Following a successful West End engagement at the Dominion back in 2019, White Christmas has been taken on the road for the 2022 festive season. This time round, the Irving Berlin classic musical stars Jay McGuiness, Dan Burton, Jessica Daley, Monique Young, Lorna Luft and Michael Starke – and of course includes several renditions of the famous title song.
‘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.
‘Doesn’t survive the surgery’: THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT – West End
Director Sean Foley had a huge success with The Ladykillers, turning the gentle fifties Ealing comedy into a smart farce. You can’t blame him for taking a second bite at the same cherry. Unfortunately, The Man in the White Suit feels infinitely more laboured.
‘A watchable account of political in-fighting’: THE BEST MAN – West End
Although The Best Man’s message — that being defeated can be a victory of sorts — is appealingly paradoxical, it is unlikely to make your heart race very fast.
SCROOGE THE MUSICAL – Leicester ★★★★
It all makes for classic festive fayre with Leslie Bricusse’s original work, last seen some 15 years ago, being subtly re-engineered for this revival. Jasper Britton heads the cast in the title role, convincing us throughout of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge.
SILVER LINING – Touring
Storm Vera is battering the UK and people are being evacuated from their riverside homes following the imminent threat of severe flooding. With the promise that emergency services are on their way, five older age ladies wait patiently on the first floor of the Silver Retirement Home in Gravesend for help to arrive.
THE DRESSER – West End
Great work from Ken Stott and Reece Shearsmith saves a nostalgic drama from wallowing in its own Britishness.
LAWRENCE AFTER ARABIA – Hampstead Theatre
Howard Brenton’s new study of desert warrior T E Lawrence is more like a frustrating mirage than a nourishing oasis.
THE CRUCIBLE – Edinburgh
Exceptional clarity characterises the Lyceum’s production of The Crucible, whose focus on small details reaps rewards but does so at the expense of dramatic impact.
WAITING FOR GODOT – Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
For the opening production of the Lyceum’s 50th anniversary season, outgoing artistic director Mark Thomson has assembled a suitably celebratory cast, with Bill Paterson and Brian Cox in the roles of the two men killing time in the countryside waiting for the mysterious Godot in a play where supposedly ‘nothing happens – twice’.
Review: The Ladykillers (Gielgud Theatre)
It would be hard to find a theatrical concept more Londony than ‘The Ladykillers’, a ‘classic’ Ealing Comedy from the fifties following a gang of bungling bank robbers disguised as a string quintet to hide out in the home of sweetly dotty Mrs Wilberforce, whose windows conveniently face the train tracks at Kings Cross via […]
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