Carnival of the Animals was performed at the Riverside Studios, London. Thom Southerland, director of A Carnival of the Animals, told me that this production was still very much a work in progress. He wanted to get it in front of an audience to gauge their reaction and see how to further develop the piece. So […]
Forever Tango – Walter Kerr Theatre, New York
Forever Tango opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre, New York and continues until 15 September. The steamy index on Broadway these summer nights is being hiked a notch or two by the return of Forever Tango. The show, created and directed by the Argentine-born Luis Bravo, first unleashed all its sensuous contortions on the Great […]
Barbershopera – The Three Musketeers
Barbershopera! The Three Musketeers was performed at the St James Theatre Studio, London, and tours until 26 October. For those who have never seen a Barbershopera! production before, the name accurately suggests close harmony a cappella singing, within a conventional narrative structure. And while that’s perfectly true, the name doesn’t quite capture the anarchic nature of […]
Barb Jungr – St James Studio
The Men I Love: The New American Songbook – Barb Jungr at the St James Theatre Studio, London. The second of four Fridays with that real singer’s singer Barb Jungr at the plush St James Studio was always going to be a treat, provided you were prepared to cast aside preconceived ideas about how hugely popular […]
The Cradle Will Rock – Encores New York
The Cradle Will Rock was presented by Encores! at Off-Center at New York City Centers. The new Encores! Off-Center series at New York City Center has gotten off to a rousing start with its fledgling production, Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 opus The Cradle Will Rock. You might even say, a rabble-rousing start. The piece is unabashed […]
Tim Flavin – Crazy Coqs
Cravin’ Flavin: Memoirs of a Broadway Gypsy was performed at the Crazy Coqs, London. Broadway’s loss was very much London’s gain with Tim Flavin, a song-and-dance man from Texas whose luck turned big-time when his love life brought him across the pond in the mid-1980s and he enjoyed huge success almost immediately. Flavin took to […]
Guildford School of Acting – Pippin
Performed at the Ivy Arts Centre, Guildford. Stephen Schwartz and Roger O Hirson’s Pippin is a show in which a band of strolling players re-enact the story of Prince Pippin, the son of King Charlemagne, and his journey in search of life’s meaning – war, religion, regicide, hedonism and rural domesticity are all tried. When […]
The Matchgirls – Wilton’s Music Hall
The Matchgirls was performed at Wilton’s Music Hall, London. The Red Ladder Theatre Company, in collaboration with Dumbwise, produced a cohesive interpretation of Bill Owen and Tony Russell’s 1966 musical The Matchgirls which fulfilled the aims of both theatre companies in terms of creating socially engaged pieces of work. The production was a community theatre piece […]
Daryl Sherman – Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club
Daryl Sherman performed at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, London. American jazz singer and pianist Daryl Sherman has been a longtime favourite at New York’s most famous cabaret haunts – the Algonquin, the Waldorf-Astoria, Feinstein’s at the Regency etc – and she has previously been in London at the now-defunct Pizza On the Park. Now, after […]
Daryl Sherman – Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club
Daryl Sherman performed at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, London. American jazz singer and pianist Daryl Sherman has been a longtime favourite at New York’s most famous cabaret haunts – the Algonquin, the Waldorf-Astoria, Feinstein’s at the Regency etc – and she has previously been in London at the now-defunct Pizza On the Park. Now, after […]
Sondheim Society archive, Kingston University
The story of Stephen Sondheim’s life and works in all its forms – books, photographs, theatre programmes, DVDs, CDs, memorabilia, reviews and posters – is now on tap to present to future generations thanks to the Sondheim Society archive being available to researchers at Kingston University in Surrey. The archive represents a gift of more […]
Guildhall School of Music and Drama – Rags
Performed at the Barbican, London. The end of Fiddler On the Roof sees Tevye, his family and neighbours forced out of their homeland, leaving for new lands and new lives. Rags can be seen as a continuation of their story, albeit with different characters, for it tells of other Jewish displaced immigrants arriving in New York. […]
