48 stories by "Emma Brockes"
Andrew Lloyd Webber's monster hit has all the subtlety of a plunging chandelier but it will soothe and transport youThe Phantom of the Opera is a perfect expression of the time it was writte…
Studio 54, New YorkCumming, Michelle Williams and a great ensemble will break your heart and lift your spirits in Sam Mendes's production which has the ghost of Bob Fosse in the choreography…
Why pay hundreds to 'enjoy' cramped seats, overpriced booze and being herded like cattle? Because it's the theatre, that's whyJust before Christmas, I went to the theatre. It was a Harold Pi…
She performs semi-nude and asks audiences: 'Ever been raped?' Are you ready for this brash New Yorker's brand of polemic standup?Adrienne Truscott apologises to me before our meeting: the vi…
Julie Andrews found a little subtlety in the score. Underwood will go at it with the pop-eyed mania only Simon Cowell appreciatesJoining all the other things to make one's spirits sink at th…
Even 400 years on, Shakespeare's play is as alive as ever to an imaginative reinterpretation that shows the raw truth about powerMembers of Congress currently holding the House to ransom, co…
Sam Mendes on making Bond, coming home and turning Charlie And The Chocolate Factory into a musicalCharlie and the Chocolate Factory has taken five years to become a stage musical, for reaso…
Review: With its epic burps, parenting parables and anarchic high spirits, it's no wonder the RSC's musical has New York enchantedThe RSC's Matilda opened on Broadway this week, and it was s…
After all the cliches " sleezy hack, crusading attorney, tart with a heart " isn't it time showbiz tackled chemical engineering?There isn't much to recommend the Broadway revival of Glengarr…
Musical's latest incarnation on Broadway is a crowd-pleaser in a city that desperately needs some cheering up after SandyI've never been a big fan of Annie the musical. The score is great, I…
Mitt take note: the South Park creators' scurrilous satire on the foibles of religion weirdly endears Mormonism to audiencesMitt Romney could do worse than look to the Book of Mormon (the mu…
She's best mates with Lady Mary, but Ruth Wilson reveals why she sidestepped Downton in favour of TolstoyRuth Wilson talks brusquely, in quick, ungainly sentences that take one back to …
The award-winning composer produced many cheesy Hollywood numbers, but who among us hasn't belted out one of his tunes?A lot of what Marvin Hamlisch composed over the course of his extraordi…
The Baywatch and Knight Rider star talks frankly about how he has come to terms with his new, semi-ironic fameDavid Hasselhoff, psyched from jetlag and a morning can of Red Bull, bounces int…
One-man show gets off to a surprisingly good start before going off the rails when Tyson tries to talk about women he's knownMike Tyson's one-man show, Undisputed Truth " or Undisputed Troof…
A performance of every word of F Scott Fitzgerald's jazz era classic, Gatz lasts a marathon eight hours (with a break for dinner). How do the actors manage it?On paper it looks like punishme…
Sarah Ruhl expected her play about the history of the vibrator to disappear without trace. Three Tony awards later, she is bringing her smash hit to Britain.The play In the Next Room, also k…
"Wendy and the Lost Boys" is Julie Salamon's biography of the playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who died in 2006.
Judi Dench looks back on more than half a century of acting.
'I'm a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two seconds'When Stephen Sondheim was in his 30s, he would get approached, occasionally, by out-of-town theatre companies, s…
An encyclopedic account of the American musical.
Stephen Sondheim's blasts at the likes of Gilbert and Sullivan are refreshing, but elsewhere he wilfully misses the pointThere's nothing like a set-to between legends to lift the spirits: th…
The crazy upbringing, the success, the drink, the drugs, the four husbands. After all that, Emma Brockes expected Liza Minnelli to be a little dotty. But over lobster, endless cigarette brea…
