humour
Hercules, Theatre Royal Drury Lane review - new Disney stage musical is no 'Lion King'Saturday, 28 June 2025
Many years ago, reviewing pantomime for the first time, I recall looking around in the stalls. My brain was saying, “This is terrible, the jokes are lame, the acting execrable and the set garish.” My eyes were saying, “These kids are loving it,... Read more... |
Showmanism, Hampstead Theatre review - lip-synced investigation of words, theatricality and performanceTuesday, 24 June 2025
I think my problem is that when I should have been listening in school assemblies or RE lessons, I had the Tom Tom Club’s joyous “Wordy Rappinghood” buzzing through my mind. That experience has given me a lifelong aversion to phrases like “The Word... Read more... |
Abstract Erotic, Courtauld Gallery review - sculpture that is sensuous, funny and subversiveMonday, 23 June 2025
The Courtauld Gallery’s Abstract Erotic is a delight for two reasons – because an institution that has often seemed locked in the past is now embracing change and also because the sculptures on show are clever, suggestive and subversively funny.For... Read more... |
This is My Family, Southwark Playhouse - London debut of 2013 Sheffield hit is feeling its ageFriday, 30 May 2025
MOR. Twee. Unashamedly crowdpleasing. Are such descriptors indicative of a tedious night in the stalls? For your reviewer, who has become jaded very quickly with a myriad of searing examinations of mental health crises and wake up calls about the... Read more... |
Much Ado About Nothing, RSC, Stratford - Messina FC scores on the bardic football fieldTuesday, 29 April 2025
Fragile egos abound. An older person (usually a man) has to bring the best out of the stars, but mustn’t neglect the team ethic. Picking the right players is critical. There’s never enough money, because everything that comes in this season is spent... Read more... |
Album: Self Esteem - A Complicated WomanFriday, 25 April 2025
Given that Prioritise Pleasure was Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s (RLT) Back to Black, and that there’s been a lengthy wait for this new release, it’s no wonder that there’s so much anticipation around A Complicated Woman. Add to the mix... Read more... |
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Musical, Theatre Royal Bath review - not a screaming successSaturday, 29 March 2025
In Italy, they did it differently. Their pulp fiction tales of suburban transgression appeared between yellow covers on new stands and spawned the influential Giallo movies of the Sixties and Seventies, gory exercises in an offbeat, highly stylised... Read more... |
Sister Midnight review - the runaway bridegroomThursday, 13 March 2025
Marriage is not often presented in cinema as a bowl of mangoes, but it’s rarely shown as so morbidly strange as in this reckless corker of a debut feature written and directed by Karan Kandhari, and backed by Film4.We meet the newly hitched – that... Read more... |
Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker, Whitechapel Gallery review - absence made powerfully presentSaturday, 22 February 2025
Donald Rodney’s most moving work is a photograph titled In the House of My Father, 1997 (main picture). Nestling in the palm of his hand is a fragile dwelling whose flimsy walls are held together by pins. This tiny model is made from pieces of the... Read more... |
Titanique, Criterion Theatre review - musical parody sinks despite super singingFriday, 10 January 2025
This Celine Dion jukebox musical has been a big hit in New York, but crossing The Atlantic can be perilous for any production, so, docked now at the Criterion Theatre, does it sink or float?We open on a framing device, with a group of tourists being... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, Royal Shakespeare Theatre review - comic energy dissipates in too large a spaceSunday, 22 December 2024
It is not just Twelfth Night, it’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will in The Folio, a signpost of the choices the inhabitants, old and new, of Illyria must make. Perhaps it’s also an allusion to Will’s own choices as an actor/playwright in the all... Read more... |
King James, Hampstead Theatre review - UK premiere drains a three-pointerSaturday, 23 November 2024
Cleveland is probably the American city most like the one in which I grew up. Early into the icy embrace of post-industrialisation, not really on the way to anywhere, but not a destination either and obsessed with popular music and sports, it's very... Read more... |
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