Monthly Archives: December 2012

The good news is Michael Grandage, former artistic director of the Donmar Theatre, has formed his own company and is presenting a season of five plays with star names in the West End at affordable prices. (There are over 100,000 … Continue reading →

The film, with Whitney Houston and Kevin Kostner, got a terrible press, which had no effect on the public whatsoever and it went on to be the second biggest box-office success in 1992. The album of the soundtrack sold 45 … Continue reading →

Sarah Wooley’s modern fable, which owes quite a lot to a short story by Bertolt Brecht, is billed as a tender comedy. There is nothing tender about it. A 70-year-old widow (Maureen Lipman, underplaying) who has led a very respectable … Continue reading →

Live forever? Without any genuine Girl Power, you must be joking. This dismal juke box musical uses the back catalogue of the Spice Girls to tell a cliché-ridden story about wanting fame and losing friends. The production only comes to … Continue reading →

Cole Porter’s heyday was in the 1920’s and 1930’s and by the late 1940’s he was no longer in fashion. Sam and Bella Spewack, nevertheless, managed to persuade him to write the music and lyrics for their musical, which took … Continue reading →

Stephen Sondheim’s musical was reviled at its premiere in 1981 and lasted only 14 performances; but the show, much improved since then, is probably too sophisticated ever to be truly popular. The title couldn’t be more ironic. The subject is … Continue reading →

If you are looking for a play to take young teenagers to, which you will also enjoy, let me recommend this adaptation of Michelle Magorian’s award-winning adult children’s novel by David Wood. An illiterate London boy, who has been verbally … Continue reading →

Actresses are always complaining, and very reasonably, that there not enough roles for them in Shakespeare. Phyllida Lloyd justifies her all-female production by setting the play in a women’s prison. The actresses present a manly front. Harriet Walter, in particular, … Continue reading →