Menier Chocolate Factory
Power of Sail, Menier Chocolate Factory review - alternately stiff and startlingSaturday, 30 March 2024The Menier Chocolate Factory has made something of a habit of late out of trawling unexpected corners of the contemporary American repertoire. A happy result of that last May was the local premiere of the Off Broadway show ... Read more... |
First person: playwright Paul Grellong on keeping pace with American politicsWednesday, 27 March 2024I’m writing this in the lobby of the Menier Chocolate Factory a couple of hours before the first preview. I was last here in February for the start of rehearsals. In the time since, I’ve made a handful of, one hopes, helpful adjustments to the... Read more... |
Pacific Overtures, Menier Chocolate Factory review - lesser-known Sondheim scores afreshMonday, 11 December 2023This is, by my reckoning at least, the third major London production over the years of Pacific Overtures, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's dazzling curiosity of a show first seen on Broadway in 1976 and reappraised ever since in stagings... Read more... |
Close-Up: The Twiggy Musical, Menier Chocolate Factory review - a tourist's view of a Sixties iconFriday, 29 September 2023The Biba dresses are way too colourful, the shop’s interior about 10 times too bright… and did anybody really say ”happening threads” in 1965?Taking Ben Elton to task for his portrayal of the Sixties, which feature in the first half of Close-Up, his... Read more... |
Marjorie Prime, Menier Chocolate Factory review - superbly acted chiller about a contemporary crisisSaturday, 18 March 2023Artificial intelligence has become an even hotter topic since Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime was first staged in Los Angeles in 2014, so it’s not surprising that the play’s handling of AI is being seen as its unique selling point. (It subsequently... Read more... |
Alex Edelman, Menier Chocolate Factory review - London run for unmissable off-Broadway hitSaturday, 21 January 2023At one point in this brilliantly constructed and performed set, Alex Edelman ponders on the catchment area for his comedy and figures it might be the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Nah: this is comedy that can talk to anybody with a brain. ... Read more... |
10 Questions for comedian Alex EdelmanMonday, 19 December 2022US comic Alex Edelman first came to the attention of British audiences in 2014, when he was named best newcomer in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for his show Millennial, in which, said one critic, “he regales us with tales of smart-arsery and backchat... Read more... |
The Sex Party, Menier Chocolate Factory review - disappointing detumescenceFriday, 18 November 2022In the past, playwright Terry Johnson has mixed sex and comedy with hilarious results. His Freudian farce, Hysteria, and his tribute to traditional British Benny-Hill-style comedians, Dead Funny, share a bed of giggling gyrations with his love... Read more... |
Habeas Corpus, Menier Chocolate Factory review - grappling with Alan Bennett's anti-farceWednesday, 15 December 2021In his 1973 play Habeas Corpus, now revived at the Menier Chocolate Factory under the direction of Patrick Marber, Alan Bennett had his way with the venerable Whitehall farce. Today’s younger playgoer would probably marvel at the popularity of these... Read more... |
Stephen Sondheim in memoriam - he gave us more to seeTuesday, 30 November 2021It seemed impossible and yet, the other evening, while idly flicking through emails, I learned the unimaginable: Stephen Sondheim, age 91, had passed away. And very quickly by all accounts, given that he was reported to have enjoyed a Thanksgiving... Read more... |
Indecent, Menier Chocolate Factory review - cabaret-style depiction of a rapidly changing worldWednesday, 15 September 2021Indecent is a play wrapped inside a news story about stigma. Playwright Paula Vogel was at Cornell University when she stumbled on a “yellowing copy of an out-of-print translation” of Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance. Asch had been born into... Read more... |
The Boy Friend, Menier Chocolate Factory review - fun but featherweightWednesday, 04 December 2019There’s slight (White Christmas, to name but one) and then there’s The Boy Friend, a period musical so unabashedly vaporous that if you sneeze, it might blow away. All credit then to the Menier Chocolate Factory for anchoring Sandy Wilson’s... Read more... |
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