The Scottsboro Boys, Garrick Theatre
You come away from The Scottsboro Boys sure of two things: that the next Cakewalk you ever hear will induce queasiness; and that the show’s director/choreographer Susan Stroman is some kind of genius. This kick-ass UK premiere,…
Dogfight, Southwark Playhouse
The movie slipped through my net, the musical comes to Europe – more specifically the Southwark Playhouse – laden with Off-Broadway awards, including the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical. You can see why. There is conspicuous…
Forbidden Broadway, Menier Chocolate Factory
Since 1982 it’s been open season on the great and the good of Broadway musicals. It was in that very year that a chap called Gerard Alessandrini created Forbidden Broadway and from the hitherto innocuous sidelines of…
Miss Saigon, Prince Edward Theatre
The heat is on in Saigon – and 25 years after its world premiere Cameron Mackintosh has just turned up the thermostat. Boublil and Schönberg’s celebrated take on Puccini’s Madam Butterfly has always been my favourite of…
The Pajama Game, Shaftesbury Theatre
On the Richter scale of catchiness Richard Adler and Jerry Ross’ songs for The Pajama Game are right up there. Quite who did what in their brief but shining songwriting partnership was never entirely clear, though Adler…
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Savoy Theatre
The “fantasy” Riviera conjured by designer Peter McKintosh for the West End premiere of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – the Musical is pretty much an extension of the Savoy Theatre’s shining Art Deco auditorium, its sleek angular segments…
I Can’t Sing! London Palladium
The names have been changed to protect the guilty but half the fun of I Can’t Sing! – the so-called X-Factor musical – lies in the relentless spoofing of a show we love to hate and a…
The A-Z of Mrs P, Southwark Playhouse
The most ambitious musicals spring from the most unlikely sources – you need go no further than Stephen Sondheim to establish that – but turning those musicals from novelty into living, breathing, involving experiences requires very special…
Candide, Menier Chocolate Factory
It’s one of theatre’s great ironies that turning Volaire’s bitter satire Candide into a musical proved every bit as taxing and fraught with disaster as the journey to a better life endured by the novella’s principal characters.…
From Here to Eternity, Shaftesbury Theatre
“Love and pain is like peace and war – you want one you have the have the other.” It’s a line that pretty much sums up From Here to Eternity. The title of James Jones’ novel and…
