REVIEW: The Crumple Zone, King’s Head Theatre ✭✭✭✭
Julian Eaves reviews The Crumple Zone by Buddy Thomas now playing at the King’s Head Theatre.
Julian Eaves reviews The Crumple Zone by Buddy Thomas now playing at the King’s Head Theatre.
Julian Eaves reviews The Musical of Musicals by Joanne Bogart and Eric Rockwell now playing at Above The Stag Theatre in Vauxhall.
We have come to rely on Above The Stag to supply to us, it is high-quality homoerotic titillation with a chaser of moral uplift and this show is no exception
This is an intriguing and valuable revival with some very solid performances at its heart. I am not fully persuaded that this double-bill has earned a lasting niche in the repertory, but the performers make a persuasive and consistently attractive case for it.
The star of the show, in truth, is Carole Todd’s spirited, cheeky, and knowing choreography, which brings out the very best in the cast and masterfully establishes high readings on the happy barometer of the mood in the auditorium. The cast might not be real hookers, but they are all good hoofers.
It’s a great story, but the show’s most glittering treasure is its music. There are folk tunes, love songs, impassioned ballads, comedy numbers, patter songs, soaring melodies, complex harmonies and splendid polyphony, all with a sprinkle of Irish jig around the edges. The inherent power and attraction of the score is helped in no small measure by a superbly assured delivery of the most difficult, and gorgeous, music by Jennifer Harding who excels in the central role of Constance. This is an engaging, absorbing, fantastical musical, radiant with possibility and truth. It’s confronting in parts and heartbreaking in others. And it is full of magical moments.
Spindlewood, like most towns of age, has its traditions. But no practice, custom or Old Wives Warning is so firmly adhered to as ‘The Turning of the Key’. Every year, on the last night of winter, as the first day of spring unfolds, the townsfolk gather to take part in a strange ritual. They meet in the centre of the town square, where a statue bearing the likeness of a young girl stands, poised and still, one hand raised as if to toast the sky. Constance has stood in the square for as long as any can remember. But she is never more lifelike than tonight. Spindlewood is also home to a Clockmaker with a secret – something the simple folk of the town must never discover. Through methods hidden even to himself, the Clockmaker has created something much, much more than a machine. . . This world premiere by new … Read more
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