Tuesday, February 2, 2016
It’s a kind of French Mikado. In a distant and exotic kingdom a victim must be found to celebrate the King’s name-day. No little list, no W H Gilbert wit, either, but a handful o…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:53AMFriday, January 8, 2016
It’s not hard to see why Grey Gardens – the musical – has become such a collector’s item. This strange but true tale of American royalty gone rogue, of Jacqueline Kennedy’s rebelli…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:47AMThursday, December 3, 2015
It's hard not to invoke the B word - Barbra, that is, not Brice - and I speak as one who bunked off school to catch her at a midweek matinee when Funny Girl first played London almost 50 yea…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:32AMIt’s hard not to invoke the B word – Barbra, that is, not Brice – and I speak as one who bunked off school to catch her at a mid-week matinee. It was standing room only at the Prince o…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:44AMSaturday, November 14, 2015
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 Verd…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:35AMTuesday, November 10, 2015
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 ra…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:51AMThursday, November 5, 2015
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 …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:55AMMonday, October 26, 2015
Yesterday, Edward Seckerson interviewed Jon Robyns, currently starring in Memphis, as part of his Singular Sensations series of one-off events at the Charing Cross Theatre. Next up, it's Jon…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 03:09AMSaturday, October 24, 2015
As we approach the centenary of his birth, Leonard Bernstein enthusiasts Edward Seckerson and composer, arranger and musical director Jason Carr are joined by Olivier Award nominee Sophie-Lo…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:07AMWednesday, October 21, 2015
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 i…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:30AMThursday, September 17, 2015
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 mus…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 08:14AMFriday, August 7, 2015
Never in a million years would you guess that Grand Hotel – the 1989 New York hit now brilliantly revived at Southwark Playhouse – is one of Broadway's great rescue jobs. That something …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:49AMFriday, May 15, 2015
It took approximately thirty years for High Society to first make its laborious transition from screen to stage and there are good reasons for that. The indelible impression left by the movi…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:39AMThursday, January 8, 2015
Everything about this little-known and largely forgotten show suggests epic, starting with the title: multiple locations, ambitious concept, big ideas. But like so much of Jerry Herman's wor…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:45AMTuesday, December 2, 2014
Santa Claus does make it to the Menier Chocolate Factory this Christmas but his name is Sam Byck and he plans to fly a 747 into the White House and “incinerate Dick Nixon”. So not the Ch…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:05AMThursday, October 23, 2014
It's throwback week on the West End, with two very different shows recalling the darkest days of America's racial disharmony. But whereas The Scottsboro Boys shocks and satirises and has us …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:00PMMonday, October 20, 2014
You come away from The Scottsboro Boys sure of two things: that the next cakewalk you hear will induce queasiness and that the show's director/choreographer Susan Stroman is some kind of gen…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:44PMSunday, October 19, 2014
There’s a moment of stunned silence in Imelda Staunton’s storming Mama Rose at the Chichester Festival Theatre, a long, long, moment where neither speaking nor singing she conclusively d…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 07:10AMThursday, May 22, 2014
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 h…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:29AMWednesday, May 14, 2014
On the Richter scale of catchiness Richard Adler and Jerry Ross’s songs for The Pajama Game are right up there. Quite who did what in their brief but shining songwriting partnership was ne…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:00AMThursday, April 3, 2014
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…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 02:37AMWednesday, March 26, 2014
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 forma…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 06:29PMThursday, February 27, 2014
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, …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 03:58AMSaturday, November 23, 2013
In the season of goodwill a new musical based on Bret Easton Ellis’ notorious novel American Psycho might earn itself the subtitle “NOT the Christmas Show” - but when the composer is D…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:00AMWednesday, October 23, 2013
“Love and pain is like peace and war - you want one you have to have the other.” It’s a line that pretty much sums up From Here to Eternity. The title of James Jones’s novel and the …
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 05:00PMWednesday, February 20, 2013
Even singular sensations grow older - yet A Chorus Line, which coined the phrase, seems ageless, so sure is it of its place in musical theatre history, so locked now into our theatrical cons…
SOURCE: The Arts Desk at 04:26AM 
