There’s a lot of pressure when you’re adapting such an adored staple of British television culture into your next big musical. Everyone who goes in to watch this show is going to have expectations with a whole load of Bake Off tropes and customs that we’re going to be looking out for. Jake Brunger and…
Jenna Fincken’s debut play Ruckus is a thrilling and uncomfortable insight into the world of coercive control and toxic relationships. Inspired by real stories and research from leading domestic abuse charities, Georgia Green directs this deeply unsettling production, luring the audience in softly before shattering perspectives and revealing the shocking, albeit statistically inevitable outcome, of…
Matthew Ryan’s revival of Kevin Elyot’s 1994 play, set at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-80s, makes for a lightly entertaining evening at the Turbine Theatre. Structured over three acts, the play touches on areas of love, loneliness and infidelity, centred around the never-seen character Reg, and the impact of his promiscuity…
Panto season might be cancelled, but with its bright and colourful costumes, audience participation and pop songs galore, Adam Nichols’ wonderfully camp production of The Merry Wives of Windsor is a real outdoor treat. As part of its double bill in OVO’s season, it’s playing back-to-back with Henry V, perhaps of note that that’s two…
I don’t think it would be right to start this review without acknowledging that OVO – as director Matthew Parker highlights in his programme note – is one of the first companies to be staging live theatre since lockdown. After nearly five months, audiences are once again coming together and partaking in the communal experience…
Good versus evil. Truth versus lies. Free will versus actions determined by the circumstances of our existence. These are the dichotomies that Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train puts up against each other, whilst exploring the injustices and complexities of the American justice system. Whilst Angel Cruz (Ukweli Roach) is locked up in…
The Watermill Theatre re-imagines Twelfth Night in the 1920s Jazz scene, as twin siblings Viola and Sebastian are separated at sea, and comedy ensues with romance, music and mistaken identity. Paul Hart’s production might not justify the infatuation that so soaks the text, but set on the gorgeous stage of Wilton’s Music Hall, it certainly…
Utility feels like one of those plays where it claims to do a whole bunch of things that it doesn’t quite do in practice. Set in Texas, Amber (Robyn Addison) and her on/off husband Chris (Robert Lonsdale) can barely pay their bills, and Amber just wants to throw a nice birthday party for her eight-year-old…
Fifty years since the premiere of the musical Hair, the show is revived in a new production, directed by Jonathan O’Boyle. The show first opened in the West End in 1968, a day after the theatrical censorship laws were revoked. Taking the form of a rock musical, the show centres around a tribe of American…