The Force of Destiny, London Coliseum
Whenever the name Calixto Bieito is mentioned it’s invariably to mention ‘the toilets’ – not the reasons for them, just the fact that they were there at all. That production of Verdi’s A Masked Ball was one…
Elf, Dominion Theatre
There’s nothing wrong with Elf that a decent song or two wouldn’t help put right. Oh, wait, there is one – “Nobody Cares About Santa” – which bucks up act two no end and turns rather deliciously…
The Stationmaster, Tristan Bates Theatre
Aria Entertainment’s From Page to Stage platform for new writing in musical theatre is another of those life-lines which refreshes the parts that the West End so rarely reaches – and to see a fledgling musical like…
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Chailly, Barbican
There’s an old conductor’s adage which suggests that the only way safe to start Strauss’ Don Juan is to start before the applause has died – that way no one hears any imperfections in the upward rush…
La Boheme, English National Opera
So this is the moment where the tables are turned and La Boheme, the opera, takes its cue from Rent, the musical, and Rodolfo the poet’s observation that he has “a few more lines” to finish takes…
In the Heights, King’s Cross Theatre
Lin-Manuel Miranda is America’s new Poet Laureate. When I first saw his fledgling opus IN THE HEIGHTS on Broadway it struck me that here was the moment where all the existing catergories previously used to define musical theatre…
Measure for Measure, Young Vic
Shakespeare’s strangest and nastiest play is a kind of black farce where the reckless dash to redemption makes the redemption itself – forgiveness, reconciliation, all is sort of forgiven – seem like an afterthought. Joe Hill-Gibbins is having…
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, London Coliseum
Mark Wigglesworth’s arrival as English National Opera’s new Music Director was never going to be a quiet affair. They probably heard it all the way over at the Kremlin. It wasn’t so much a case of a…
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall
Mahler’s supersonic Seventh – a grand experiment in sensory colouration if ever there was one – needs no special pleading: it is what it is, a one-off, an oddity, a new departure of no fixed destination. But…
Kinky Boots, Adelphi Theatre
If the shoe fits, they say, wear it. But in truth there’s always been a bit of a size differential between Kinky Boots, the modest urban Brit-flick, and the Cyndi Lauper/ Harvey Fierstein musical that it spawned.…