REVIEW: Musicals Unsung, St James Theatre Studio ✭✭✭✭

Unsung Musicals at the St James Studio

Musicals Unsung St James Studio Theatre 27 May 2016 4 Stars Musicals Unsung is an evening of songs cut from musicals. It’s an interesting premise and one that I found both entertaining and informative as a musical theatre lover. On this occasion, the song choices were decidedly modern with songs chosen from shows including The Last Five Years, Wicked, Shrek, Aladdin and The Drowsy Chaperone. The evening offered an insight into the process involved in developing musicals, and in some cases the fine tuning done to major musicals as they tour, or are made from animated features into stage musicals. Major musical motifs tend to remain in songs cut and replaced and it is usually easy to identify what shows are involved without being told. In the intimate St James Studio, playing to a full house, were Stewart Clarke, Lucie Jones, Jeremy Legat, Katie Paine and Sally Samad.  The majority … Read more

REVIEW: Our House, Union Theatre ✭✭✭

Our House at the Union Theatre

While this is a deserved revival of an intriguing show, the core material remains in some respects unsatisfactory, and the scale of the show is not a great fit with the location. If this sounds churlish, then that is only because in musical theatre – as in opera – for the whole to succeed to best advantage the list of parts that need to be in great shape is a long and exacting one.