Velma Celli

Velma Celli is the all singing, all dancing drag queen, in the body of West End performer Ian Stroughair. The Hippodrome Casino’s Matcham Room is the perfect venue for a cabaret show of this calibre because Velma Celli is unlike other drag queens – she is class not crass (well mostly), with a powerful vocal […]

Hamlet

One of the glories of theatre are those moments when new works or new interpretations sneak up and take you by surprise, although director Zoé Ford’s re-imagining of Shakespeare’s tragedy doesn’t so much sneak up as eyeball you from the word go before quickly smacking you in the face. For this raw, visceral and utterly […]

Bakersfield Mist

Eight years on from her triumphant performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Kathleen Turner returns to the London stage with another powerhouse turn in this new play by Stephen Sachs, where her brash, expletive-spouting ex barmaid proves a perfect foil for Ian McDiarmid’s eccentrically twitchy performance as a pompous New York art expert. But […]

Have you seen The Commitments yet?

Around Christmas last year I posted my best and worst theatre shows that I saw in 2013. One of my top 6 was The Commitments, a stage adaption of Roddy Doyle’s 1987 novel (and 1991 film) about growing up in Dublin, where times are hard and music is the only thing the youngsters live for. I […]

Venice Preserv’d

Scuttling along the length of the Cutty Sark, the meeting point for Venice Preserv’d, I wonder if I am in the right place. It is quiet and overcast and there are a few small groups milling about but not much else going on.  Suddenly though, there is an explosion of bells, whistles and jubilant shouts from the ship’s prow.  As […]

Sandel

It has become standard procedure to scandalise even the most wholesome of relationships. Particularly in our celebrity culture, we rummage through the scraps of inconsequential evidence to piece together tales of lust and sordid deceit in the hopes of eliciting cheap thrills from our peers. Glenn Chandler’s romance Sandel controversially infuses a pair of lovers […]

Miss Saigon

Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s follow up to the 1985 West End hit Les Miserables (which is still running almost 30 years later) was the 1989 production of Miss Saigon. Based on the Puccini Opera Madame Butterfly, the musical opened at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 1989 where it played for just over 10 […]

Les Mis and Mamma Mia win joint 1st place at West End Eurovision

Last night saw celebrity-studded West End Eurovision return to the Dominion Theatre for its 7th and final year in support of The Make A Difference (MAD) Trust where Mamma Mia! and Les Misérables jointly won the Winners Trophy. Book of Mormon scooped the Technical Theatre Awards Ident Award. My favourite Ident was Mamma Mia but I did […]

All My Sons – Regents Park Outdoor Theatre

The outdoor theatre is a magical place, but the giant billboard with a Stepford Wives style happy family grinning down at us is quite creepy. The growing darkness proved the ideal setting for To Kill A Mockingbird last May and once again the sinister shadows are timed perfectly as we witness the play’s final tragedy. All My […]

Godspell in Concert

Godspell was first performed in the West End in 1971 and was apparently received well by everyone, including the clergy. Most of the press surrounding this year’s concert has focused on original cast members David Essex and Marti Webb… even though they’re not actually in it. This seemed to be a surprise to most of […]

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