Grimeborn Festival crashes into the Arcola Theatre for the 6th year, disputing Opera’s elitist title. Homerton Hospital is the setting for a new piece by the mysterious creative duo Muelas+Ward. A micro-tragedy for the modern age. A&E digitally premiered at the Tète-á-Tête Opera Festival in 2020, and elements of the socially distanced staging are kept throughout. Now a physical premiere takes place in ...
Barbican: dancing the steps of the genres it satirises The Barbican has done it again! This savvy receiving house dominates the summer theatre landscape yearly. Cole Porter’s Anything Goes (2022) provided us with the balm we needed for a Covid battered soul. But enough looking backward. A Strange Loop, the award-collecting unstoppable monsoon of intersectionality spins over from Broadway, ploughing ahead at great speed. ...
The Phoenix Theatre Flapping its way from the Birmingham Rep into The Phoenix theatre, the 80s hit TV show Spitting Image returns. What a flutter of talent, high expectations, and a desperate attempt to prove relevancy. Attempt being the operative word. Aptly this theatre’s origin was a musical hall called The Alcaraz. Idiots Assemble is a rowdy bawdy show far more reminiscent of ...
Roman Theatre of Verulamium (St Albans) A 1930s tragicomedy of manners filled with venom and set partly on a balcony should feel right at home in the ancient shell of a Roman amphitheatre. Shouldn’t it? I mean they are both outside, and both involve historic exhibitions of cruelty. OVO and Adam Nichols resurrect one of Noël Coward’s most popular plays ...
Sadlers Wells Billed as “the original showbiz musical” it would be more astute to call it a Frankensteinian opulent 80s rework. Isn’t that a catchy nickname? Resurrected from a 1933 musical film of the same name producer David Merrick spliced the original lyrics from famed songwriters Al Dubin and Johnny Mercer and music by Harry Warren. Sprinkling in other songs from the Dublin ...
The Piano Works The latest dining/ theatre experience to hit London is SingEasy, situated in the heart of the West End’s Theatreland. We sent our intrepid Gabriel along to sample not just the food, but the whole experience. Hell is personal. Mine is people playing music out loud on the Tube. So, when I describe a musical theatre extravaganza in the ...
Prince Edward Theatre A blinking billboard proclaims The Temptations at the Fox Theatre. A booming American voice jovially tells us to turn off our phones and topically makes a joke about unwrapping our lozenges now. A generation who grew up with The Temptations on record as I did with Britney Spears on CD shuffle in their seats… what has Broadway brought us ...
The Almeida I love honey, and the little yellow jackets that craft it so carefully (much to the disappointment of my vegan mother), AND I love Lynn Nottage’s glowing version of Sue Monk Kidd’s bestselling novel. I love Duncan Sheik’s busy bombastic music and Susan Birkenhead’s buzzing lyrics, I love Whitney White’s delicious directing, and the whole cast, crew, and ...
‘A mammoth achievement’ Amidst the city, the fortified seat of British commerce, Giles Terera’s debut play about the slave ship Zong finds a strikingly fitting home. However, as the show unfolds, we realise that it would have resonance in any ancient theatre or Town Hall in the country. “Anyone who lifts a spoon of sugar to their tea,” proclaims one ...
Barbican Theatre Complicité’s most recent production is haunting me, goading me, calling to me to witness it. Interestingly afterward I did it continues its ghostly persecution as only an eco-murder-mystery or climate-revenge-story can. I will explain. A close relative (who prefers to stay anonymous in worry of backlash) saw Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (DYPOTBOTD for ...