Chris Burgess’ Jewish Hollywood is like a musical essay – but instead of being a heavy-handed play of ideas, it’s a light-hearted – but wildly informative – narrated musical revue. The idea that attending a vibrantly relayed song-and-dance history lecture would be entertaining is novel – yet it succeeds in both informing and entertaining with…
Shakespeare had a tendency to play with history. Quite a lot of that mucking around was to reflect the Tudor thoughts on previous monarchs and regimes. So, when watching a Shakespearean historical drama, it’s always worth taking the story with a pinch of salt. Luckily, that doesn’t detract from the play itself, especially as Will…
The press material for The Winston Machine describes this new play as both an epic family saga (told through two love stories) and as a ‘contemporary state-of-the-nation show exploring how our relationship with the mythology of WWII shapes our present’. Unfortunately, the promise of a meaningful multi-generational saga remains largely unrealised despite impressive performances from…
If Irish scholar and celebrated novelist CS Lewis were to pay a visit to Austrian neurologist and founding father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud what might the two men be keen to debate? And what significance would their discussion have when played out against the looming threat of Nazi invasion and the advent of the Second…
The biggest story in the USA in 1924 was the kidnapping and gruesome murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks by two rich students from Chicago, Nathan Leopold Jr and Richard Loeb which became known at the time as “The Crime of Century” and made Leopold & Loeb infamous across the land. The two were lovers and…
Mykal Rand’s revival of the Olivier-winning Five Guys Named Moe is a high-energy, hootenanny of harmonies – offering West End calibre performances up-close in the Gatehouse’s intimate (but not claustrophobic) upstairs theatre. Although this show has nothing to do with the festive season per se, the joint feels like the kind of New Year’s bash…
