I recently wrote to every major theatre chain in London to ask to see their COVID safety risk assessments and ventilation plans.
‘A revue is always tricky to review’: CLOSER THAN EVER – BroadwayHD (Online review)
This new production of Maltby and Shire’s Closer Than Ever just about gets there, though it occasionally struggles to break through the digital form.
NEWS: Rachel York & Haydn Gwynne join the cast of Anything Goes at the Barbican & extra dates added
Broadway star Rachel York and Tony and Olivier nominee Haydn Gwynne will join the cast of critically-acclaimed Anything Goes for the final weeks before the show must end on 6 November 2021.
‘The cast contrast & balance each other’: SMALL CHANGE – Omnibus Theatre
Both Barrels Theatre’s revival of Peter Gill’s 1976 Small Changes looks back to postwar Cardiff through the eyes of two Catholic, working-class families.
NEWS: Eight-time Offies nominee Mercurius returns to White Bear with Anton Chekhov’s Vaudevilles
Prolific Off West End producers Mercurius Theatre — nominated for a staggering eight Offies — return with their critically-acclaimed production of Anton Chekhov’s Vaudevilles next month.
‘This gem of a show’: THE LAST FIVE YEARS – West End ★★★★★
Jonathan O’Boyle’s inspired actor-musician take on Jason Robert Brown’s song cycle-cum-musical felt like an eye-opening reinvention.
‘A feminist fairy tale which entertains first and educates second’: MUSTARD DOESN’T GO WITH GIRLS — Online
Although I always have the best of intentions about promoting and reviewing online young people’s theatre, I’d be the first to admit that it has often taken a back seat. I’ve now tackled a very high percentage of shows on the regular list so I’m going to make a rather more concerted effort to engage with those on the junior version and get this up to the same level. I thought I’d start by heading for one where the title had long intrigued me.
NEWS: West End production of the Mike Bartlett play C O C K will star Taron Egerton, Jonathan Bailey, Jade Anouka & Phil Daniels
Taron Egerton, Jonathan Bailey, Jade Anouka and Phil Daniels will star in C O C K, the first West End production of Mike Bartlett’s Olivier Award-winning play about love and identity.
NEWS: Concert staging of Sunset Boulevard at Royal Albert Hall reunites Mazz Murray, Ramin Karimlo, Zizi Strallen & Jeremy Secomb
In a special, one-night-only concert, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black and Christopher Hampton’s musical Sunset Boulevard will be staged at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 3 December 2021.
‘The Dumb Waiter meets Black Mirror at a WeWork’: Join Terri Paddock at the Old Red Lion for a Snowflakes Q&A
We are back on for brand-new biting black comedy Snowflakes, for which I was originally due to chair a post-show Q&A in April 2020. The inaugural play from Dissident Theatre Company now premieres this autumn at the Old Red Lion Theatre.
‘I was transported to a cave system thousands of miles away’: DECIPHERING – New Diorama Theatre
Deciphering is billed as “an inter-continental journey to the origins of human creativity” and it certainly lives up to this epic ambition.
NEWS: More details announced for National Theatre’s new season as the venue opens up for daytime visitors
The National Theatre has announces further details for its upcoming productions Trouble in Mind, Wuthering Heights and Small Island, as well as the return of daytime opening for visitors.
NEWS: Papatango Prize-nominated Proud features in ATG Premiere Season at New Wimbledon
After Invisible Me this month, playwright Bren Gosling returns to New Wimbledon Studio next month with his powerful new drama Proud, which was longlisted for the prestigious Papatango Prize and the Radius Playwrighting Prize in 2020.
‘Every beat of comic bewilderment hits home’: RELATIVELY SPEAKING – Jermyn Street Theatre ★★★★★
We always knew that among the first sproutings of recovery would be a few Alan Ayckbourns, popping up as welcome as snowdrops. I am always fond of this early one, with its deadly-accurate eye on the British qualities of embarrassed, pained civility and insane reluctance to ask the straight and obvious question.
‘It carries with it a powerful message’: IS GOD IS – Royal Court Theatre ★★★★★
Two actors on stage describe their characters as if the direction in the playtext is part of the script. It is the first of many quirks in Aleshea Harris’ dark revenge comedy Is God Is.
The bittersweet unfinished theatre business of Covid
Last week saw Paula Vogel’s Indecent finally open officially at the Menier Chocolate Factory, a year and a half after previews had begun, for the UK premiere of Rebecca Taichman’s Tony-winning original production.
REVIEW ROUND-UP: The Beauty Queen of Leenane – Chichester Festival Theatre/ Lyric Hammersmith
We round up the reviews for the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre and Chichester Festival Theatre co-production of Martin McDonagh‘s The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
‘This time the thrill was different & unexpected’: BLITHE SPIRIT – Harold Pinter Theatre ★★★★
In Richard Eyre’s briskly directed production Jennifer Saunders stands out. Her Arcati is draggled but not cartoonish: donnishly dishevelled, earnestly scholarly rather than exaggeratedly nuts.
‘A revival to savour’: SMALL CHANGE – Omnibus Theatre ★★★★
First presented at the Royal Court in 1976 and last seen in London in a starry 2008 revival directed by the author, Peter Gill’s knotty, elegiac text is a dense, tense jumble of memory play, kitchen sink drama, poetry and gay love story. Dipping back and forth in time between the mid 1950s and the mid 1970s in working class Cardiff, it still packs a powerful punch as it raises questions of where do you come from versus where you are now, and what it emotionally cost you to get there.
‘A tear-jerking and heart-warming ode’: EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE — Leicester Curve & Tour
This past weekend saw the return of the much-loved West End Live in Trafalgar Square. A free festival for theatre lovers, the event has increased in popularity each year (I still remember the early years when everyone was crammed into Leicester Square and only a handful of shows took part!), and eventually it will outgrow its current home too (where next? Hyde Park?).