The Last Five Years, St James Theatre
From Monteverdi to Schubert to Bernstein and Lloyd Webber the dramatic song cycle has travelled far and wide over the centuries though not until Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years in opposite directions. His two-handed tour-de-force…
Floyd Collins, Wilton’s Music Hall
It’s one of those true stories you really couldn’t make up. In 1920s Kentucky, Floyd Collins, visionary cave explorer, happens across a spectacular sand cave – the sand cave of his dreams – only to become trapped…
A Conversation With DAME SIÂN PHILLIPS
Dame Siân Phillips is a celebrated and much loved Welsh star of stage and screen, acclaimed for her scheming Livia in I Claudius (Best Actress BAFTA), her portrayal of Marlene Dietrich in Marlene (UK and USA) and…
Groundhog Day, Old Vic
Well over a decade ago Stephen Sondheim expressed some interest in turning the movie Groundhog Day into a musical. Presumably he, too, would have turned to the movie’s scriptwriter Danny Rubin for the book – it is,…
Ramin Karimloo, London Palladium
Strictly speaking it should have been billed as “Ramin Karimloo and Broadgrass at the London Palladium” – then we might have anticipated the support act and late arrival of the West End and Broadway star known especially…
The Go-Between, Apollo Theatre
It has taken six years – and Michael Crawford – to bring Richard Taylor and David Wood’s poetic musicalisation of L P Hartley’s The Go-Between to the West End stage; and before the tired old debate begins…
Flowers for Mrs Harris, Crucible Sheffield
You emerge from Flowers for Mrs Harris a little richer, a little lighter, a little more hopeful. Paul Gallico’s enchanting fable is about many things – it’s about new beginnings, rebirth; it’s about aspiration; it’s about the…
Threepenny Opera, National Theatre
John Gay started it, Bertold Brecht politicised it, and right now Dougal Irvine has smartly contemporised it in rhyming couplets. But beggars or buskers aside there’s only one Kurt Weill score – insidiously catchy down to its…
A Conversation With ELAINE PAIGE
Thursday 19th May 2016 11.30am, The Chapel Sydmonton Court The Festival is thrilled to welcome Elaine Paige – actress, singer, producer, radio presenter and mega-star of musical theatre – to stunning Sydmonton Court, the private home of Andrew Lloyd…
Sunset Boulevard, London Coliseum
At a time in musical theatre when you never quite know what you are hearing when the band strikes up, seeing was believing that on the stage of the Coliseum there were strings aplenty, horns, bassoons, trumpets,…
