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.
‘Dianne Pilkington has excellent stage presence’: BEDKNOBS & BROOMSTICKS – Touring ★★★★
I was very excited to see this classic film revived as a stage musical so that a new generation of children could enjoy it.
‘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.
‘What’s on offer is experiencing an epic story with a roomful of strangers’: Anthony Almeida directs ETT’s Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
Love London Love Culture chatted to director Anthony Almeida about the revival of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, currently touring the UK.
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.
‘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.
‘There’s a musical theatre dream team’: CLOSER THAN EVER – Broadway HD (Online review)
As it’s a recorded stream, you’re at liberty to choose your own encore moments and replay any numbers which particularly take your fancy – and there are bound to be several of those.*
‘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?).
‘Tear-jerkingly beautiful as ever’: HAMILTON — Victoria Palace Theatre
You know how it is, when a ticket to Hamilton falls into your lap, you can’t really say no to this… So a return to the Victoria Palace Theatre, my first since this behemoth of a show actually opened up and one which was surprisingly rewarding, over and above the pleasures of the show itself.
‘Layers of meaning’: LOVE BEYOND THE ZOO — BBC Sounds (Online review)
During the 20th century, absurdism and surrealism surfaced in literature to make pertinent points about human nature and ‘the real world’. Prime examples include Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and by George Orwell’s Animal Farm. In both cases, anthropomorphism features – a state of affairs that is tonally ‘taken for granted’.
‘Provocative & rousing, nostalgic & contemporary’: EAST IS EAST – Birmingham Repertory Theatre
Twenty-five years after its first performance at the Rep, Ayub Khan Din’s comedy about a British-Pakistani family in 1970s Salford returns home to Birmingham. In Iqbal Khan’s production for the Rep and National Theatre, East is East feels like both a modern classic and as fresh as a new play.