into your TV, you might have been lucky enough to catch a little gem of a programme called The Day We Sang which has now been released on DVD. Written by national treasure Victoria Wood, The Day We Sang was originally commissioned as a play for the Manchester International festival. It is the story of Enid and Tubby, two adults who as children were involved in the children’s choir recording of Nymphs and Shepherds in the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1929 and how their lives had changed many years later. The Day We Sang stars Michael Ball as Tubby and Imelda Staunton as Enid. They bring massive amounts of heart to the heartfelt story of two people facing a second chance in life. Balls portrayal of the over-enthusiastic, always smiling, overly likeable Tubby played against … Read more

REVIEW: A Breakfast Of Eels, Print Room At The Coronet ✭✭✭✭

Off West End, Reviews
A Breakfast Of Eels at The Print Room

The text is like a huge tapestry – there are many elements sewn into it: moments of silence, of banality, of revelation, of humour, of intense longing, of possibility, of heartbreak, of examination, of acceptance, of desolation. Quite a lot of the dialogue is lyrical, evocative. But there is a shimmering through-line of unspoken hurt and non-alignment which positively aches. Andrew Sheridan and Matthew Tennyson complement each other perfectly and the gradual changes in each over the course of the play are finely judged. Complex and absorbing.

REVIEW: Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction), Bloomsbury ✭✭✭✭✭

Reviews
Pop Up Opera perform The Abduction

The discipline of stripping a work down to its basics and re-inventing it in numerous very different locations night after night recaptures the spirit of repertory tradition that was the foundation of core value and strength of so much of British Theatre, and gives potential lessons from which the grandest of directors and opera houses might benefit. This production could transform the way you think about opera as an art form!