Jonathan Church’s production, which originated at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre late last year, is a handsome, thoughtful addition to the West End roster. It may sometimes be gruelling to watch, but it is never less than absorbing.
Review: The Railway Children
This is no circus, but a massive barn-like structure big enough to accommodate a real-life train engine and a carriage.
Review: Wicked
An autumn rich in musicals in the West End may yet bring better ones, but it’ll be difficult to find a more eye-poppingly lavish show anywhere than Wicked. And a musical about the castings of spells seems to have duly cast its own and hypnotises audience who have embraced it as not so much a musical as an event.
Review: War Horse
Straight after coming home from seeing War Horse, the now annual National Theatre production based on a children’s book and designed for family audiences, I went online to book tickets to see it again, this time with my partner, parents and older brother (who is a vet and has specialised in working with horses). So should you, before it sells out completely – and it will.
Review: Treasure Island
The first half, alas, passes by in a lot of sluggish exposition and character development as we are introduced to the pirate band, before the second half takes more imaginative flight when the Hispaniola reaches the island.
Review: Thriller Live
All the hits are here — Man in the Mirror, Billie Jean, Bad, Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, Can You Feel It etc — and more (yes, Heal the World is in there, too).
Review: Sunny Afternoon
Edward Hall’s production has more room to breathe on the West End stage, with the action spilling happily beyond it into the stalls via a ramp that bisects the front rows. There is also some cabaret seating at the front and back of the stalls to add to the atmosphere.
Review: The Scottsboro Boys
Here’s a dazzlingly executed piece of showbusiness panache, and all for a story that truly matters.
Review: The Play That Goes Wrong
The play starts ‘going wrong’ even before it has begun when cast members bustle through the front-of-house looking for a missing dog called Winston.
Review: Once
After the juggernaut onslaught of The Book of Mormon, another musical has just arrived from Broadway much more unobtrusively — but is even more unmissable. It is in an entirely different emotional register, too: where the Mormons have a literally missionary zeal, Once creeps under your skin to achieve a kind of ecstasy in its quiet, insistent yearning for life’s missed opportunities, but the lessons we can learn from them.