musicals
Baby Driver review - thrill-ride runs out of roadThursday, 29 June 2017
Baby drives like a deranged bullet. Edgar Wright’s “diegetic action-musical” choreographs the bank-heist getaways of angel-faced Baby (Ansel Elgort) as physically exhilarating pure cinema, a rush that’s rare. It’s also pure, adrenalin-pumping rock’n... Read more... |
10 Questions for George Stiles and Anthony Drewe: 'we are optimistic people'Wednesday, 28 June 2017
George Stiles and Anthony Drewe – Stiles and Drewe, as the songwriting partnership is universally known – are responsible for one of theatre’s most memorable acceptance speeches. Their show Honk!, staged at the National Theatre after an initial run... Read more... |
Bat Out of Hell, Coliseum review - Jim Steinman's rockin' dystopia hits the stageWednesday, 21 June 2017
Opera-lovers coming to St Martin's Lane may feel confused to be confronted by an unrecognisable Coliseum, which now has huge girder-like structures adorning the stage and ceiling and a rather ugly skyscraper looming out of the wings, called Falco... Read more... |
h.Club 100 Awards: Hope Mill Theatre, ManchesterTuesday, 06 June 2017
The Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester is an irresistible example of the can-do spirit. Less than two years ago the ground floor of a disused mill was being advertised on Gumtree as a storage space. Two actors who had been working as waiters – William... Read more... |
Annie review - a 12-year-old star is bornTuesday, 06 June 2017
Forty years after Annie swept on to Broadway, brimming with shining-faced optimism amidst wearying times, along comes Nikolai Foster's West End revival of the show to do much the same today. A tentative-seeming Miranda Hart may be the name player,... Read more... |
On the Town review - triple threat Danny Mac and co are unmissableThursday, 01 June 2017
On 8 April 1952, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green were chatting to Charlie Chaplin at a party when he started raving about a picture he’d seen the previous night at Sam Goldwyn’s house. It was called Singin’ in the Rain – had they... Read more... |
La Strada, The Other Palace review - Fellini's tragicomedy becomes a noisy rompThursday, 01 June 2017
Hitting the essence of a Fellini masterpiece in a different medium is no easy task. Try and reproduce his elusive brand of poetic melancholy and you'll fail; best to transfer the characters to a different medium, as the musical Sweet Charity did in... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: La La LandTuesday, 16 May 2017
We’ve had the pre-release hoopla. We’ve had the gruellingly inevitable backlash. We’ve had, as an additional sideshow, the brief interlude when it was this year’s best picture at the Academy Awards, until it wasn’t. The time has now come for La La... Read more... |
Whisper House, The Other Palace review - 'a delicately calibrated human story struggling to be heard'Thursday, 20 April 2017
It used to be said that the devil had all the best music. But the devil seems to have lost his touch in this ghost-story rock musical from Duncan Sheik, composer of the stage version of American Psycho and the award-laden Spring Awakening. If the... Read more... |
Carousel, London Coliseum review - 'Katherine Jenkins is game, Boe out-acted by wig'Wednesday, 12 April 2017
“Then I’ll kiss her so she’ll know.” At the sound of his ringing voice, the girls part to reveal him standing there, a hapless monument of rumpled charm. The audience relaxes in pleasure as an easeful actor joyfully shows what you can do with a... Read more... |
42nd Street, Theatre Royal Drury Lane, review - 'sheer synchronised splendour'Wednesday, 05 April 2017
Can London support two dance musicals, each one dazzling in a different way? We're about to find out, now that the mother of all toe-tappers, 42nd Street, has set up shop a jeté or two away from where An American in Paris is achieving... Read more... |
An American in Paris review - 'stagecraft couldn't be slicker'Wednesday, 22 March 2017
What’s in a yellow dress? Hope over experience? Reckless confidence? This is a legitimate question when the second big cross-Atlantic people-pleaser hoves into view featuring a girl in a frock of striking daffodil hue. It doesn’t take a degree in... Read more... |
