Subscribe:
RSS feed
New company Beg Borrow Steel makes a promising debut with this story of a west London Jamaican family forced to confront their dark past by an estranged daughter who returns for her late father’s memorial service and the Notting Hill Carnival. Playwright Justin Marosa developed and staged a version of ‘Love Is Not Enough’ while […]
August 28, 2012
Bookended by Emi Wokoma’s Tina Turner reflecting on her rocky road to success, this musical about the megastar’s marriage to Ike and rise to stardom comes across as a simplified rerun of Turner biopic ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’. It boasts a stunning central performance but lacks substance. Bio-dramas are the rags-to-riches fairytales […]
August 21, 2012
The Finborough once again demonstrates its keen eye for a timely revival with this gem by JB Priestley. Unseen in London for 70 years, its story of a small import office facing bankruptcy seems painfully prescient. The first half begins as an unhurried, witty sketch of the amusing oddities of office life; it’s easy to […]
August 16, 2012
I should confess at the outset of this review that I am an enormous fan of Doctor Who. If you think it’s trivial, nothing more than a bit of wobbly-walled sci-fi nonsense, you’re wrong. It’s inspired everyone from Mark Gatiss to Neil Gaiman and is at the root of this funny, moving one-man show by comedian Toby […]
August 14, 2012
The engineered cliffhanger that ends the first half of this fast-paced, blackly funny production isn’t followed by a ‘duff duff’, but it could be. This is Jacobean tragedy via ‘EastEnders’ – and it works. Thomas Middleton’s lurid, camp tale of a man’s elaborate revenge on the duke who murdered his betrothed is far more knowing […]
August 14, 2012
F Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel about 1920s America continues its 2012 onslaught on the British stage with this musical adaptation. Don’t panic about people singing about hit-and-runs though; it’s handled more subtly than that. But perhaps inevitably, some of the book’s desolate beauty and power is missing. Linnie Reedman has crafted Fitzgerald’s story of enigmatic […]
August 13, 2012
Jonny and The Baptists are the kind of band you wouldn’t mind spending an evening with in the pub – although you’d be wise to avoid any establishment claiming that name if it sells more than beer. As they make clear in a typically witty protest against the advent of wasabi nuts and fancy cuisine, […]
August 13, 2012
‘Nothing is not giving messages’ reads the sign on the red shelf, in the red room, under the staircase. I am sitting drinking port on a single bed, under the glassy gaze of a tattered teddy bear propped up on a pillow. In front of me, perched on a small stool is Ryan van Winkle, […]
August 12, 2012
You could argue that this show is critic proof. Woven from the words of soldiers wounded in Afghanistan since 2002, and performed by them alongside professional actors, it has the awful weight of reality behind it. But to grant it special dispensation and to praise it by default, for its intentions, would be to undermine […]
August 28, 2012
0