Category: Reviews
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Reviews round-up: December 6, 2022
I’ve had a week of highs and lows, theatrical excitement and anxiety. We are living through a really remarkable period of life, and it is impossible to separate what we see on our stages from the circumstances in which we’re viewing them. On the one hand, it is a relief to be back in theatres […]
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Review: The Drifters Girl
Last night The Drifters — or at least the current incarnation of the 1950s pop singing troupe, co-founded by George Treadwell in 1953 and whose legacy was then continued by his wife Faye after his death in 1967 — appeared at the Gywn Halls in Neath; tonight they will be at the Regal Theatre in […]
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My reviews round-up of last week
Jenna Russell in Concert (Cadogan Hall, November 7)Les Miserables (Mountview, ran November 1-6)Bandstand (ArtsEd, ran November 2-6)‘Night, Mother (Hampstead Theatre, London NW3, to December 4Footfalls & Rockaby (Jermyn Street Theatre, London SW1, to November 20)Pride and Prejudice (Sort of) (Criterion Theatre, London SW1, open-ended run, booking to April 17, 2022)The Ocean at the End of […]
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Reviews round-up: November 2
HMS Pinafore (London Coliseum) in rep to December 11 The Magician’s Elephant (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon) Runs to January 1, 2022 What’s New Pussycat? (Birmingham Repertory Theatre) Runs to November 14, 2022 Love and Other Acts of Violence (Donmar Warehouse) Runs to November 27, 2022 What an alternately serious and delightful pleasure it is to […]
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Friday reviews: October 22
For over 11 years, I used to file a weekly theatre review column for the Sunday Express, and although space was tight (typically 500 words), I used to love filling it with my passion for theatre, addressing an audience who weren’t necessarily aficionados, and hopefully occasionally igniting a similar enthusiasm to try something on, or […]
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Reviews: Beauty and the Beast / Frozen
The “Disneyifcation” of Broadway — and in particular of the formerly derelict stretch of 42nd Street that includes the venerable New Amsterdam Theatre that Disney presided over a lavish refurbishment of — was a big part of the regeneration of Times Square as a cleaned-up, shiny, family-friendly tourist district, after some decades in the 70s […]
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Review: Cinderella
It has been harder for Andrew Lloyd Webber to schedule a press night for Cinderella than any prince has ever had to find the wearer of the glass slipper in the fabled fairytale that has already played a central role in prior musicals like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s own 1957 television musical version of the same […]
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Review: 2:22 A Ghost Story
It’s a long, long wait to 2.22am in 2: 22 A Ghost Story, when strange things may or may not be taking place in the early hours of the morning in the house that Jenny and Sam have moved into with their new baby, mostly an unseen presence but not unheard one, as she’s frequently […]
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Review: The Windsors Endgame
In what Hamlet might call an e’er hasty marriage, The Windsors Endgame has been rushed into the Prince of Wales as a summer filler to temporarily replace one deliberately bad-taste show with a no-taste one, as The Book of Mormon remains on its Covid hiatus. It’s by some stretch the best joke of the show […]
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Review: Carousel
Here is Carousel as I’ve never seen — or heard it — before. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s second ground-breaking musical — originally premiered on Broadway in 1945, two years after their debut as a partnership with Oklahoma! ushered in a new era of the modern musical, it has long been their dramatic masterpiece for me, their […]