40 stories by "Stephen Farrow"
Again, here's many reviews in a single post. Normal service will be resumed as soon as I get a better definition of normal. A VERY EXPENSIVE POISON A very big miss. There's a terrific play s…
It seems almost unbelievable that London has had to wait twenty-seven years for a professional production of Falsettos, the seminal 1992 Broadway musical about a New York family that breaks …
Razor-sharp, ice cold, meaner than a box of snakes, and VERY funny. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's thermonuclear family drama goes off with the force of a fifteen-kiloton bomb. We're in a plantati…
No, this isn't an orange advert from 1985. Playing catch-up again: three small musicals, in (coincidentally) diminishing order of size, seen over the last month or so. The Secret Diary of Ad…
Cast Robert James Waller's dazzlingly awful 1992 novel out of your mind. While you're at it, you might as well forget Clint Eastwood's almost-as-stinky 1995 film adaptation. This is, yes, st…
Oh, come on. You didn't think a David Mamet play about the Me Too movement with a thinly-disguised Harvey Weinstein figure as the central character was actually going to be good, did you? Pl…
There's a danger sometimes in waiting until the end of the run to see a show that everyone has praised to the skies and back again. When you go in after hearing an almost neverending chorus …
See all those stars on the poster? Matthew Warchus's stellar revival of Present Laughter deserves every last one of them, and so does Andrew Scott. This is a blissfully funny, absolutely pit…
Yes, five: the UK tour of Lincoln Center's revival of The King and I in Manchester, Fiddler on the Roof, the last night of the National Theatre revival of Follies, and The Play That Goes Wro…
If you'd asked me to place a bet, I wouldn't have put money on William Finn and James Lapine's Little Miss Sunshine " yes, an adaptation of the 2006 film " arriving in the UK before their se…
There's a moment late in the second act of Jeremy Herrin's star-driven revival of All My Sons, which just opened at the Old Vic, when Sally Field's Kate Keller appears to age twenty years an…
We're all familiar by now with preshow announcements about cellphones and smartphones, right? After last Wednesday night's performance of the National Theatre's very, very wonderful adaptati…
Mad props, or something, to the very intense woman seated three seats down the front row from me at Wednesday afternoon's performance of Bruce Norris's Downstate, a play so relentlessly blea…
In the closing moments of the first act of Local Hero, the new musical based on Bill Forsyth's 1983 film, Texan oil executive Mac steps outside a pub in the run-down Scottish village of Fern…
(Yes, I'm playing catch-up. The production closed two weeks ago. Deal with it.) Meet the Baum family: Moe and Rose, comfortably-off Manhattanites who lose almost everything in the 1929 stock…
The original Broadway production of Rags in 1986 was a notorious flop, running for just four performances. Despite the short run, it received five Tony nominations, including a nod for Best …
It's back, and it's (even) better. The first time around, Dominic Cooke's revival of Follies at the National Theatre was simultaneously thrilling, breathtaking, and slightly flawed. Cooke pu…
On paper, Come From Away looks wince-inducing. A musical set against the backdrop of 9/11 following the story of people stranded in a small town in Newfoundland when their flights were force…
Actually, this time the ride could be bumpier. In describing Ivo van Hove's fascinating stage adaptation of the classic 1950 backstage drama All About Eve, it's possibly helpful to start by …
Another one crossed off the list. I've loved Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley's score for Violet since the first recording of it was released in 1999, but somehow I've never managed to see a…
It's not giving anything away to say that Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat, currently receiving its British premiere at the Donmar Warehouse, basically involves two hours of watch…
André de Shields knows the value of silence. At the very beginning of Hadestown, the Anaïs Mitchell folk opera currently playing a pre-Broadway tryout at the National Theatre, he steps f…
Another op'nin, another revival of Kiss Me, Kate. The Crucible's Christmas musicals are usually worth looking forward to, and this one is no exception. In terms of execution, it's up there w…
Fun fact: if you were once married to a king, you can still belt out the big notes even after you've been beheaded. Six, the clever one-act musical currently touring prior to a second London…
In the title role in Nottingham Playhouse's revival of Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III, Mark Gatiss delivers a breathtaking, stunning, dazzling star turn. Well, delivered, it's clos…
