Monthly Archives: January 2015

Jerry Herman’s 1979 Broadway musical, which is getting a belated European premiere at Finborough Theatre, is an adaptation of S N Behrman’s watered-down version of Franz Werfel’s play, Jacobowsky and the Colonel. The story is set in World War 1. … Continue reading →

VILLAGE WOOING has considerable charm. A writer of guide books (Mark Fleischmann) on a cruise is cornered by a chatterbox (Madeleine Hutchins). “I never talk to women,” he says. “If I talk to women they always want to marry me.” … Continue reading →

If you were to see only one classical ballet in a lifetime it would have to be SWAN LAKE if only for Tchaikovsky’s unforgettable music, the sheer beauty of the corps of white swans and the amazing synchronisation of a … Continue reading →

Jeffrey Lane and David Yazbek’s musical adaptation of Pedro Almodovar’s film didn’t work in New York. Will it, now that it has been reworked, succeed in London? The characters are outrageous, obsessive cartoon figures and their behaviour is frantic, insane … Continue reading →

James Hogan’s two rambling monologues are for two lonely, embittered women. They would work better if they were seen separately in a double-bill which offered more of a contrast.

Paul Miller directs an enjoyable revival of Bernard Shaw’s play, which forces audiences to face unpleasant facts about capitalism. “Middle-class respectability fattening on the poverty of the slime as flies fatten on filth is not a pleasant theme,” said Shaw; … Continue reading →

Pirates can usually be relied on to provide excitement and the National has produced excellent entertainment for family audiences in the past; but, unfortunately, their version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure story is as dead as the proverbial parrot. Jim … Continue reading →

Nina Raine, author and director, says her play is about “how terrible and how wonderful the NHS can be simultaneously” and she has called it Tiger Country because “hospitals can be a wild place, a war zone.” A young doctor … Continue reading →