Monthly Archives: December 2017

The feel-good musical by Dan Gillespie Sells, Tom Macrae and Jonathan Butterwell is about a 16-year-old boy whose ambition is to be a drag queen. John McCrea, massively confident, acts, sings and camp it up as the exuberant and vulnerable … Continue reading →

The Menier Chocolate Factory Theatre has been transformed into a circus ring for Cy Coleman’s musical. Acrobats, fire-eaters and magicians have been engaged to strut their stuff. The dance numbers, choreographed by Rebecca Howell, are the high spots in Gordon … Continue reading →

Willkie Collins’s novel is perfect melodrama for Andrew Lloyd Webber, a composer who loves Victoriana. The score is lush romantic and the singing is impressive. Greg Castiglioni as the villainous Count Fosco has a show-stopping, cod-Italian operatic number, You Can … Continue reading →

Times are hard and four Chicago salesmen in real estate are fighting to keep their jobs. Glengarry Glen Ross is David Mamet’s best play and as damning an indictment of capitalism as Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman. The … Continue reading →

The refugee crisis and mass migration make Aeschylus’s epic tragedy, first performed 2,480 years ago, very topical. The women are 50 virgins who have fled from Egypt to Argos to avoid marrying their cousins. The king asked his citizens to … Continue reading →

Tom Littler directs a first-rate cast in Howard Brenton’s adaptation of Strindberg’s once notorious masterpiece and initially banned in 1888 for its immorality.Aristocratic Miss Julie (Charlotte Hamblin) recklessly throws herself at her father’s valet (James Sheldon) on Midsummer’s Eve; and … Continue reading →

Shakespeare’s Coriolanus has never been an easy play to perform on stage and generally works best at times of national strife when Left and Right find they can use its political arguments for their own ends. The crowd scenes are … Continue reading →

Patrick Marber’s play will have a special appeal for football fans. The beautiful game is no longer as beautiful as it once was. Football and corruption go hand in hand when two mentors fight for a boy’s soul. Stephen Tompkinson, … Continue reading →