‘Wild fury’ Gathering dust, choking darkness and that eponymous moon – grandfather of American theatre Eugene O’Neill’s final written play howls at the sky relentlessly. As someone who grew up around desiccated barns and insular communities, I am aware of the creeping misery certain places can cultivate. My central Devon might not be closely comparable to the Connecticut setting of ...
‘The Muses are every inch the match for their film counterparts and thankfully given even more stage time’ How far can a cocktail of nostalgia and money take you? Evidently all the way to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, where Disney’s bacchanal of bastardised Greek myth will dazzle, as long as you don’t look too closely. The year is 1997. ...
‘overweighted with either surrealist rambling, stiff pronouncements on gender/sexuality, or unwieldy stereotypes’ An exciting premise highlighting an extraordinary, historically overlooked person regrettably gets wrapped up in itself attempting to do justice to a complex combination of elements. Claude Cahun, to answer the play’s title, was a queer artist and writer, anti-Nazi freedom fighter and surrealist – a complex person at ...
‘Cheese on toast’ Britain is an undeniably childish nation, an odd blend of self-aggrandisement, self-abasement and toilet humour. That brings me to Lovestruck, currently enjoying a run at Stratford East and the second loo-based musical I have reviewed in the space of a year, believe it or not. Let’s dive straight into the murky waters of the poo-sical. Hey now! Maybe ...
‘Piddly by name, but not piddly by nature’ Central (South) London is treated to all the circus classics for less than a sandwich and a coffee at Pret. I have an odd relationship with circuses. There is something in the sweat-stained sequins, gasoline reek mixed with popcorn and undeniable talent that has always tightened my collar. Yet I hate animals ...
‘Theatrical beauty’ If you don’t love Fiddler are you even a musical theatre fan? Perhaps you’re not, I do pride myself on the mixed-bag readers of this site. Yet I would argue regardless of your relationship to a step-ball-change, you should. Here’s a quick history lesson, get comfy children. Sholem Aleichem’s Yiddish language stories were carefully musicalised by writer Joseph ...
‘A garden, a mother, a daughter, and a looming line of work. Bernard Shaw’s searing social commentary springs eternal with Imelda Staunton and Bessie Carter as head gardeners’ Now I will level with you, dear reader, this is my first shuffle with Shaw. I know scandal and shock, a Nobel prize-winner to boot. I mean, I’ve heard of him whispered ...
‘Treading the glamorous but dangerous path of memory lane’ I am a super fan of Hersh Dagmarr’s blend of cabaret and campy vampire (like a singing queer Dracula) which is going to make this review a tricky one to get down. The setting is flawless, the doldrums of Sunday flung aside in the hustle to get tarted up and head ...
‘hope to recontextualise the past, improve the present, and hopefully change the future’ Now I am a history girlie, chuck me a bustle, a hoop skirt, a cod piece (cheeky) or a corset and I’m blissful. However uncomfortably, I am a feminist, and so often the voices of women are absent or drowned out from the past. Enter Ava Pickett! ...
‘Luminous prose, weaving emotion and poetry’ When London feels like it’s having a hot grey bowl of diffused sunlight pressed down upon it, many flee to the AC-wafted basement of the Barbican. But what is clicking along down there pulls more of a crowd than just those on the hunt for a cool troglodyte refuge. Samuel Beckett returns to one ...