‘How many Faroese shows have you seen?’ Islands are where the world pauses, takes a breath, isolated bubbles with their own rules. Yet the stamp of modernity rarely allows many to escape unaffected. Castle of Joy is another tale in a long lineage, pushing against the conforming boot of the mainland, extending in a furious but rather frantically aimed retaliation. ...
‘Flashes of comedy are few and far between and the show even lacks sex appeal’ How jazz hands are you as a person? I only ask as Garry Marshall’s touring production of everyone’s favourite Hooker-Businessman romance will test even the most ardent musical theatre zealot. It was 1990, the last gasp of the 80s, a decade so dusted with cocaine and ...
‘Queer joy and friendship must be celebrated’ As someone who has been rewatching the same four 90s sitcoms for the last ten years, I could not be called good at “endings”. So at least I have something in common with Mary Higgins and Ell Potter as they explore the phenomenon from all angles. I mean mainly from the theatrical one, ...
‘Occasional flashes of comedy’ January is a tense month, isn’t it? Cold and tense. Everything seems portentous to the coming year. My first dinner out in 2024, my first run, my first breakdown, my first trip to the theatre. Speaking of, my first tumble on the boards is a resurrection of a long-forgotten Michael Hastings play. Hastings’s work, although not ...
‘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 ...
‘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 ...
‘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 ...
‘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 ...