mon 12/05/2025

cabaret

The X Factor 2010, Week 9, ITV1

Another week, another “fix” in the glorious cavalcade of manipulation, ill-feeling, class hatred, allegations of racism and – oh yes – singing that is The X Factor. This week it was another shift in the rules, seemingly in order to allow the judges...

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Frisky and Mannish, Touring

Frisky and Mannish: Laura Corcoran and Matthew Jones deliver a very original musical 'lecture'

Felicity Fitz-Frisky and Hansel Amadeus Mannish (aka Laura Corcoran and Matthew Jones) describe their act as “twisted pop cabaret” but that doesn’t begin to encapsulate a show that expertly parodies modern music. An easy target, you think, but this...

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Shoes, Sadler's Wells Theatre

The Health and Safety number: You too can leave your 'shoe-fession' on the Sadler's Wells site

Every time I go to Sadler’s Wells now I come out wondering if there’s something wrong with my hearing, so loud and numbing are their speakers. It’s a blight on a lot of shows, but on none more so than Shoes, because this is the first major London...

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Edinburgh Fringe: Stuart Goldsmith/ Steve Mason/ Peter Straker

Stuart Goldsmith: he looks clean-cut, but likes to live a bit on the wild side

You may think the very well-presented comic Stuart Goldsmith - clean-shaven and wearing sensible Merrells (“which says I’m not wearing a fleece but I own one”) - is the sort of  bloke your mum always hoped you would end up marrying or having as your...

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Infinite variety at Charleston

Nine years of larks at Charleston: anything goes in honour of Quentin Bell

Oh, those Bloomsberries: what fun they must have had at Charleston farmhouse snug under the Sussex downs - Vanessa and Clive Bell in menage with Duncan Grant, Lytton and Virginia popping in for tea... Well, maybe not, if you're allergic to the...

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Nevermore, Barbican Theatre

Bretta Gerecke's costumes are Edward Gorey by way of Tim Burton

If there was an opposite to the limitless “ever after” of fairytales, the relentlessly nullifying "nevermore" of Edgar Allan Poe’s raven would come pretty close. A deformed, sickly smiling "musical fable for adults", the ominously named Nevermore is...

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Diary of a Strumpette, Part Three: Ready, set, go!

Miss Kitty Kowalski is the stage name of a writer on The Arts Desk - read her earlier diaries here and hereCheck out theartsdesk’s guide to UK Festivals 2010

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Debbie Reynolds - Alive and Fabulous, Apollo Theatre

Let me confess immediately: Debbie Reynolds didn't mean a great deal to me beyond Singin' in the Rain, warbling "Tammy" and Being Princess Leia's Mother (and believe me, she gets plenty of comic mileage out of the Carrie Fisher connection...

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Camille O'Sullivan, Apollo

It is telling that there were drama critics at the Apollo to review Camille O’Sullivan’s show, The Dark Angel. The half-French, half-Irish woman is ostensibly a singer, but so unique is her delivery that each song is a piece of theatre in its own...

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