Sing Street - Review

Lyric Hammersmith, London

***

Music & lyrics by Gary Clark & John Carney

Book by Enda Walsh

Based on the motion picture written and directed by John Carney

Directed by Rebecca Taichman

Grace Collender and Sheridan Townsley

Together with Gary Clark, John Carney has taken his 2016 movie about the power of music, love and dreams to conquer the poverty of 1980’s Dublin, translated it into a musical.

It’s a tall order for any story to be so transformed and (for the show’s first half at least) the photographed beauty that underscored the movie fails to be replicated on Hammersmith’s Lyric stage. Enda Walsh has been drafted in to write the musical’s book, but for all Walsh’s innate understanding of Irish culture, his storyline lurches clumsily through too much expositional cliche.

The evening’s strengths however rest on the extraordinary talents of its young cast of gifted actor-musicians, many of which are making either their London or professional debut in the show.

Sheridan Townsley and Grace Collender (respectively Conor and Raphina) lead the narrative as the young lovers destined to be together. Both have a vocal strength  and charisma that suspends disbelief and drive the story through its cliched backdrop. There is great work too from accomplished singer Adam Hunter as Conor’s older brother Brendan.

It is Carney and Clark’s songs however that power the show, restoring this jaded reviewer’s faith in new writing. Where so much new musical writing can fail to land, in Sing Street, and in the second half in particular, as Walsh’s book fades into insignificance, the songs and more importantly, the passion and power with which they are delivered, make the evening soar.

This show's actors and songs are fab. With a sharper storyline and the 2hr 40 running time trimmed by half an hour, this could yet be a fantastic show.

Runs until 23rd August

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

Evita - Review

London Palladium, London




***



Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics by Tim Rice
Directed by Jamie Lloyd

The cast of Evita

Six years after bringing an outstanding Evita to London’s Open Air Theatre (click here for a review of that 2019 production) and amidst a blaze of well orchestrated publicity, Jamie Lloyd helms his show into the London Palladium. But what was once wondrous in Regents Park, fails to stun in the West End.

In 2019 it was Samantha Pauly, an actor relatively unknown in the UK who played Eva, delivering a performance that shone both in its excellence and its leading of her supporting company. Today however it is Hollywood’s wunderkind Rachel Zegler who heads the bill, a young woman who knows how to play to the camera but who lacks the chops to convincingly act through song on stage.

Familiar with delivering leading roles in starry close-up on the big screen, Zegler has amassed a following of millions. But with only a modest exposure to having performed in (let alone leading) a major show on Broadway or in the West End, it appears that much like Eva Duarte herself, Zegler has been hired for star quality over experience. 

Any production of Evita has to rest on the strengths of its leading lady, who in this production is sometimes found to be missing in action. As has been widely reported, Zegler sings Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, from the Palladium's outside balcony to a bunch of assembled passers-by, while the paying crowd *inside* the theatre are reduced to mere voyeurs, watching her via a big screen livestream. That the translucent screen barely shields the show’s upstage orchestra who remain visible throughout, is a distraction. 

Much has been made of Lloyd’s use of live-action video, notably with his 2023 take on Sunset Boulevard that saw Tom Francis careering around London’s Strand before winding up back on stage at The Savoy. But that of course was different. Francis was not the show’s main star, nor his song the evening’s biggest number.

At the Palladium we find Evita performing one of the most exquisite songs in the canon, from a remote location that is at best, acoustically compromised. Unlike previous on-stage Evitas, remove this Eva’s microphone and she doesnt just become hard to hear, she becomes completely inaudible, Lloyd's staging denying the audience the experience of hearing Zegler's natural tone and timbre as she delivers the classic number. It is not an unreasonable expectation that a live musical (and especially this musical, for which the money keeps rolling in at up to £245 per ticket) should deliver songs that are sung live on stage, all performed to the highest standard that the performers’ voices and the venue’s acoustics will allow. At the Palladium, the audience is being cheated. 

And while the outside throng of several hundred are no doubt appreciating the nightly free rendition of the show’s nine o’clock number, as Lloyd’s camera pulls back to reveal Soho’s mostly empty Argyll Street (including the distracting logo of the next door Pret restaurant that hoves into view), it all seems a little tacky and contrived and, both literally and artistically, many miles away from the narrative's intended romance of Buenos Aires and the Casa Rosada. Good theatre should suspend the audience's disbelief, transporting the audience to another place. When the only place that they are transported to is a grimy London side street, then that fragile bubble of imagination bursts.  

Back inside the theatre, Fabian Aloise’s choreography remains exciting and imaginative, equally Jon Clark’s brutal lighting designs heighten the violence of Peron’s fascism. But the production's sound design is ghastly, with too many songs coming across as though they are being shouted from the stage into an inaudible oblivion.

The Palladium balcony scene has proved a brilliant marketing gimmick, with the show having grabbed news headlines across the country and word of mouth spreading like wildfire. In reality however, the scene’s flaws see it amounting to little more than a modern interpretation of The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Jamie Lloyd’s revived Evita proves that star quality is no substitute for talent.

Runs until 6th September

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

The Midnight Bell - Review

Sadler's Wells, London

***

Directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne

The company of The Midnight Bell

Inspired by the novels of Patrick Hamilton, The Midnight Bell plunges us into the murky, world of 1930s Soho. And there, thanks to Paule Constable’s gloomy lighting, it remains for one hour and fifty minutes (apart from a twenty minute interval). While Lez Brotherston's set design is atmospheric, the action is not always visible. That the follow-spots sometimes fail to light their intended subject doesn’t help matters. 

The titular Midnight Bell is a pub where various people – lonely, listless, cocky or whatever – meet. Most are looking for love or sex in some form or other, with some of the encounters working out better than others.  

Of course the choreography is sensitive, imaginative and very watchable. Some of the gestures are witty too and it’s all very human. This is Matthew Bourne, after all, and he’s a master of his own form of body language.  But the story telling is too vague and given the shadowy lighting it’s often hard to distinguish one character from another although each is, apparently, drawn specifically from the novels. 

Terry Davies’s evocative music, pre-recorded by an eleven piece orchestra with a singer, fits the mood of the piece perfectly. He deploys an effective use of voice, sailing over the top of the musical texture, to create mystery, sadness or wistfulness. Like Bourne, Davies is very good at evoking mood with, for example, a minimalist percussion rhythm accompanying a sex scene in a seedy hotel that is aurally arresting. Less successful is the use of characters miming 1930s songs which simply feels lazy. Dance in general, and ballet in particular, is a non-verbal medium and the songs are a jarring interruption. 

This revival of The Midnight Bell, first seen in 2023, is reasonably enjoyable theatre, athough the second half drags. Not Matthew Bourne’s finest.

Runs until 21st June, then on tour.

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Reviewed by Nicola Klein

Here We Are - Review

National Theatre, London

***

Music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by David Ives

Directed by Joe Mantello

The cast of Here We Are

It is a rare show indeed that combines a generous dose of magical creativity with the tedium of disappointing over-ambition, but so it is with Here We Are that’s recently arrived at the National Theatre from New York under the continued helming of Joe Mantello.

The musical, Stephen Sondheim’s final composition, is a nod to the movies of Luis Buñuel - well, two movies in particular, Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie - with the show’s first act proving an incisively scorching satire on the shallow platitudes of the privileged middle-class, themed around a group of friends seeking, and serially failing, to find a restaurant for brunch.

Sondheim is at his best when he mocks society’s pretentious, pompous shallowness and the range of his melodies blended with the brutal wit of his lyrics are just sensational. By way of example, when one of the friends orders a coffee, the waiter, who we learn has no coffee nor indeed much else on the menu, parries the request with this sensational retort:

We do expect a little latte later,

But we haven’t got a lotta latte now.

The structure, rhyme and alliterate assonance of those lines is just brilliant. Every new writer of musicals should be made to study Sondheim to recognise the discipline and structure that goes in to crafting a good song. That the two leading musical roles (atop a starry cast) that drive the first-half’s wicked satire are played by the incomparable Tracie Bennett along with Denis O’Hare only adds to the outstanding entertainment on display.

But then it’s the interval and then it’s act two which sees the group of friends caught in the horror of being trapped under a spell from which they cannot escape. The most horrific consequence of this spell however is that it leads to the majority of the act being song-free, and when one considers that it is Sondheim's song writing sparkle that gives the show what zest it has, to deny the actors the oxygen of Sondheim's flair leads to a stifling of the show as it rapidly loses momentum, becoming a flaccid and boring interpretation of Buñuel’s brilliant original.

David Zinn’s ingenious set may well be stunning, equally Natasha Katz’s lighting, but neither are enough to rescue this flaccid hour-long dirge, with the second half proving to be little more than a self-indulgence by book-writer David Ives who, stripped of Sondheim's support, clearly lacks the creative nous to effectively translate an already brilliant movie into entertaining theatre. 

Producers take note : If this show were to be chopped at the interval it would make for a short, stunning tribute to the genius that was Stephen Sondheim.

Runs until 28th June

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Faygele - Review

Marylebone Theatre, London

***

Written by Shimmy Braun

Directed by Hannah Chissick

Ilan Galkoff and Andrew Paul

In an immaculately performed production Faygele tells the story of Ari Freed, a gay young Jewish man brought up in a strictly orthodox household and who was to take his own life as a consequence of his parents’ failure to embrace their son’s sexuality. In an evening that is occasionally moving, Shimmy Braun’s script can be perceptive while at other times coming across as shallow and two-dimensional.

Under Hannah Chissick’s assured direction Ilan Galkoff turns in an accomplished performance as Ari, at times speaking to us after death, at other times speaking in real life flashback. There is a measured energy to Galkoff’s work (including a seamless comment to an audience member to silence their mobile phone!) that impresses.

Ari is the story's most rounded character. Elsewhere, despite Braun’s sometimes flawed script, there is fine work from Ben Caplan as Ari’s monstrous father Dr Freed and in particular from Andrew Paul as the family’s rabbi. Clara Francis plays Ari’s mother in perhaps the most well constructed of all of Ari’s supporting characters.

Faygele speaks to a painful and complex subject that cries out for deeper consideration than Braun is able to offer. Mercifully the play’s one act, 90-minute duration keeps the evening short.

Runs until May 31st

Photo credit: Jane Hobson

Giant - Review

Harold Pinter Theatre, London

***

Written by Mark Rosenblatt

Directed by Nicholas Hytner

John Lithgow

.

Back in October 2024, when Giant premiered at the Royal Court, this website declared John Lithgow a likely Olivier contender for his world-class interpretation of Roald Dahl, in Mark Rosenblatt’s new play. And so it was that the Olivier award came to pass, together with numerous other gongs that have been bestowed upon this production. And while Giant's cast were impressive at the Court, they are equally impressive in the West End with all the key players remaining  other than Romola Garai who is stunningly replaced by Aya Cash in the role of Dahl’s American publisher, Jessie Stone.

While the production values remain exquisite and the acting world class and Rosenblatt’s words still pack a tightly constructed 2+ hours, the quality of the drama that he has created remains highly-debatable. As this website set out last year, Giant lacks a base objectivity. 

Rosenblatt (and Hytner?) rightly highlight Dahl’s vicious antisemitism and the evil of his appalling conflation of Israel’s actions as being the ultimate responsibility of the entire Jewish people. But for all that signalled virtue, there remains a failure to effectively posit or argue any explanation whatsoever (save for a brief passing nod by Stone in act one) for Israel’s military actions, with the play remaining an unbalanced soapbox for anti-Israel tropes. And from there it becomes all too easy for audiences to take the writer's evident Israel-sceptic stance and translate his comments, drawn from a 1982 conflict between Israel and Lebanon, onto a critique of today's current military action in Gaza.

Giant offers quite possibly the finest acting in town, matched only by a premise that is as deeply flawed.

Runs until 2nd August

Photo credit: Johan Persson

My Master Builder - Review

Wyndham's Theatre, London

***

Written by Laila Raicek

Directed by Michael Grandage

Elizabeth Debicki and Ewan McGregor

My Master Builder marks Lila Raicek’s impressive arrival on the West End. Ewan McGregor is Henry Solness the titular, eminent, architect, but just whose master builder he is, remains an enigma. It is clear from early on that his marriage to Elena (Kate Fleetwood) is in dire straits, while the arrival of Mathilde (Elizabeth Debicki) to the party that is marking the completion of Henry’s latest project, only adds a complex layer of shading to the narrative. 20 years his junior, Mathilde shared a romantic liaison with the architect a decade ago. The passions and grief that surround Raicek’s narrative are at times smouldering and at other times blistering. 

Debicki and Fleetwood are phenomenal - Fleetwood in particular with her lament in the second act as to the challenges facing women in life. McGregor convinces as a deeply flawed protagonist, but there are moments in his performance when his acting loses the required depth. This may no doubt be addressed as the play’s run settles in.

Similarly, and particularly in the first half, Raicek’s dialogue drifts into expositional cliche. For the most part however her writing thrills as it explores the agonies both of failed relationships and of bereavement. There is sound work too from David Ajala and Mirren Mack that serves to drive the story forward.

A play about an architect demands an appropriately ingenious staging, with designer Richard Kent duly delivering. That being said, Kent has created some massive set components that require hoisting up and down through the evening, with the Wyndham’s noisy winches proving an annoying distraction.

My Master Builder is clever and at times, deeply perceptive.

Runs until 12th July

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Farewell Mister Haffmann - Review

Park Theatre, London

***

Written by Jean-Philippe Daguerre

Translated by Jeremy Sams

Directed by Oscar Toeman

Nigel Harman and Jemima Rooper

Blending history with fiction, Jean-Phillipe Daguerre’s narrative explores Paris under Nazi occupation in the early 1940s.

Alex Waldmann is the titular Parisian jeweller, a Jew who transfers the ownership of his business to his Catholic employee Pierre (Michael Fox) to avoid it being seized by the Nazis. Haffmann also requests of Pierre that he and his wife Isabelle (Jennifer Kirby) move into the flat above the jewellery shop, with the hope that the couple will provide sufficient decoy to enable the jeweller to avoid deportation to the concentration camps. Not long into the establishment of this ménage-a-trois, we learn that Pierre is infertile and that a bizarre deal is to be brokered in which Haffmann is to impregnate Isabelle. This is an improbable storyline at best, which for the audience’s disbelief to be effectively suspended, requires actors of the highest calibre. Unfortunately the hard-working trio lack a convincing chemistry and so the first hour or so of this 90-minute, one-act play makes for soggy and unconvincing drama.

However - much like the way Steven Spielberg made the audience wait 80 minutes before revealing the shark in his movie Jaws, the evening’s final third is electric, as Otto Abetz (Nigel Harman), Hitler’s real-life ambassador to France together with his wife Suzanne (Jemima Rooper) arrive as the dinner guests of Pierre and Isabelle.

Harman’s Nazi is clipped and manicured and in a performance that must surely be up for an Offie nomination, his manifestation of the Third Reich’s evil proves as mesmerising as Christoph Waltz’s Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. Rooper’s drunken Suzanne is equally entertaining.

There maybe moments when Farewell Mister Haffmann feels like a long-haul but hang in there, Nigel Harman is sensational!

Runs until 12th April

Photo credit: Mark Senior

Backstroke - Review

Donmar Warehouse, London

***

Written and directed by Anna Mackmin

Tamsin Greig and Celia Imrie

Celia Imrie and Tamsin Greig are Beth and Bo, mother and daughter in Anna Mackmin’s Backstroke, a play that explores womanhood, memory and the end of life. Coming fast on the heels of the autobiographical The Years' recent transfer to the West End, this Aga-saga (for there is such an onstage stove) similarly spins its yarn through a company of 5 female actors.

The drama opens around Beth’s hospital bed. A now elderly former hippy, she has recently suffered a stroke. That her relationship with the middle-aged Bo has been unconventional and strained is made clear from the get-go, with Bo addressing her mother by her first name rather than one of the more typical maternal salutations.

This is a narrative that plays fast and loose with timeframes. As the play unfolds, Beth leaps from her hospital bed into the  kitchen of her former years. Bo's past memories are portrayed as an immaculately photographed short film, flashes of which are projected on to an upstage blacked-out backdrop. As we explore Bo’s complex relationship with her mother, further emotional emotional intricacies are revealed that outline the younger woman's infertility together with her journey to adopt daughter Skylar.

This is a story that could have made for a sensational evening in the theatre. As it is, aside from Imrie and Grieg’s outstanding performance skills, Mackmin’s self-directed dialogue creaks, with the whole endeavour feeling far too tedious. In what is (essentially) a two-handed piece, Bo's occasional interactions with healthcare professionals around Beth’s hospital bed appear implausible and unconvincing. 

Lez Brotherston’s set proves surprisingly low-key given his usual hallmark of design genius.

Ultimately Backstroke is a brilliant idea that has been fashioned into a lacklustre script and delivered by world class actors.

Runs until 12th April

Photo credit: Johan Persson

The Years - Review

Harold Pinter Theatre, London

***

Based on Les Années by Annie Ernaux

Adapted and directed by Eline Arbo

Romola Garai

There are moments in The Years that make for some of the finest drama to be found in London. Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical writings, translated here from the French by Eline Arbo who also directs, offer a vivid glimpse into a womanhood spanning from the 1940s through to the early years of the 21st century.

Five women, who all opened the play last year at the Almeida prior to this West End transfer, capture Ernaux through the decades, and all with sublime performances. Seamlessly, the quintet also perform all the play’s supporting roles.

At its best The Years delivers the Nobel-winning Ernaux’s depictions of her own emotional and sexual development. From the highs of the excitement at the discovery of the secret adolescent thrills of masturbation, through to the depths of fumbled painful humiliation experienced during her teenage defloration, (credit to Anjli Mohindra for playing those chapters). The pain is worsened as Romola Garai plays out the backstreet abortion that Ernaux chose to undergo in her twenties. It is a credit to Garai that with nothing more than her outstanding acting skills and a judicious amount of stage blood - but no nudity whatsoever nor any other props or special effects - that her portrayal of such an horrific event is delivered with such harrowing impact.

Gina McKee picks up the emancipated Ernaux in in her fifties, having separated from her husband and enjoying not only parenthood but the joys of passionate sexual liaisons. Again - fine sensitive work from McKee. Deborah Findlay plays the writer’s endgame with equal perception and wisdom. A nod too to Harmony Rose-Bremner who takes up another of the author’s youthful personages.

Aside from speaking of her feminine evolution, Ernaux also offers historical comment on the world’s global and political evolution through the years. Her historical analysis however is crass, barely getting beyond schoolyard Marxism such is her bias. Billy Joel’s song We Didn’t Start The Fire achieves more accurate historical context in five minutes than Ernaux and Arbo can muster over nigh-on two hours with no interval.

Technically, the night of this review was a disaster blighted by not one, but two show-stops. The first was understandable with an audience member who having fainted at Garolai’s depiction of the aforementioned abortion, required assistance in leaving the auditorium. The second however was an inexcusable and appalling fault of the sound system. With tickets selling at close to £200 a pop, paying punters are entitled to expect flawless technical standards at a West End show.

The Years is a curate's egg, albeit brilliantly acted, that is 30-minutes too long. 

Runs until 19th April

Photo credit: Helen Murray

The James Bond Concert Spectacular - Review

O2, London

***

A evening that was definitely for James Bond fans played for one night only on the O2’s Indigo stage.

Q The Music - a tribute orchestra dedicated to performing the Bond classics, provided a sparkling delivery of the franchise’s unforgettable melodies with Kerry Schultz and Matt Walker on vocals. Some of the singing was glorious - GoldenEye, originally performed by Tina Turner was a spectacular cover, however the take on Skyfall, with its demands to replicate Adele’s original understated complex melancholy, failed to hit the spot.

David Zaritsky compered the night with perhaps more patter than was needed and while the music may have been magnificent the O2’s decaying fabric - allowing smells from the adjoining lavatories to permeate the auditorium - detracted from what really should have been a sparkling evening and left some in the audience shaken, not stirred.

Q The Music know their tunes and with perhaps just a quantum of solace added to their programme, this evening could yet prove an all time high.

Filumena - Review

Theatre Royal, Windsor

***

Written by Eduardo de Filippo

English version by Keith Waterhouse & Willis Hall

Directed by Sean Mathias

Felicity Kendal and Matthew Kelly

Felicity Kendal and Matthew Kelly star in Eduardo de Filippo’s classic Neapolitan folly Filumena, delivering the 1970s translation penned by those stalwarts of modern English literature, Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall.

There are moments of comedy gold in the play's first half, particularly early on, as we learn of Kelly’s cantankerous, philandering Don Domenico being outwitted by his bride Filumena Marturano (Kendal) on the day of their marriage, a union which itself is a formalisation of their hitherto 35-year cohabitation.

Theirs is an unlikely romance. Filumena in her youth was a prostitute and the Don one of her clients, and from there blossomed a prickly love. Kelly and Kendal sparkle in their roles, with an electricity in their sparring that is frequently hilarious.

But Filumena (the play) cannot just rest on Kendal’s seductive, knowing wiles and Kelly’s frequent states of exasperation, brilliantly delivered though they may be. The story’s narrative offers a glimpse into the foibles and strata of 1940s Naples, but what once may have been an enchanting farce now seems dated and wordy. This review will not spoil any of the plot’s reveals, but especially in the second act, the comedy fast evaporates with the story condensing into a yarn that it is difficult to care about.

One imagines that de Filippo's original may well, like a fine chianti or prosciutto, have been steeped in l'italianità, the very essence of Italian culture, that will have added a richness to the tale that would have been recognised and adored by the cognoscenti.  Waterhouse and Hall’s translation however, for all its wit, strips away the beautiful Italian linguistics and the English that they replace it with quite simply lacks a romantic charm.  

The supporting cast – and all credit to producer Bill Kenwright Limited for employing such a large company – are for the most part a talented bunch with standout work from Julie Legrand as the faithful retainer Rosalia, and Jodie Steele as the Don’s latest young squeeze, Diana. 

At Windsor for another week and then touring, Filumena offers an evening of gentle entertainment.

Runs until 19th October and then on tour.

Photo credit: Jack Merriman

Giant - Review

Royal Court Theatre, London

***

Written by Mark Rosenblatt

Directed by Nicholas Hytner

John Lithgow

Set in a bucolic summer’s afternoon in Buckinghamshire in 1983, amidst the drilling and banging of a country residence that’s being lovingly restored, Giant is a drama loosely based on facts, about the antisemitic views and writings of that hero of children’s literature, Roald Dahl.

Bearing a striking resemblance to how we recall Dahl from his appearances in the media, with perhaps a nod to JR Hartley too, John Lithgow makes his Royal Court debut as the author. His foils across the lunch table are real life publisher Tom Maschler (played by Elliot Levey) and the fictional Jessie Stone (Romola Garai), an agent from Dahl’s US publishing company. Dahl has recently published a book review, widely seen as antisemitic, and the two publishing professionals are there, over glasses of Chablis, to coax him into drafting an apology.

Mark Rosenblatt’s drama is tightly written. In what feels like a slightly overlong 2hrs 20mins, the pace never falters, with Rosenblatt’s dialogue proving well-structured and his characters, credible. Garai and Rachael Stirling, as Dahl’s Mitford-like fiancée Felicity Crosland are both outstanding. Levey plays a recognisably luke-warm diaspora Jew, not too bothered by Dahl’s pronouncements and more concerned with trying to smooth things over at all costs. Of the three supporting characters, his is perhaps the least compelling.

Lithgow’s work however is tremendous - and under the direction of Nicholas Hytner, turns in an Olivier-worthy performance.

But other than some smug references to Ian McEwan and the literary world of that time, ultimately what is the point of this play other than to provide a platform for Dahl’s rabid ravings? Giant drips with Dahl’s criticism of Israel (the 1982 Lebanon War was raging), with clear echoes of criticisms that have been levelled at the Jewish state in more recent times during the Gaza conflict. Unsurprisingly for the Royal Court there is little offered by way of challenge to Israel’s actions, although it ultimately has to prove some comfort that Dahl’s rants against Israel are coming from the same mind and mouth that throughout the play utter the vilest antisemitic slurs. There remains of course the sad but realistic possibility that much of that irony may have soared over the heads of many of the Royal Court’s audience.

That this is brilliantly crafted theatre is unquestionable. That it also provides a soapbox for countless tropes makes for an evening that is ultimately deeply unsatisfying.

Runs until 16th November

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

Why Am I So Single? - Review

Garrick Theatre, London

***

Written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss

Directed by Lucy Moss

Co-directed and choreographed by Ellen Kane

Leesa Tulley and company

It’s quite something for writers to have a brace of shows running simultaneously in the West End, but with Six at the Vaudeville and now Why Am I So Single? round the corner at the Garrick, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss have achieved that double.

Six was famously created around the wives of Henry VIII, lending itself to a tightly written book based on a rich chapter of world-famous history. It enjoyed a stratospheric and deserved rise from humble beginnings on the fringe to the globally touring phenomenon of modern musical theatre that it is today. Why Am I So Single? however, drawn from the lives of Marlow and Moss themselves, makes for a narrative that’s lightweight and superficial in comparison. While the pair's close platonic friendship and respective life stories may be touching, they do not support a 2 1/2 hour show that itself could do with a trim of at least 30 minutes.

Where Stephen Sondheim once brilliantly explored the angsts of being single in Company, Marlow and Moss offer little more than an immaculately produced evening of self-indulgent introspection and navel-gazing. Written by anyone other than these now acclaimed wunderkinder the production may well have struggled to gain traction and backing - that is if it were even conceived at all - let alone this big fancy West End opening that frames its commercial rollout.  

Amidst countless references to classic musicals and frequently smug breakouts across the fourth wall, Nancy and Oliver (played by Leesa Tulley and Jo Foster) are Marlow and Moss’s leading characters, effectively their onstage "fictional" representations. The show is technically whip-smart and while its lyrics may be repetitive and its melodies forgettable, both Tulley and Foster sparkle with performing excellence and gorgeous voices. Noah Thomas as their mutual friend Artie is also at the top of his game.

Ellen Kane’s choreography and co-direction is another of the evening’s stunning treats with her company drilled to a glorious visual perfection.  Atop the stage, Chris Ma’s eight-piece band are equally slick.

The storyline may be thinly crafted but who knows? With its Marlow and Moss imprimatur, Why Am I So Single? may yet appeal to Gen Z. It’s certainly been rolled in enough glitter!

Booking until 13th February 2025

Photo credit: Matt Crockett

The Grapes of Wrath - Review

National Theatre, London

***

Written by John Steinbeck

Adapted by Frank Galati

Directed by Carrie Cracknell

Cherry Jones

Frank Galaţi’s 1990 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic makes for an interesting glimpse of American history. The 1930s Dust Bowl, coming hard on the heels of the Great Depression and Wall Street Crash saw the fabled american dream evolve into a nightmare for millions, with countless Mid-Westerners migrating towards California, in desperate search of a living.

Simply staged, Carrie Cracknell’s production that comes in at just under three hours mixes quality with tedium. Greg Hicks and Cherry Jones as Pa and Ma Joad are a magnificent focal pair of Oklahomans leading their family west. Hicks only recently played an onstage farmer in the musical Oklahoma!, so there is a theatrical symmetry in seeing his decline from playing a prosperous landowner to an impoverished migrant.  Both he and Jones bring a perfectly weighted gravitas to their family’s struggles and amidst a luxuriously cast company of 27, there is standout work from Harry Treadaway as their son Tom and Mirren Mack as daughter Rose of Sharon.

Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel is brutal in its portrayal of the depths of the era’s hardships, not least in its harrowing finale that Cracknell and Galati effectively retain. The show however slips into cliché too often, with Maimuna Memon’s songs that have been written for this production. The #RefugeesWelcome theme to Memon’s lyrics offers a clumsily crass attempt to link a contemporary political relevance with Steinbeck’s magnum-opus and proves to be a disappointing distraction.

Good in parts.

Runs until 14th September

Photo credit: Richard Hubert Smith

I Ran With The Gang - Review

Stage Door Theatre, London

***

Written and directed by Liam Rudden

In its first ever London production, Liam Rudden’s tribute to Alan Longmuir, the original Bay City Roller, plays for one week at the Stage Door Theatre above Covent Garden’s Prince of Wales pub.

In a show that's more monologue than musical (this ain't no Jersey Boys) Michael Karl-Lewis plays Young Alan, effectively narrating Longmuir's story and that of the group he founded, the Bay City Rollers, a band that for a chunk of the 1970s saw "Rollermania" dominate the global pop scene.

What this show lacks in panache it more than compensates for in audience enthusiasm. Longmuir’s story is an impressive tale of beating the odds to reach global stardom before the band was to fall apart, but the two-dimensional nature of Rudden's narrative makes for heavy going at times. A heartfelt photo-tribute to Longmuir that wraps up the first phase of this hour long one-act show shares a sentimental intimacy that seems best preserved for a more private gathering, rather than a theatre-show.

No matter - the evening’s second shift sees Karl-Lewis and his fellow performers Ross Jamieson and Lee Fanning leading a glorious kitsch singalong to a backing-track powered medley of the band’s greatest hits. Guilty secret: I might just have sung along to Bye Bye Baby….

The theatre was packed with a mature tartan-waving throng. With most of the Bay City Rollers’ hard-core following now drawing their pensions, to see such a grey-haired mob up on their feet and rocking to the music was as much of a tribute to hip surgery and HRT, as it was to the chart-topping songs.

Strictly for the fans who won’t let the music die.

Runs until 17th August

Fiddler On The Roof - Review

Open Air Theatre, London

***

Adam Dannheiser

Book by Joseph Stein

Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick

Music by Jerry Bock

Directed by Jordan Fein

Much like the village of Anatevka itself, Jordan Fein’s production of Fiddler On The Roof is a microcosmic melting pot, not only of the marvellous but also of the mediocre. It gives a curious message that the show's producers have decided that its main publicity image promoting and celebrating the show, should be of Chava (played by Hannah Bristow), the one daughter of Tevye and Golde who deserts her Jewish heritage to marry outside the faith, rather than upholding 'tradition'. Notwithstanding this unusual bias, Fein’s interpretation has managed to retain the show’s cultural essence.

This is of course the first Fiddler On The Roof to play in London since the horrors of October 7 2023. The pogrom that befalls a community of dancing, celebrating Jews and which closes the first act, leaving Anatevka in flames, chills in its identical ideology of hatred that led to the massacre at Israel’s Nova Music Festival last year.

Hannah Bristow as Chava in the show's main publicity image

Fein makes gorgeous use of Raphael Papo as The Fiddler. His violinist serves as a musical interpretation of Tevye’s (Adam Dannheiser) Jewish conscience, and intriguingly is rarely offstage. This is a beautiful touch, for Jerry Bock’s melodies written for the Fiddler deserve the centre-stage attention given to them by Fein.

Dannheiser himself (last seen by this reviewer as an outstanding Lazar Wolf on Broadway) is an adequate Tevye. Vocally strong, but occasionally disconnected, particularly in his brief exchanges his God, that feel as though they are played more for laughs than for sincerity. Lara Pulver is Golde, in possibly the worst miscasting to have been seen in years. Pulver is one of the more gifted musical theatre performers of her generation but her Golde lacks a shtetl-based warmth. Clipped and reserved, she appears more Lucille Frank (her outstanding 2007 role of an Atlantan Jewish spouse subject to horrific antisemitism) rather than Tevye’s loyal wife of 25 years.  Vocally strong, but with barely any detectable acting through song, her Golde disappoints. Similarly Dan Wolff’s Motel fails to convince us of the sincerity of his love for Liv Andrusier’s Tzeitel. The show however is in its early days and both of these flaws can yet be remedied by Fein.

Tom Scutt’s set is enchanting, a roofed canopy across much of the theatre’s stage, itself topped with fields of corn. It is a visual that works stunningly. Tevye’s Dream too is a comic delight that has been cleverly conceived. Upstage, Dan Turek’s 11-piece band are a delight. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s songs are timeless works of genius and for the most part, especially in the company numbers, are worth the price of the ticket.

Runs until 21st September

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Shrek The Musical - Review

Eventim Apollo, London

***

Music by Jeanine Tesori
Lyrics and book by David Lindsay-Abaire
Co-directed by Samuel Holmes and choreographer Nick Winston

Antony Lawrence

Packed with adoring children Hammersmith Apollo hosts Shrek The Musical for a brief Summer residence.

Adapted from the Dreamworks movie, Antony Lawrence plays the eponymous ogre with Joanne Clifton as Princess Fiona, the love of his life. Their acting is lovely in this modern fairytale with the strangest of endings. The rest of the company are also a class act. Todrick Hall is an impressive Donkey with more than a hint of Eddie Murphy in his flair and James Gillan is an appropriately villainous Lord Farquaad. A shout-out too for Cherece Richards whose singing as the Dragon was fabulous.

Nick Winston’s choreography is a delight with some impressive company numbers, not least in the routines of tap-dancing rats and three well-drilled blind mice.

Ben Cracknell’s lighting and Ben Atkinson’s music arrangements are slick - but elsewhere production values are creaky with an over reliance on unimpressive projections and poor sound balancing, with too many lyrics lost in the Apollo’s cavernously poor acoustics. Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire’s songs do not match the wit of the movie’s original scriptwriting quartet and there are moments when the musical lacks pace.

Kids will love and remember this show as a fun trip to the theatre.

Runs until 31st August

Mnemonic - Review

National Theatre, London

***

Conceived and directed by Simon McBurney

The cast of Mnemonic

A one-act, two-hour, seven-hander, Complicité’s Mnemonic returns to London, revised from its original iteration some 25 years ago.

A bold conceit that explores the fragile strands of our memories, the play interweaves a series of pan-European micro-narratives all set against a backdrop of the discovery of, and research into, the frozen 5,000 year old corpse of a man found high in the Alps.

The acting, the design and the stagecraft on display are all flawless in a production that at times is mesmerising. But Icarus-like, Mnemonic strives to say too much and in the end delivers little more than a garbled message. The evening sees world-class production values mingled with undergraduate agitprop, in a clutch of shallow arguments that cling to a biased commentary on the sacred timelessness of the refugee in a world (or at least a Europe) that is, or the play suggests should be, frontier-free.

Simon McBurney returns to direct his original conception. Pure theatrical Marmite.

Runs until 10th August

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Opera Locos - Review

Peacock Theatre, London

***

Opera Locos, conceived by the Spanish Yllana theatre company, comes to the Peacock Theatre following its successful Edinburgh Fringe run last summer. The show is a bizarre carnivalesque romp through opera’s greatest hits performed by a troupe of five avant-garde opera singers. The performers weave through a veritable top of the pops of opera from Verdi’s La Traviata to Mozart’s Queen of the Night Aria, interspersed with some more modern hits, and isloosely centred on emerging romances between the performers. The plot lines feel merely incidental to the music and are, at times, difficult to follow as they are swallowed by exaggerated comedy. The show also takes a surprisingly darker turn with one of the performers struggling with alcoholism and suicidal contemplation, a plot choice that, while potentially nodding to the tragedy of opera, seemed stark and out of place in such an eccentrically comedic show. The operatic performances are brilliant with truly high class singing, most notably a breathtaking Nessun Dorma, performed by Jesus Alvarez. However, the performers voices surprisingly failed to carry the modern classics, not quite awarding the same power to Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You as was given to Bizet’s Carmen.

The ‘jukebox opera’ style of Opera Locos is formatted to make opera more accessible for non-opera goers by veering away from the long and involved classics and providing recognisable tunes to get the whole audience on board. While this goal is largely successful, with the showreel of best hits keeping up a constant tempo, the ‘all over the place’ approach lacked the normal pathos and commitment to story from a regular opera. The high degree of forced audience participation, while fun, could also be off putting for those who might not be as familiar with La donne e mobile yet find themselves being encouraged to sing it into a microphone.

The staging was simple with limited use of set or props which allowed the performers to really take the fore. Tatiana De Sarabia’s costuming gave a fun hint to the Spanish origins of the group however, did also give the impression of a child who had gotten overexcited playing dress-up.

Audiences should still expect to be delighted by this outlandish opera-come-pantomime although should be advised to thoroughly suspend their expectations of reality or the normal running of a theatre show with regular spurts of lights on audience interaction and one (hopefully willing) audience member even being taken on stage for the final curtain call.

Runs until 11th May

Reviewed by Dina Gitlin-Leigh