musicals
Veronica Lee
With the politics of hate alive and well both sides of the Atlantic, this seems a good time to revive Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori's 2003 musical, which is set in Civil Rights-era Louisiana. This production was first seen at Chichester Minerva Theatre last year and transfers to the West End via a run at Hampstead Theatre and has a stand-out central performance by Sharon D Clarke.Inspired in part by Kushner’s own Southern Jewish childhood, Caroline, or Change is almost entirely sung-through and Clarke (pictured below) is the titular black maid who is paid a pittance by the Gellman family to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This is a soundtrack with vast shoes to fill. Frozen, The Lion King and Aladdin may be the best-selling Disney soundtracks but, alongside The Jungle Book, the original 1964 Mary Poppins has the most beloved array of songs. It takes chutzpah to try and match a set that includes such childhood standards as “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, “Chim Chim Cher-ee” and “A Spoonful of Sugar”. That the music from Mary Poppins Returns makes a spirited and expertly calibrated attempt is a nice surprise.The man who took on what could have been a poisoned chalice is Hollywood showbiz orchestration Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
When the biggest laugh in Bernstein’s Candide goes to a narrator’s mention of how nationalism was sweeping through Europe, you may have a problem. Still, the Bernstein Centenary has been among the best of all possible anniversary celebrations this year and at the LSO Candide - the great man’s bonkers operetta-ish take on Voltaire, a flawed masterpiece with a succession of glorious tunes and snappy lyrics - could have been its apex. At times, it was.If it wasn’t wholly up there, that is in large part due to the conundrum the piece poses about how to bring it convincingly to the stage (or here Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Perhaps belatedly prompted by the release of Barbra Streisand’s new album Walls, the worst-selling disc in her 55 years with Columbia Records, this documentary was an uncritical celebration of Babs’s brilliant career from her first stage appearances in the late Fifties to the joys of Hello, Dolly!, The Way We Were and Yentl. The somewhat arbitrary cut-off date of 1984 meant that we were even able to enjoy a nostalgic blast of “Woman in Love”, from her collaboration album with Barry Gibb, Guilty.These days Streisand (present here only in archive clips) has become a grandiose diva in aspic, Read more ...
Marianka Swain
There’s a welcome alternative to panto hijinks in this gem of a Trevor Nunn musical revival – more attuned to the biting hardships of winter, and to the elegiac aspect of change, than to festive jollies. Which is not to say that there isn’t rousing fun to be had in many a slick set-piece, but this intimate, sensitive staging brings out the work’s soul, particularly its timeless call for empathy and compassion.Joseph Stein, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick drew on Sholem Aleichem’s stories for their 1964 musical, and it initially feels like a folk tale: that of Tevye the dairyman (Andy Nyman) Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The road to full musical theatre production has been a long one for Hadestown. It began back in 2006, with Anaïs Mitchell’s song cycle – a folk/jazz take on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth – toured around Vermont in a school bus, then grew into an ecstatically received concept album in 2010, and has gone through further development with director Rachel Chavkin in Off-Broadway and Canadian stagings. Now, it comes to the National ahead of a Broadway run.Whatever its past or future forms, Chavkin’s staging is a superb fit for the Olivier. Rachel Hauck’s spare, multi-level speakeasy set, which Read more ...
Liz Thomson
What to make of The Simon & Garfunkel Story, which began a week-long residency at London’s Vaudeville Theatre last night and which tours in the new year? A success “from Sydney to Seattle” apparently, with Elaine Paige having called it “amazing” and various regional newspapers offering superlatives. The programme proclaims it (with idiosyncratic use of upper case), "The World's biggest and most successful Simon & Garfunkel Theatre Show". Is there competition?The singing is pretty classy, Sam O’Hanlon as Simon and Charles Blyth as Garfunkel producing evocative close harmony, though Read more ...
aleks.sierz
You can see why artistic director Indhu Rubasingham chose to stage this version of Zadie Smith's classic White Teeth as part of the Kiln's opening season. The bestselling 2000 debut novel is set in Willesden, Kilburn and thereabouts so it's a good fit for what is essentially a play that pays tribute to the area's multicultural character. Ironically, of course, the Kiln's previous incarnation, the Tricycle Theatre is mentioned in the book, and Canute-like protestors outside the venue continue to campaign in vain for the old name to be reinstated. But how does Stephen Sharkey's adaptation cope Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The most thrilling revivals interrogate a classic work, while revealing its fundamental soul anew. Marianne Elliott’s female-led, 21st-century take on George Furth and Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical comedy Company makes a bold, inventive statement, but somehow also suggests this is how the piece was always meant to be. Ah, a weighted paradox – Company is full of them. Successful New Yorker Bobbie (Rosalie Craig, pictured below with Alex Gaumond and Jonathan Bailey) is celebrating/avoiding her 35th birthday, amidst the overbearing friends she both loves and longs to escape Read more ...
Matt Wolf
What better way to celebrate a homecoming than with a party? That is the capacious-hearted thinking behind this new musical version of Twelfth Night, which additionally marks Kwame Kwei-Armah's debut production at the helm of that undeniable dynamo otherwise known as the Young Vic. Resident of late Stateside where he was running Baltimore's Center Stage, Kwei-Armah has posited as his opening production a show that celebrates London in a giddy spirit of inclusion that seems a necessary antidote to our mean-spirited times.And if Kwei-Armah's production, credited to him and the powerhouse Read more ...
aleks.sierz
There was once a time when grime music was very angry, and very threatening, but that seems a long time ago now. Today, Dizzee Rascal is less a herald of riot and revolt, and more of a national treasure, exuding charm from every pore, even if his music has become increasing predictable and safe. But, as wordsmith and dancer Debris Stevenson proves in her debut play, Poet in da Corner, Dizzee Rascal still can change minds and influence people. Now on the Royal Court's main stage, the electrifying semi-autobiographical show features Stevenson herself, as well as grime MC Jammz and music by Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Cher. Abba. The Mamma Mia films. If you're not excited by all of the above, I'm afraid we can't be friends. I will not apologise for being thoroughly giddy at the prospect of a Cher album of Abba covers. The Queen of Camp taking on some of the greatest pop songs of all time: it's unashamedly exhilarating.Well, the idea of it was, anyway. In reality, the album is – fine. A bit like a Chinese takeaway, or the finale of Bodyguard, the anticipation has somewhat outweighed the event itself. Dancing Queen opens with its title track. What's immediately striking is that the instrumentation of Read more ...