London
Gary Naylor
Max is big and black and Tyler is slight and (very) white, an odd couple trapped in a dual-control car as Max barks out his instructions and Tyler prepares for his driving test. If their relationship is to get started, like the clutch of the Vauxhall Corsa, it’s going to have to find its biting point. When the men reveal a little more of their insecurities, it does and we’re away.Will Jackson was commissioned by the Bush Theatre to write this play and it’s a delight to see Clutch given a run in its studio space. It may not be the boldest concept (there are strong vibes of a 1970s BBC pilot Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Britain is a divided nation, but one of the divisions that we don’t hear that much about is that between Pakistani gay men. Written by Waleed Akhtar (who also stars in this impressively heartfelt two-hander), The P Word is about the differences in life experiences between one asylum seeker and one Londoner, and comes to the Bush Theatre in a production which has been supported by Micro Rainbow, the first safe house in the UK for LGBTQ asylum seekers and refugees. So what’s it all about?Set in contemporary London, the 85-minute play begins with two parallel life stories: one is that of 31-year Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
As Dipa Baruwa-Etti’s latest play, The Clinic, reminds us, the Tory party has a strong showing of Black MPs – Badenoch, Cleverly, Kwarteng. It was finished long before the latest Cabinet appointments, but presciently picked those three names, all now with key ministerial roles. But the title isn’t strictly a reference to the regular meeting MPs hold with the public, even though one of the characters, Amina (Mercy Ojelade), is a struggling Labour MP. The term is what one upwardly mobile Nigerian family believe they can offer less fortunate Black people – and, in particular, Wunmi (Toyin Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
A starry cast headed by Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell doesn’t quite manage to bring this lavish, light-hearted period pastiche to life, though it looks good – nice cars, lovely costumes, a quasi-Wes Anderson vibe – and there are mild chuckles to be had.Filmed during the pandemic in an empty theatre-land, it’s Bafta-award-winning director Tom George’s film debut and fans of BBC Three’s brilliant mockumentary, This Country, which he directed, may be startled at his new trajectory. This Country’s creator and star, Charlie Cooper, is also on board as a melancholy theatre usher, as is Paul Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Who tells your story? Something of a theme in new musicals since Hamilton posed the question in those long ago pre-Covid, pre-inflation days. In Ride, the once famous cyclist who had hardly ever ridden a bike, Annie Londonderry, circumvents the problem right at the start, because she will – and she’ll also, a little reluctantly, tell the story of Annie Kopchovsky, the Latvian-born mother she once was.It was three years ago that Freya Catrin Smith and Jack Williams found Annie’s story and started to develop it as a musical, a version winning the Vault Festival Show of the Week in 2020. It Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Schoolteachers know – even if only the very best can put it into practice – that faced with a noisy classroom you shouldn’t raise your voice, but rather speak quietly. Over recent Proms seasons audience coughing has reached extreme levels, so the charismatic Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto took the bold course in playing Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending as softly as it is possible to do – and the hall responded with the most silent, rapt attention I can remember there.It's been fashionable to mock The Lark as long as it has been topping the Classic FM hall-of-fame, but hearing it last Read more ...
Gary Naylor
A semi-staged concert performance of a musical is a little like a third trimester ultrasound scan. You should see the anatomy in development, the shape of what is to come and, most importantly, discern a heart beating at its centre. But you can’t tell if what will arrive some time later will be a bouncing baby or a sickly child. So it is with this iteration of a new British musical, Treason. We’re in a divided kingdom whose leader, Queen Elizabeth I, is about to die and whose successor is unclear – the audience did not need too much prompting to catch the contemporary parallels. Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Has the pandemic made us more angry? Although Francesca Martinez’s debut play, which is at the National Theatre, was programmed before COVID, its belated opening has not dampened the playwright’s fiery criticism of the effects of Tory government austerity on the lives of people with disabilities.As you’d expect from the writer – who is an award-winning comedian, actor, author of What the **** Is Normal? and has cerebral palsy (though she prefers the word “wobbly”) – All of Us is written in a deeply committed and compassionate way, but although I agree with its political points, and am moved Read more ...
Gary Naylor
LJ's dream has come true - she has her very own wine bar. Unfortunately for us, it turns into a bit of a nightmare.This new musical open on a nostalgic 70s vibe. Tables and chairs fill almost all of Southwark Playhouse's smaller space, a set that conjures memories of the sitcom from that period, Robin's Nest, or the infamous dining room at Fawlty Towers; recent films such as Boiling Point have also found comparable environments fertile ground for exploring the narrow line between comedy and tragedy.Initially we focus on LJ herself, Mischief theatre alum Nancy Zamit's harassed manager Read more ...
Gary Naylor
If jukebox shows occupy one end of the musical theatre spectrum and Stephen Sondheim's masterpieces the other, Sister Act The Musical is somewhere in-between.We get songs we know (Alan Menken's score, heard first on the West End and then, in 2011, on Broadway, includes many staples of talent shows and daytime radio), stunt casting for name recognition and, best of all for a production delayed for two years by Covid, a confident showmanship that screams "entertainment"! If you can afford to be sniffy about such blatant commerciality in these straitened times, then good for you!The director Read more ...
Matt Wolf
There's further training, shall we say, still needed on 101 Dalmatians, the much-delayed show that marks the second consecutive musical this summer at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, following their revisionist Legally Blonde.A busy, bustling title that takes ages to come into focus, Timothy Sheader's production feels like a work-in-progress, even if the puppetry work from the busy Toby Olié (concurrently represented by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) as it is could scarcely be bettered. Is the piece worth pursuing further? You bet, not least because of the enduring Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Music plays a big part in the life of Dwight, an 11-year-old black lad growing up in early 80s Leeds. He doesn't fit in at school, bullied because he is "slow", and he doesn't fit in outside school, would-be friends losing patience with him.But he does fit in at home, loved unequivocally by a protective mother, somewhat enviously by a bickering sister, and rather reluctantly by a preoccupied father. Like the records he plays on the gramophone, his life is about to spin – and he'll have to hold on to the warmth of family love in a cold world.Zodwa Nyoni's new play for the Kiln Theatre packs Read more ...