‘A thinking person’s musical’ Flippantly christened “a Soviet-peasant Fame” (by me), Paweł Pawlikowski’s Oscar-nominated 2018 film, Cold War, has now been musicalised. And you can add in a sprinkle of Elvis Costello and a sparkle of Conor McPherson because, after all, it is Christmas. Luminous telly stars and Polish folk music combine for an evening that glows, in a smoky ...

‘Replicating the positives of the original, not bringing much new’ Matthew Bourne After 9 years of absence from the London theatre scene, Matthew Bourne’s balletic version of Caroline Thompson, Tim Burton, and Danny Elfman’s 1990 classic film returns with blades a-swishing. Thompson’s screenplay is a riff on the Frankenstein myth, Kookified by Burton and bolstered by Elfman’s expansive musical vistas. ...

‘Sheer extravagance’ Although I know it’s only November, it’s late in the day, whether you like it or not, and we are in the festive season. Theatrically that means two things, clawing sentiment and brashy spectacle. It rarely means a flurry of Mongolian culture in the West End’s largest theatrical venue. The Mongol Khan started life as the 1998 play The State ...

‘Certainly not scared to experiment’ As I balanced delicately on a window sofa, waiting for my “promptly” arriving friend, I pondered as one does. In a market so flooded with cocktails, how does a venue stand out from the crowd? Especially if they are Shoreditch-proper adjacent. Of course, East London’s party-high street has gone downhill, purely from a quality standpoint: Hawking watered-down Pornstars ...

‘You get what it says on the tin, and as tributes go this is a persuasive one’ Adding a 4th ABBA-based show to this already overstuffed city seems a brave move, but can the Swedish pop sensations still pull a crowd? Will the call of flesh and blood triumph (if only briefly) over the flatness of projected light? Let me start ...

‘An overall flat and emotionally stale feeling’ Haruki Murakami, master of Literature. Rambling global settings and gnawing sense of loss have cemented themselves as staples in his style, along with a lack of concise endings. Bryony Lavery’s recent adaption wrestles with a lesser-known work, Sputnik Sweetheart. Having very little to do with space (sadly) narrator K (Naruto Komatsu) has a ...

‘Impressive depiction of crumbling mental health’ Your enjoyment of a show can be as fickle as a spring breeze. Sometimes the stars don’t align, and a serene work might fall on deaf ears or a closed heart. The day you have led leading up to the anticipated evening obscures the trip itself. This is the conundrum I find myself in ...

‘So good they named it twice’ Are you a bustling Shoreditch type? Trendily clad in black with a Mac under one arm and a bag made from recycled bottle tops swinging from the other? Rushing from meeting to meeting to end up trash-talking in the cold night air on Shoreditch House terrace? Well, if so… do I have a spot for you. Taco ...

‘Everything is so almost right’ In my halcyon, and rather hazy youth, I travelled around Peru and Bolivia, admittedly seeing more of the inside of hostel bars than walls of venerable temples. But what sticks with me, after all these (many) years, is the range and breadth of the culinary diversity in that enchanted strip of South America. Robert Ortiz’s ...

‘ongoing inventiveness and a truly madcap script’ Change is something all couples go through to some degree, nay all humans. Typing this as someone in their 9th year of relentless relationship tectonics I can confirm. But do many of us want to open up one of the most fundamental changes a person can go through to the paying public? Rosana ...