How does Irving Berlin’s musical do on a smaller scale? Excellently, not least because the extraordinary percussive mass tap-sessions are even more exciting right up close.
FEATURED SHOW: ‘Unique effervescent joy’ with ‘big theatre qualities’. ★★★★ Call Me Madam reviews are in!
Rosemary Ashe is ‘the songstress with the mostest’, and her performance ‘rules over all she surveys’ in Upstairs at the Gatehouse’s revival of Irving Berlin’s classic Broadway musical Call Me Madam. Check out our roundup of review highlights.
‘Rosemary Ashe & Richard Gibson lead a joyous cast’: CALL ME MADAM – Upstairs at the Gatehouse ★★★★
Rosemary Ashe’s high-energy singing and delivery drive the action in this playful revival of Irving Berlin’s 1950 Broadway comedy, directed by Mark Giesser.
VIDEO: Rosemary Ashe follows in Ethel Merman’s footsteps in Call Me Madam
When classic Irving Berlin musical Call Me Madam gets a rare London revival at Highgate’s Upstairs at the Gatehouse this month, Rosemary Ashe takes the title role written for Broadway legend Ethel Merman, who originated it on both screen and stage.
‘An all-singing, all-dancing festive treat’: WHITE CHRISTMAS – West End ★★★★
White Christmas is an all-singing, all-dancing festive treat, full of showbiz razzmatazz and a little bit of romance thrown in for good measure – though with the memories of war lurking in the background, there is a dark edge that offsets the Technicolor world of the 1950s.
‘Delivers in style’: WHITE CHRISTMAS – West End
Before long the stage is overflowing with so much joy, romance and goodwill to all that ultimately, much like the snow song, this White Christmas proves impossible to resist.
NEWS: Curve’s production of White Christmas transfers to the West End for short festive season
Made at Curve production of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas will transfer to London’s Dominion Theatre from 15 November 2019 to 4 January 2020, with a press night on 25 November.
‘A fabulous feel-good delight’: WHITE CHRISTMAS – Leicester ★★★★
With Berlin’s classic numbers and in the gifted creative hands of director Nikolai Foster and his choreographer Stephen Mear, White Christmas becomes a fabulous feel-good delight.
‘A treat for the eyes & ears’: WHITE CHRISTMAS – Leicester
With White Christmas, Curve has yet again produced a classy production filled with yuletide magic and enough fluffy escapism to warm hearts on these cold winter nights.
NEWS: Joanne Clifton follows Flashdance with Top Hat’s fringe premiere
Former Strictly Come Dancing champion Joanne Clifton continues her run of musicals by starring in the London fringe premiere of all-singing, all-dancing Irving Berlin musical Top Hat.
NEWS: Hershey Felder swap Bernstein & Berlin for Our Great Tchaikovsky’s UK premiere
In a programme change at The Other Palace, award-winning actor and pianist Hershey Felder presents the UK premiere of Our Great Tchaikovsky, replacing the previously announced double bill of his musical plays about two other composers: Irving Berlin and Maestro Leonard Bernstein.
TOP HAT – Kilworth
Stephen Mear’s take on Top Hat, just opened at Leicestershire’s Kilworth House Theatre is further proof that for this summer at least, the very best musical theatre openings are all taking place outside of London.
ANNIE GET YOUR GUN – Union Theatre
This is a difficult one. I really like Annie Get Your Gun but the 1946 original was butchered in 1999 for a US revival with Bernadette Peters and most references to ‘Injuns’ excised to suit PC sensibilities, losing a couple of good songs.
NEWS: Full cast announced for Sheffield’s Annie Get Your Gun at Christmas
Sheffield Theatres today announces the cast for its major new revival of Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun. Paul Foster directs Anna-Jane Casey as Annie Oakley and Ben Lewis as Frank Butler in the Christmas production, running in the Crucible 8 December 2016 to 14 January 2017, with a press night on 14 December. The cast also includes: Nicolas Colicos (Buffalo …
FUNNY GIRL – Menier Chocolate Factory
People, people who need people are, allegedly, the luckiest people in the world. I’d argue that those who are emotionally and financially self-sufficient have a hell of a bigger reason to feel lucky than those who depend needily on others for their wellbeing. But I’m not a character in a musical – and neither, really are the people who need people who appear in Funny Girl a narrative so far removed from the actual history of kooky kosher comedienne Fanny Brice and her deeply dodgy gangster hubby Julius ‘Nicky’ Arnstein as to be a complete fiction.
THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH – Touring
This is an artful wheeze. Take the story from the sunniest of films, a 1957 cheer-up British Lion starring Peter Sellers, Margaret Rutherford and Bernard Miles. Bolt on some classic Irving Berlin songs, and you’ve jukeboxed a stage musical. Director-writer Thom Sutherland has done this – fresh from a London success with Grand Hotel – for a cheerful touring show with a six-piece band. I saw it at the Mercury, which produces it, before it squares its shoulders and toots off round the country. A thin Monday house was hard to stir, but the frolicking energy of the cast and the sheer good-humoured Ealingness of the story got us going. Hard not to, with so much help from the Berlin tunes and lyrics.
PUTTIN’ ON THE RITZ – Touring
Puttin’ On The Ritz – which promises to take the audience back to the ‘golden age of Hollywood’ – has the potential to be a hit show. Billed as a ‘song and dance extravaganza’, it plays to the country’s fascination with ballroom dancing (as demonstrated by Strictly Come Dancing) and with the musical genius of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, whose hits caused many audience members to sing along.
Can you succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews? Maybe not…
We owe the phrase “you won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews” to Spamalot – so it only officially entered the theatrical lexicon circa 2005 when the Monty Python musical opened on Broadway (and I first heard it live a year later, when it had its West End premiere at the Palace […]
Weekly Theatre Podcast: An Oak Tree, Violence and Son, Face the Music
Every week, a group of regular, dedicated, independent theatre bloggers gather together for intelligent discussion “from the audience’s perspective” about plays and musicals they’ve recently seen in London. Lively, informed and entertaining. On this week’s programme: An Oak Tree, Violence and Son and Face the Music.
FACE THE MUSIC – Ye Olde Rose and Crown
History Lesson: there’s no shortage of backstage musicals. There’s no shortage of musicals set in the Depression or prohibition era either – from Annie to Chicago to Windy City everyone from the Gershwins (who did it in Of Thee I Sing) on down has had a crack at it, and our home-grown Phil Wilmott is just about to launch one actually called Prohibition.
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