Theatre
Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Les Dawson: Flying High / Boris IIISunday, 07 August 2022
Les Dawson: Flying High, Assembly George Square ★★★ Any opportunity to watch impressionist Jon Culshaw at work is not to be missed. Here he gives a spot-on rendition of the gruff-voiced comic who hosted BBC’s Blankety Blank in the... Read more... |
South Pacific, Sadler's Wells review - strong singing in Daniel Evans's fast-paced productionSaturday, 06 August 2022
How old is Emile de Becque? Perhaps because my first Emile was the 1958 film version’s Rossano Brazzi, my vision of the lonely French plantation owner in the South Pacific during the Second World War has been coloured by that casting: a visibly... Read more... |
The Tempest, Shakespeare's Globe review - occasional gales of laughter drown out subtletySaturday, 06 August 2022
Alexei Sayle, in his angry young man phase, once said that you can always tell when you’re watching a Shakespeare comedy, because NOBODY'S LAUGHING. That’s not entirely true, of course, but sometimes a director has to go looking for the LOLs and... Read more... |
Tasting Notes, Southwark Playhouse review - whining in the wine barSaturday, 30 July 2022
LJ's dream has come true - she has her very own wine bar. Unfortunately for us, it turns into a bit of a nightmare.This new musical open on a nostalgic 70s vibe. Tables and chairs fill almost all of Southwark Playhouse's smaller space, a set that... Read more... |
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Gillian Lynne Theatre review - the puppetry is all part of the magicFriday, 29 July 2022
This bold reimagining of Sally Cookson’s innovative 2017 production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe swoops into Drury Lane from a triumphant national tour. Where Cookson gently and skilfully detached CS Lewis’s original from its Christian... Read more... |
Sister Act the Musical, Eventim Apollo review - the West End meets the WestwayThursday, 28 July 2022
If jukebox shows occupy one end of the musical theatre spectrum and Stephen Sondheim's masterpieces the other, Sister Act The Musical is somewhere in-between.We get songs we know (Alan Menken's score, heard first on the West End and then, in 2011,... Read more... |
Chasing Hares, Young Vic review - militant mix of politics and fantasyWednesday, 27 July 2022
While Britain is experiencing a "summer of discontent", with inflation, strikes and other conflicts, it is odd that so few plays are as overtly political, and as overtly resonant as Sonali Bhattacharyya’s Chasing Hares, which won the activist... Read more... |
101 Dalmatians, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - puppets rule in patchy musicalTuesday, 26 July 2022
There's further training, shall we say, still needed on 101 Dalmatians, the much-delayed show that marks the second consecutive musical this summer at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, following their revisionist Legally Blonde.A busy, bustling... Read more... |
The Darkest Part of the Night, Kiln Theatre - issues-led drama has its heart in the right placeSaturday, 23 July 2022
Music plays a big part in the life of Dwight, an 11-year-old black lad growing up in early 80s Leeds. He doesn't fit in at school, bullied because he is "slow", and he doesn't fit in outside school, would-be friends losing patience with him.But he... Read more... |
Much Ado About Nothing, National Theatre review - Shakespeare’s comedy goes Hollywood musicalFriday, 22 July 2022
After gender-flipping the National’s Malvolio, the director Simon Godwin might have been expected to be equally bold with Much Ado About Nothing at the same address. A same-sex Beatrice and Benedick romance? Dogberry in bondage gear, zonked out on... Read more... |
Closer, Lyric Hammersmith review - still sordid and sexy 25 years onFriday, 22 July 2022
Drama is writing in thin air, its content instantly spirited away into unreliable memory, so if a play is to be revived a quarter century on from its first run, it has to say something substantial about the human condition. Patrick Marber's Closer... Read more... |
Anything Goes, Barbican review - shipboard frivolity still fizzes, mostlyFriday, 22 July 2022
This is the summer, in musical theatre terms at least, of the revival of the revival, with several recent remountings of iconic titles (South Pacific, now in London previews) getting a renewed lease on life, alongside the likes of My Fair Lady,... Read more... |
