No fewer than 25 Queen melodies energise We Will Rock You, Ben Elton, Roger Taylor and Brian May’s 2002 hit show, a version of which is touring Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and, more recently, Sheffield’s Motorpoint Arena. Elton’s idea is terrific, but as contorted as it is ingenious. As a vehicle for the sizzling […]
The West End Men in Concert
Playing at the Vaudeville Theatre until June 22. The West End is awash with fantastic tunes – from current musicals to the classics of previous years – but a show in which the music is the star also needs to offer something a little special. Although, at first, none of The West End Men in […]
Billy the Musical – Union Theatre
Playing at the Union Theatre, London until 29th June. Originally staged in the West End back in 1974, Billy the Musical (adapted from Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s play Billy Liar by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais), with a score from John Barry and Don Black, has at its heart a hardly average musical hero. Billy […]
London cabaret Sondheim style
London cabaret gets a new spin with the launch of a series of Stephen Sondheim Society presentations at London’s Leicester Square Theatre Lounge, teeing off with actress Rachael Louise Miller on Wednesday, 19 June. These one-hour shows, starting at 7pm, will feature rising talents and more established names performing programmes in which Sondheim’s work will […]
Miss Nightingale – The Burlesque Musical
Miss Nightingale – The Burlesque Musical, a touring production, reviewed at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham (23-25 May). Sex, scandal and showbiz in London 1942 is the subtitle of Miss Nightingale – The Burlesque Musical, a show that highlights the dangers that beset freethinking performing artists in a backward-looking war-torn England, where lust lingers but sexual preferences and […]
The Great Gatsby – Riverside Studios, London
Playing at the Riverside Studios, London until 8 June. It is clear from the outset that a Fringe musical of F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby could never compete on scale or budget with Baz Luhrmann’s $100 million-plus Hollywood adaptation. But nor should it attempt to – and Ruby in the Dust’s production […]
Avenue Q – Upstairs at the Gatehouse
Playing at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London until 30 June. Although it ran for five years in the West End followed by a national tour, Avenue Q‘s Off-Broadway roots always showed. In its first UK fringe theatre production, the smaller space and intimacy works in its definite favour. The musical takes the idea of humans […]
Hairspray the tour
Hairspray, a touring production, reviewed at the Hippodrome, Birmingham (21 May-1 June). If Hairspray has become one of the UK’s biggest hit musicals of the past three years, it’s because it deserves all the accolades showered upon it. It has everything. The story and lyrics, devised by a prodigiously talented team of four (librettists Mark O’Donnell […]
Anne Reid at Crazy Coqs
Anne Reid In a New Key, at the Crazy Coqs, London. Electrocuted as Valerie Barlow in Coronation Street in 1971, Dinnerladied by Victoria Wood in 1998, kit off as a daring 66-year-old who beds a pre-Bond Daniel Craig in The Mother in 2003 and wooed by Derek Jacobi in last autumn’s wonderful TV series Last Tango […]
Next Thing You Know – Landor Theatre
Playing at the Landor Theatre, London until 8 June. It’s not always easy to recognise whether you’ve got the right ingredients to make a musical work, but despite writers Joshua Salzman and Ryan Cunningham’s best efforts to just write theatre music without a story, Next Thing You Know truly hits the spot with its universal […]
Some Like It Hotter is fast and funny
Some Like It Hotter, a touring production, reviewed at the Devonshire Theatre, Eastbourne (15-18 May). Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, the stars of the iconic film Some Like it Hot, are reunited in the afterlife. They have been restored to their younger, beautiful and sexy selves and find themselves in one of Heaven’s waiting […]
Sondheim Society Performer of the Year
Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year Competition 2013 and the Stiles and Drewe Best New Song Prize. Reviewed at the Garrick Theatre, London. When it was suggested to Stephen Sondheim that a song competition be formed in his name, he agreed only if it included new songs by young composers. For the seventh year […]
