Back with some theatre this week – this time Off-West End again with my first trip to the Underbelly Boulelvard Soho!
The full title here is Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody and it’s arrived in Soho after a run at the Edinburgh Fringe and is also running off Broadway in New York. It’s based on series one Heated Rivalry, which is in itself an adaptation of the book by Rachel Reid. If you’ve managed to miss this phenomenon so far the short hand is “canadian gay hockey romance” and the longer version is that Shane Hollander and Ilya Rosanov are both star hockey players and professional rivals as they play for different teams (and are from different countries) but who secretly in a relationship.This is parodying the tv series and and retelling it through the eyes of a “wine mom”.
Now this is the point where I admit that at the point where I saw the show (despite all my best intentions) I’ve only seen the clips and memes of the TV show, although I have read the book that it’s based on. But I don’t think that held me back because I still laughed a lot. The framing is really fun and the cast is great. Aside from the actors playing Shane and Ilya there are three other cast members who take on all the other roles and they’re doing a great job. I don’t think I’d seen any of them in anything before, but they were doing a great job and getting the absolute most out of everything. I was disappointed that some of the backdrop elements of the set look to be made using AI – once I’d spotted that on the menu for the juice bar it made me give everything else in the set design a closer look and a bit of side eye, which is a shame. But the songs are great and there is a cast recording of the Off Broadway cast out now if you want to have a listen.
This is at the Underbelly Boulevard in Soho until November 1 – it was packed the night that I was there and seems to be selling well, so if you want to go and see it you’ve still got time if you’re quick
I’m back with another documentary pick this week – apart from Quarterback at the start of September it’s been a very theatre heavy three months both on the blog and for me generally because I’ve spent a lot of time away from home, which typically means I’m spending my evenings at the theatre or reading books rather than watching something on a screen.
This is a TV documentary about the comedian Rik Mayall who was one of the pioneers of alternative comedy in the 1980s. I’m too young to remember that – but old enough to remember the repeats of various of his shows being on BBC 2 and for him to have been an anarchic presence in the general realm of showbiz. I knew the main contours of his life, but not the details – and this filled in the gaps with archive footage and talking heads interviews with all of the key players – including audio recordings of Mayall, who died unexpectedly of a heart attack aged 56 in 2014.
It’s hard at this point to understand how revolutionary or groundbreaking things that seem commonplace now are – whether it’s the Beatles in music, naturalism arriving in movie acting or alternative comedy – which was different in the UK compared to the US. So many of British comedy’s big names are people who came up through the alternative scene that it’s hard to remember that they were once outside the mainstream. Anyway, if you like comedy history, this is a good watch. If you remember anything about the era it’s even better, with some moments of real sadness – such as Mayall’s children talking about the impact of the quad bike accident on their father and Adrian Edmondson (his longtime collaborator) talking about his regret that the two of them didn’t get over the breakup of their relationship before Mayall’s sudden death.
There’s no trailer for this one, so I’ve used it as an excuse to post (possibly) my favourite scene in all of Blackadder – Mayall’s scene stealing turn as Lord Flasheart, stealing a bride away from the altar. I can (and do much to Him Indoors’ distress) recite every word of this scene. It’s just glorious. Woof!
This was on Sky Documentaries and actually quite a long time ago back in June – see my comments above about how little time I’ve spent at home that mean it’s taken me this long to watch it – but you should still be able to find it on Now.
Yes this happened a couple of weeks ago now, but it was a one off concert that Martha slotted between her gigs supporting Snow Patrol at the Royal Albert Hall so it’s not like I’ve missed out on alerting you to an ongoing tour by not posting it sooner.
At this point my love for Martha Wainright (and her brother Rufus) should be well known, and this was a lovely, intimate gig in a new to me venue – the Tabernacle in Notting Hill. She put out a warning on her instagram the day before that there was no opening act and that she’d be on straight away at 7.30, so of course being perpetually early I was there for the doors opening at 6.30 and got a spot in the front row. Of course then I had to hang around in it for an hour before the show started, but the floor was clean and I had a book (and a pint of cider) so it wasn’t exactly a hardship!
There were a bunch of the old favourites here but the main purpose was for her to preview some of the songs from her upcoming album. I’ve seen Martha a few times, but not doing a solo set like this (ie just her and her guitar) since the very first time I saw her at The Stables near Milton Keynes when she was touring the Come Home to Mama album more than a decade ago. Her songs sound good with a band – but they’re also great when it’s just her on her own. We did have a few songs with her and a sax, but they were the minority. Her chat between songs was hilarious – as she lamented her younger self’s propensity for alternate guitar tunings and her difficulties in remembering them now. All in all, a lovely night and a real treat – and I’m looking forward to the new album when it comes out next year.
I’ve got another theatre show for you this week – and because has already closed I feel like I can be honest about how I feel about it without feeling like I’m being mean or potentially stopping anyone from going to see it. Which I guess is a bit of a giveaway about what is coming, but let’s maintain the facade and I’ll start with the plot.
Death Note: The Musical is based on the manga (and anime of the same name) and is the story of Light Yagami, a high school student in Tokyo who finds a Death Note – a black notebook where anyone whose name is written into it will die 40 seconds later, from a heart attack unless otherwise specified. Light has strong views about justice and decides (pretty much instantly) that he’s going to use it to rid the world of criminals who he thinks have escaped justice. The number of people dropping dead soon attracts the attention of the police who bring in the mysterious detective L to try and track down who is responsible for the biggest murder spree Japan has ever seen. There are also side plots around the Shinigami who the death note belong to and also a pop star called Mira.
I’ve been hearing about this musical for years now – which is why I went to see it. It’s been circulating in various forms for more than a decade – initially in Japan and South Korea and the first English production of it was a very successful concert performance production in London a couple of years ago and there was a lot of buzz around this when the Barbican announced it. This was also my first Frank Wildhorn musical in a theatre, having been reading about his various shows for 20 years – ie before streaming was a thing so if you wanted to hear the music in question you needed to pay £20+ for a CD of something you had no idea whether you would like or not.*
I am not familiar with the source material but the original manga ran to 12 volumes – and the anime series to nearly 40 episodes – so I suspect that there has been a considerable amount of flattening out of the plot, characters and motivations of the story to get this down to 2 hours and 40 minutes including interval. Or at least I hope there has because I found it all very one dimensional and surface level. Everything happens very quickly and characters take no time to reflect on the whys and whats of their behaviour. Not only does Light decide to start his vigilante killing spree very fast, he soon has (apparently) no qualms about killing anyone who is trying to track him down and stop him. None of this is helped by the fact that the score is also almost entirely power ballads, which start big and end big and soon lost any impact on me because of the total lack of light and shade in the music.
That said, there were things that I did like (or at least appreciate). All the performers were giving it their all and working hard with what they were given to do. My favourite performance came from Telly Leung, who I thought was great as Ryuk, the shinigami who Light’s Death Note originally belonged too – eating up every scene he was in (as well as every apple that he came across) with an enormous and hilarious performance. I thought the ambition and scale of the sets was something to behold too – even if my extreme side seat meant I probably wasn’t getting the full effect of it.
And I realise that this is probably the most down I’ve been on a show I’ve written about here, maybe ever, but I promise I have seen worse – I just haven’t written about them. Also given the massively enthusiastic reception this got in the theatre, the way it’s been selling and most of the other reviews I am an outlier here. And it’s always interesting to be an outlier. Was the fact that I’d been to see Kimberley Akimbo the previous night and loved it a factor? Who can tell but the fact remains that I’ve humming the music from Kimberly and listening to that cast recording and I couldn’t remember a tune from Death Note by the time I’d got home from the theatre.
I will be absolutely fascinated to see if this show has a life beyond this 50 performance summer run at the Barbican. From what I could judge it was definitely not a theatre crowd the night that I was there and any show that can bring in fans of the source material *and* get a 4* review from the Guardian might potentially have another life. But this is going to need a big old theatre to do it in. Much as I hope that next summer’s production of Sunday in the Park with George happens, if it doesn’t (and it feels like at this point it might not happen) I can see this getting another outing in the Barbican to replace it.
Happy Sunday.
*and for perspective, £20 at that point was more than 5 times my hourly wage at my part time job.
Happy Sunday everyone and I’m taking the opportunity to let you know that one of my favourite shows from this year so far, Into the Woods, is starting previews in the West End this week. I loved this so much when I saw it back in March that I went back again in April. Some of the cast from The Bridge have made the transfer including Kate Fleetwood as the Witch, who I thought was amazing, Gabrielle Lewis-Dobson and Gracie McGonagall – who I didn’t see on either of my two trips but there are also a lot of new faces too including John Dalgleish as the Baker and Lara Pitt-Pulver as the Baker’s Wife so there is a distinct chance that I’ll be making the trip to the Noel Coward at some point before January 9th to see it a third time and see how it has changed and evolved.
Happy Sunday everyone, I’ve got another new musical for you this week – Kimberley Akimbo at the off-West End Hampstead Theatre which as an added bonus was another new-to-me venue as I continue to tick off theatre spaces around London. This one opened this week and runs until November.
Kimberly Akimbo is the story of Kimberly Levaco, a teenage girl who suffers from a condition that makes her age rapidly. At the start of the show she and her family have just moved to a new town and we follow her as she tries to make friends at her new school and also navigate what I would describe as a complicated home life all the while knowing that the average life span for someone with her condition is 16 – and as she turns 16 during the show her time to find happiness and experience life is running out.
This has music by Jeanine Tesori, who also wrote Caroline or Change, and is based on a play of the same name from the year 2000 which was written by David Lindsay-Abaire who also wrote the book and lyrics for this. The musical was first produced Off-Broadway in 2021 and won Best Musical at the Drama Desk Awards and then moved to Broadway in 2022 where it won five Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Score and Best Actress in a Musical for Victoria Clarke who played Kimberly. This London premiere has Maria Friedman as Kimblerly, Alice Fearn as her aunt Debra and Niamh Perry as Kimberly’s mom.
For a show about a teenager with a terminal illness this is surprisingly funny and upbeat. I thought the other teen characters were great and the dynamics of the group of nerds/misfits who embrace Kimberly – and that none of the drama in the show is about kids being mean to Kimberly. Her family are chaotic and possibly psychotic and aunt Debra is an absolute scene stealer of a role which Alice Fearn absolutely makes the most of.
I loved the music – the lyrics are clever and I came home humming the songs, and I’ve listened to the Broadway recording a bunch since as well. This was a surprise to me because although I enjoyed Caroline, or Change when I saw it in London with the amazing Sharon D Clarke* in 2018, it wasn’t a show where I came out thinking that I was going to have to listen to the cast recording of it immediately because I had enjoyed the music so much. I saw the third preview and despite the fact the director was sat two seats across from me and making notes, I thought it was already in really good shape. There were a few bits where I thought it might be tightened up, a little bit of technical stuff that needed cleaning up and polishing and a couple of issues with the sound balance, but honestly I’ve been to shows in the middle of their runs that have had the same issues – or worse.
But I have no doubt that it will get the tweaks because this has a very high powered production crew behind it and all the hallmarks of a show that is being staged with thoughts about making a transfer in to the West End at a later point. Michael Longhurst also directed that Caroline or Change and is a former artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse. Designer Soutra Gilmour did the Rachel Zegler Evita (among many Jamie Lloyd productions) as well as Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), &Juliet, and the recent Woman in Mind revival with Sheridan Smith. Maria Friedman mostly directs these days (notably the Merrily We Roll Along with Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe that won *all* the awards) but she has eight Olivier nominations as a performer (and another as director) and three wins (and a fourth for director). Basically I really liked this and I would happily go and see this again – whether it’s at Hampstead or in the West End down the line.
I bought a ticket in advance and didn’t wait for discounts because I wasn’t sure how this was going to sell. There are now a few offers around, but it’s hard to tell whether that will last if the word of mouth and the reviews are good because it’s not a big theatre in the grand scheme of things. In my opinion it’s definitely worth venturing up to Swiss Cottage for. In fact I’m not ruling out a repeat trip before the end of the run in November if I can manage it to see how it has developed and changed. But I do already have a very busy theatrical autumn…
Happy Sunday!
*I was really looking forward her Othello at the RSC, and I’m sending her every positive thought as she has treatment for cancer.
**She also the Sally Bowles on the cassette tape of Cabaret I had as a teenager, but someone that I’d never seen live because although she was in the Fiddler on the Roof revival in 2019, it was as a replacement after I had seen it
The NFL season starts on Wednesday so I thought I’d write abou tthe Netflix series Quarterback today, which has now had three seasons – the latest of which came out in mid July.
Each season follows a group of quarterbacks across the course of an NFL season. The first series followed Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins and Marcus Mariota across the 2022 season, the second saw Cousins return with Joe Burrow and Jared Gough across the 2024 season and the third season in Joe Flacco, Jayden Daniels, Baker Mayfield and Cam Ward in the 2025 season. If you’re wondering why the gap between the first two seasons – the 2023 season saw a documentary series called Receiver about Wide Receivers instead, reportedly because of the difficulties in finding quarterbacks to feature in a second season at the time.
Each season the quarterbacks featured are at different points in their careers. If you know NFL you’ll have already twigged that, but for those of you (most of you?) who don’t, in the first season Mahomes was aiming for his second Super Bowl, Cousins was a decade into his NFL career and the established starter at the Vikings and Mariota was trying to establish himself as a starting quarterback at Atlanta after having spent a couple of seasons as backup or injured.
Quarterback has got great access to the teams and players – it has the subjects mic’d up during their games which was a first for the NFL. It also has Peyton Manning as one of the producers (it’s made by his production company and Patrick Mahomes’ one) and I suspect Peyton is the reason for this. For the non-NFL fans, he’s part of the Manning dynasty – his dad Archie was an NFL quarterback, his younger brother Eli was an NFL quarterback and his nephew Arch is currently quarterback in college footbal for the Texas Longhorns – he’s the son of Peyton’s older brother Cooper who was a highly rated college footballer before his career was cut short due to a spinal condition. Among his many, many accolades Peyton won two Super Bowls and an Super Bowl MVP and he’s rated as one of the best quarterbacks of all time. So if anyone was going to be able to persuade the NFL to give access and players to be involved it’s him.
Because I watch NFL it’s hard for me to judge how appealing this is going to be for people who don’t, but this was one of the first of the series to appear off the back of the success of Drive to Survive and it’s one of the better ones. Break Point (tennis) and Full Swing (golf) appeared earlier in the same year as Quarterback and I didn’t make it through a whole series of either of those. I have watched a bunch of series of Amazon’s documentary series All or Nothing which started with NFL but hasn’t done an NFL series since before the pandemic and has branched out to other sports and I think this offers more for the casual fan because unlike All or Nothing which follows one team each year, this has the wider focus. I watched the first season back when it came out and binged it, tried Receiver when that started and didn’t get through it, then forgot about Quarterback until the third season came out – but then I binged series two in one day and then series three across the next week around actually doing other things, so I clearly enjoy them – even if they haven’t featured Dak Prescott (from my team the Cowboys) yet.
Once I’d finished this, I moved on to Any Given Saturday which is about the 24/25 season in the SEC conference of college football, which was fine – but missing some of the big teams and just generally not as focused as this. So if you like your NFL documentaries it’s an interesting watch, but it’s not an entry point series really.
Happy Sunday – and enjoy the NFL when it starts with the reigning Super Bowl champions the Seahawks at home to the Patriots on Wednesday. I’ve got to wait until next Sunday when the Cowboys open their campaign against the Giants at the stadium which is back to being known as the MetLife after spending the summer as the New York New Jersey stadium for the World Cup.
For the third weekend in a row I have a theatre show for you. And this year after missing out on the last couple of summer’s hit Andrew Lloyd Webber revivals basically because I had seen them before in other productions and wasn’t prepared to pay top whack for something I hadn’t loved before just because it had a big star and then regretted it because they became the hot ticket, sell out raves, this year I was in the queue for tickets for Jesus Christ Superstar tickets as soon as they went on sale. Admittedly this is mostly because my Theatre Friend Tom is a massive Eurovision fan and: Sam Ryder, but also I like to think we learn from our mistakes. And so, this Sunday you have my review of the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber revival – which is also the last of his Mega Hits/principle works* that I hadn’t seen live.
And here’s the thing. What I learned from this is that I don’t like Jesus Christ Superstar. I just don’t. Sam Ryder was singing the heck out of the score and Richard Armitage was great as Herod (much better than Boy George who we were originally scheduled to see would have been) but it’s just not a show for me. I had forgotten/blocked out that the only reason I owned (and occasionally watched bits of) the film of the 2000 revival was because it had my teen theatre crush Tony Vincent in it as Simon Zealotes (even though he originally played Judas in the Broadway revival that recording was based on). But I’ve never bothered to see it live until now and I feel like now I’ve seen it once I never need to see it again.
But I am clearly in the minority here. It has sold phenomenally well – if you were trying to get a ticket for this summer run at the Palladium now you’d struggle to get one for under £100, so even though our tickets were the most expensive ones I’ve bought this year we still got a bargain compared to that – and it’s moving to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane after Hercules closes there for a run from October to January and then it’s touring. The audience when we saw it were wildly enthusiastic – with an attempt at a mid show standing ovation for Gethsemane – and seemingly quite a lot of non-theatre regulars. This is not the first time I have found myself out of step with prevailing trends – after all I didn’t really like Hadestown that much (I would rather sit through this JCS again than Hadestown) and everyone else loves that. And that’s fine. (Almost) Anything that gets people into theatres is a good thing – because the industry needs regular theatre goers to survive.
But if you were a visitor to London and asking me what to see this summer, I’d be sending you elsewhere – unless you specifically said “I want to see an Andrew Lloyd Webber mega musical” because even though this expensive it’s not this summer’s very hottest ticket because that’s Hamilton with Leslie Odom Jnr, which is really the thing to see if you want to make people jealous. Not that I’m still bitter about my total lack of success in getting tickets for that.
Have a great Sunday, and I leave you with the aforementioned Tony Vincent doing Superstar on American TV in 2000, which contains two of the three things I (reliably like) in JCS: the classic “Jesus Christ Superstar, do you think you’re what they say you are” phrase and the lyric “Israel in four BC had no mass communication”. (The third is Herod’s song)
*Principle is a tricky one to define, but at this point I have seen: Joseph (more than once), JCS, Evita, Cats, Starlight Express (more than once), Phantom of the Opera (more than once), Aspects of Love, Sunset Boulevard, Whistle Down the Wind. I haven’t seen The Likes of Us, Jeeves, Tell Me On A Sunday, Song and Dance, Cricket, Beautiful Game, Woman in White, Love Never Dies, Wizard of Oz (with his additions at any rate) Stephen Ward, School of Rock, and (Bad) Cinderella. I’ll let you decide whether that’s all the main ones.
I’m taking a break from plays and musicals this week to bring you some dance from my (many) theatre trips – this time the latest revival of The Car Man, his ballet using the music of Bizet’s Carmen but with an entirely different story to the opera.
It’s the 1950s and in the small town of Harmony, somewhere in mid-western America, the town’s Italian-American community is turned upside down after the arrival of a stranger in town. There is a garage and a diner, both owned by a man called Dino, who treats his wife more like property than anything else. Luca is the stranger who arrives in town and answers a help wanted sign at Dino’s garage only to start a chain of events that will end in greed, lust, betrayal and revenge.
This has a great cast with some regulars from the other Bourne productions that I have seen but also new faces and new talent too. In the programme they mention that a high proportion of the cast have come through various of the New Adventures talent development initiatives but also that this is one of the shows that his dancers are keenest to do because of the technical challenge it presents. But don’t confuse technical challenge with hard to follow or anything like that – this is brilliantly to watch and amazingly evocative.
This has got familiar music, but played soley by strings and percussion and a distinctly film noir feel. Part of the story is loosely based (or at least inspired by) the Postman Always Rings Twice, but the subplot adds more unrequited love, betrayal and revenge, which are regular themes in Matthew Bourne’s works. And I really, really love Matthew Bourne’s work. At this point I’ve seen most of his major works (I’ve previously written about The Midnight Bell and The Red Shoes here) I think now I’ve seen The Car Man, Cinderella is the major omission – and that is coming to Sadler’s Wells this Christmas so I will have my chance to remedy that.
This is at Sadler’s Wells until August 29th (so just this week to go), but then it’s touring the UK and then finishing with one week in Amsterdam at the end of November. You can find the dates and details here. If you can make it to see it somewhere, it’s really worth it.
Another theatre trip this Sunday, and I actually saw this before I saw The Comedy About Spies, but it was an early preview and opening night was only Tuesday this week so I was a good girl and saved it.
How the Other Half Loves is a 1969 sex farce written by Alan Aykbourn, it is his ninth play (his 92nd premieres in Scarborough next month) and in fact was one of his first big successes. It follows three couples across the course of a couple of days, with two different homes existing in one set. When Fiona Foster and Bob Philips’s need to hide their affair from their spouses, they use a third couple – the Featherstones – as an alibi. William and Mary have no idea that this is going on as their lives collide with the Fosters and the Philips and much hilarity ensues.
I have seen a couple of Alan Aykbourn plays, with mixed results, but I do love a farce and this has Roger Allam (on whom more later) and so I trotted down to the Old Vic on a ticket deal. And yes it has its dated moments, but it’s really clever and there are lots of laughs. However, I watched a not insignificant portion of it through my fingers because the cringe got too much for me. As I said to Him Indoors on the way home – I think you’d like it, but I can’t put myself through that again to go with you.
It’s got a cracking cast though – led by Roger Allam, who as you can see from the video above is prepared to look ridiculous. I first saw him on stage nearly two decades ago in another farce – opposite Mark Rylance in Boeing Boeing – and obviously I adore Cabin Pressure of which he is a core component. He can do Serious (I’ve also seen him as Prospero in The Tempest) but comedy is where I have enjoyed him the most. And although every character here has their moment to shine, his Frank Foster is brilliant – he’s the department manager of the other two and has the status and pomposity to go with it but he’s also clueless and bumbling and obssessed with trivialities and under it all he’s actually maybe the kindest character of the lot. As his wife Dorothy Atkinson is channeling Margo from the Good LIfe but with more secrets but Laura Elsworthy as Mary Featherstone is doing something really interesting with the shyest mouse you ever did see who manages to do a roar by the end.
It’s is also really cleverly constructed – the in the round set up and the competing action in the two different houses, which culminates in a simulataneous dinner party as the Featherstones have dinner at the Fosters (on Thursday night) and the Philips’ (on Friday) swiveling in their seats to denote which time line they’re in at any time. And I realise that that may sound mad, but it works and it’s not even the craziest thing that Aykbourn has done in his plays – he can make The Comedy About Spies four bedroom set look simple – whether it’s this, Bedroom Farce (three bedrooms, one night and morning), The Norman Conquests (three plays each set in a different part of a house across one weekend) or House and Garden (two plays, one cast, performed simultaneously in adjoining stages). I’m not sure this is the best place to start with Aykbourn, but if you’re interested in plays with interesting concepts and can cope with Alan Partridge without dying inside then this is worth a look. It’s also the reason why I’ve had Peter Sarstedt’s Where Do You Go To My Lovely stuck in my head on and off for nearly two weeks!
