As my wife would tell you, I’m a sucker for a great girl’s voice. I love Joni, Judy, Bonnie, k d, Laura, Barbra and Missy. “I recognise the first six”, I hear you say but who’s Missy? Missy is Missy Higgins a fairly obscure but wonderful Australian singer/songwriter who I’ve been listening to for years…
Whilst there are many examples of characters on TV and in the movies being spun-off into their own series, there aren’t that many (if any?) musicals that have gone through that process until it happened to fictional rock icon “Billie Trix”. Originally the narrator in the Pet Shop Boys 2001 musical “Closer To Heaven”, she…
Shida is a new musical based on the true story of a girl growing up in the Bronx, a tough neighbourhood of New York in the nineties. As the eponymous character ages from nine into her twenties, we meet her mother, aged English teacher, her best friend and other assorted characters. These are all well-defined,…
I should have known what to expect from the Union Theatre’s revival of David Eldridge’s 2006 play Market Boy just by looking at their advertising poster. In front of a pair of jeans is a stiff, upright banana with on either side, a pair of red, juicy apples at the bottom – not a very…
In 1980, “Fame” appeared on our cinema screens, conceived by producer David De Silva and directed by Alan Parker. Set in the High School of Performing Arts in New York City, it was a superb movie that portrayed the lives of the students and teachers at the school. It had superb three-dimensional characters, exuberant dance…
Joe Orton’s The Ruffian On The Stair was originally a radio play first broadcast on the BBC Home Service in August 1964 and based on a novel The Boy Hairdresser which was written by Orton and his partner (and his murderer), Kenneth Halliwell. The title is taken from a poem by William Ernest Henley: “Madam…
