Tag: theatre

book adjacent, theatre

Book Adjacent: Oliver!

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In case you don’t know, Oliver! is the musical by Lionel Bart, based on Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist. It’s a while since I read the original novel, but from my memory the plot of the musical is somewhat simpler, and the character of Fagin is less evil, more sympathetic and comedic than the book. It’s a mainstay of school productions (I was in one at my primary school, the friend I went to see it with was in one at his secondary school) and the movie adaptation (it won six Oscars!) is a mainstay of Christmas television schedules. The casting of the role of Nancy for a revival of the show in 2008 was the subject of a Saturday Night TV singing contest. I don’t know how you can exist in this country without knowing at least one of the songs from this show. And this is the point where I will admit that it is not my favourite musical by any means, and that it would not usually be high on my list of shows to see. However…

And the however is that not only has this production – a sort-of transfer of one that ran in Chichester last summer – had pretty good reviews, but but it also has Simon Lipkin, who is getting the sort of rave reviews actors dream of. If that name sounds familiar that’s because he’s in that original cast of Avenue Q that I went to see in the anniversary concert in November, and then also a late night show the next night with his friend (and fellow Q star) Jon Robyns. And I’m one of the few that saw him not once, but twice in the doomed X Factor musical I Can’t Sing, which was actually way better than the length of run suggested*. That is to say, I’m a fan and so I will brave Oliver to see him giving what one reviewer called a “career defining performance”.

And I’m really glad I did. It’s absolutely cracking. It’s directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne and designed by his regular collaborator Lez Brotherston and even from our cheap seats at the back of the stalls it looked amazing. We missed a bit of action on the catwalks (can’t be sure how much unless I go and see it again from better seats, which to be fair isn’t out of the realms of possibility). The orchestrations are good, it all whips along faster than I remember it doing, and – wonder of wonder – the child actors barely annoyed me once. But Lipkin really is the star turn. You find yourself waiting for him to reappear – a Pied Piper of pickpockets, dancing and weaving his way across the stage. He’s menacing when he needs to be, but he also cares (in his way) about his gang of children. Plus he’s a man in guyliner and we all know that that’s strongly my thing in musicals. One review described him as a piratical dandy and I would go with that. Here’s the show’s section from the Royal Variety performance – if you just want a taste of Fagin, skip to 3’40…

Anyway, this is rightly selling out all over the place and has just extended until 2026. Who knows how long this original cast will last though – they’ve all been doing it since Chichester so they’re already nearly a year into their commitment at this point and it’s worth seeing – not just for Lipkin, but for Shanay Holmes as Nancy too, and Aaron Sidwell as the very evil Bill Sykes. There aren’t a lot of family musicals in the West End at the moment that aren’t based on Disney shows, so it’s good to have one that is – and if you are thinking of taking kids, the shows at the start of the week start at 7pm (rather than 7.30) so you’re out of the theatre by quarter to ten.

Have a great Sunday!

Oliver! is at the Gielgud Theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue, and booking until March 2026.

*I Can’t Sing was definitely better than the Spice Girls musical Viva Forever, which opened around the same time, lasted slightly longer, got similarly bad reviews but remains the only show I’ve ever been to where the audience didn’t know it had finished until the actors jogged back on clapping for bows.

book adjacent, theatre

Book Adjacent: Ballet Shoes

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Ballet Shoes is a new adaptation of the beloved children’s novel (and one of my favourites) by Noel Streatfeild. The book tells the story of three sisters – Pauline, Petrova and Posy – who are adopted by an eccentric traveller who brings them home to his great niece Sylvia and her former Nanny, Nana. They live in Gum’s (Great Uncle Matthew) house in London while he is away, but after he fails to return from an expedition, their money starts to run out and the household starts to take in boarders to make ends meet. These include (fortuitously) a pair of tutors who take over the girls education when Sylvia can’t afford the school fees anymore, and a dance teacher who arranges for the girls to take classes at a theatre school. And thus begins the girls theatrical careers and another vitally needed income stream for the family.

This has been lightly modernised and a few bits of the plot have been simplified – for example the two tutors are down to one, it’s a single man with a car not a married couple and there are less plays that the girls are in – but it’s still very much the same story. Financial troubles and orphans are a staple of books from this era – for adults and children (see Miss Buncle and all the parentless girls at the Chalet School) but it’s also a found family with a sprinkling of showbiz glamour which is one of the reasons why the book still works today – and why it translates so well to the stage. There is comedy and tension and plenty of excuses for dancing and fun. It’s full of excellent performances, the set is beautiful and time just flew by. And the changes worked so well I found myself re-reading the original book this week to check that I wasn’t misremembering that it wasn’t always like that!

It’s only on for another two weeks – so if you’re in London and have a free evening it’s really worth trying to see it. I saw an understudy playing Sylvia – who was wonderful but I would happily use that as an excuse to go again and see Pearl Mackie play her, but I’m not sure I have an evening that works for it.

Ballet Shoes is at the Olivier at the National Theatre until February 22.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: The Play That Goes Wrong

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Here I come again with another play on another Sunday. Although to be fair, this is one I saw a fair few weeks ago now and has had to wait its turn. And given that we’re into 2025 now, it’s not even the tenth anniversary year any more – which was one of my reasons for revisiting the show.

The Play That Goes Wrong follows an amateur dramatic group as they attempt to put on a performance of a murder mystery as their latest show. And as the title suggests, it just keeps going wrong. Then even more wrong. Each actor is playing a character in the drama club who is playing a role in the show. And if you’ve ever spent any time around an am dram group you may recognise some of the types that seem to turn up in amateur productions. And then there’s the show – it’s sort of Mousetrap-y but it doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen the Mousetrap, because it’s a murder mystery play where anything that could go wrong does go wrong.

The first time I saw this – on the original UK tour in 2014 I laughed so hard that I couldn’t breathe and my sides hurt. I saw it again in London with maybe the second cast and so I think this was my third trip. And it’s still hilarious. The cast make it look easy but it’s really not – so much depends on the timing of all the physical comedy – and it’s impeccable. The company behind this are Mischief Theatre and they’ve gone on to do another show featuring the same characters from the drama group – Peter Pan Goes Wrong – which I saw for a second time this time last year when it had a Christmas run in the West End with many of the original cast returning. And they’ve done several other shows – several of which I’ve seen – and they have a new show coming into the West End later this year which is definitely going on the to-see list.

I struggle to think of anyone this isn’t suitable for – it would definitely make a great first grownup show for older kids (and I think there were a few families doing that when I was there) as well as people who maybe don’t speak as good English – because there’s so much physical comedy in it as well as the puns. And because it’s been going a decade it’s usually pretty easy to get sensibly priced tickets too if that’s what you’re after as well.

Have a great Sunday.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Twelfth Night

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This is my second post about a Shakespeare play in under a month, and considering how rarely I got to see Shakespeare – in the grand scheme of my theatre going, this is quite something. However as I said in that post about Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night is my favourite, so here we are.

This is the RSC’s latest production of the comedy, at the main theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon with a cast lead by Samuel West as Malvolio and Freema Agyeman as Olivia. Set in a sort of floating now (or at least floating near-now), what you can’t see from the pre-show set up is the giant organ set that is the backdrop to most of the show and allows characters to appear, disappear and hide as well as providing some of the music. it’s dark and melancholy but also a bit dreamy.

Having seen a few different versions of this now – from the Trevor Nunn directed film, through the Globe all male production and right back to my very first at the Barbican in the mid 1990s – I love to see the different ways that directors can take the show and how they can highlight some things and how many different ways there are to play it and how many different roles can actually steal the show with a cracking performance. That Globe production absolutely belonged to Mark Rylance’s Olivia – all gliding like she was on wheels and building to a screaming climax at “Cesario, husband, stay”. This production might have been stolen by Michael Grady Hall as Feste if it wasn’t for West as Malvolio – and taken over all they balance each other out in a way. Feste is ridiculous – whether it’s his giant yellow and black costume at the start or when he’s painting the organ with a paintbrush made for fine art. It can sometimes be hard to see why the household wants to take quite such a drastic action against on Malvolio but West does a good job of making you see why they might want to do that – and then manages to make the audience feel almost guilty for laughing at him by the end.

This is only on until next weekend, but I really hope that it gets a run at the Barbican as the Dream has this year – I would happily see it again because I’m sure there’s a load of stuff that I would notice going on behind the main action at a second viewing.

Have a great Sunday.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: The Producers

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A modern classic of a musical today – and actually one that I saw early in December when it was still in previews but as the whole run was sold out before it even started previews, there was no point in rushing!

This is the first London revival of Mel Brooks’ musical version of his classic movie The Producers. It follows Max Bialystock, a down on his luck theatrical producer, and Leo Bloom, and accountant turned producer, who team up together to try and swindle investors by deliberately putting on a show that will fail. Except that their sure-fire flop (Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden) is a surprise hit – and now they have to pay back their investors.

My first exposure to this show was the Broadway message boards of the early 2000s and then I West End production, on about its third cast one summer holiday. And it was wonderful. It was big and brash and funny and had huge production numbers. I loved it – and the CD of the Broadway cast recording was in regular rotation for me for years. I think I could probably still sing along to almost the whole thing. But given how big the original production was, and how small the Menier Chocolate Factory is, I was fascinated to see what they did with it, especially given their reputation for transforming massive shows into more intimate productions. I am forever in love with their La Cage Aux Folles, where they did just that, and which remains one of my favourite things that I have ever see in a theatre.

And it was a brilliant night. The Producers is still hilarious and the performances were brilliant – Andy Nyman was just as good (maybe better?) in this as he was in Hello Dolly this summer as Max and his pairing with Mark Antolin as Leo was brilliant. And it felt rawer and less shiny than the Drury Lane original did. The sets are smaller, the cast is smaller with the ensemble doubling or even tripling roles (especially on the night I was there where the artistic director came out before the start to say they were three cast members and the stage manager down). But it also felt very familiar. But with so many jokes and so much there in the writing how much can you really change? And had they actually just changed enough to make it feel fresher and less like an Old School Musical than the original did – and thus more likely to appeal to new audiences, as opposed to jaded old theatre habitues like me? I went with someone who had never seen it before and she really enjoyed it. I got exactly what I wanted – another look at a favourite show, done a bit differently – and I would have gone again if I could have done. But I can’t because it’s sold out. But if it transfers to the West End…

Have a great Sunday everyone.

Oh and here’s the original London production on the Royal Variety Show back in the day so you can see the difference in scale…

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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Actual proper culture from me this week with some Shakespeare. Although to be fair, Conclave got a bunch of Golden Globe nominations this week so maybe it’s two weeks in a row.

The RSC are back at the Barbican this winter with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This had a run at Stratford earlier in the year and has transferred in and as you can see from the programme, the big name here is Matthew Baynton (of Ghosts fame) who is playing Bottom. When I started writing this, I thought this might be the first time I’ve seen Dream done professionally* but I had totally forgotten that I saw the Michael Grandage Company’s production with Sheridan Smith and David Williams in it a decade or so ago. This is much better than that one. Much.

This isn’t one of my favourite Shakespeare’s (that’s Twelfth Night) but this production is a bit like a minimalist fever dream – with 80s inspired costumes in a big black space where lights and ladders can appear and the actors at times seem to materialise from no where. Baynton and the mechanicals are genuinely funny and their final performance capped a riotous evening that seemed to go by in a flash.

It always feels like A Decision to go and see some Shakespeare – so long, such language, not always funny when its meant to be but this was an excellent choice for a wintery evening – and as I happened to be there on press night, I also spotted several of the other Ghosts stars in the audience (to be fair I mainly spotted them in the bar at the interval) to support their colleague. A very satisfactory night out.

*although technically it was the first Shakespeare I ever saw – because Class Six did it as their leavers play when I was in Class Five, but I don’t think that counts. In case you’re interested, I spent two years in Class six (village primary, only six classes for seven years of school when I was there) and we did Bugsy Malone – I was a dancer at Fat Sam’s, and Twelfth Night – I was a recorder player at the court of Duke Orsino. As you can tell acting was not my forte

tribute

Remembering Dame Maggie Smith

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I’m not going to lie, I had a different post planned for today, but then the news broke on Friday afternoon that Dame Maggie Smith had died and I changed my plans.

There’s been a lot of talk of her two great late-in-life roles – Professor McGonagall and the Dowager Countess in Grantham Abbey – but I’m that little bit older, so for me the first time I saw her was in The Secret Garden and then in the Sister Act Movies. And she was as perfect in those as she was in those later roles, and in fact in everything else she did. You all know my tastes by now – so it’ll be no surprise to you that I’ve seen more of her comedic performances (I’ve got Death on the Nile on the TV as I watch this) on film than I have of the serious stuff, but five years ago I was lucky enough to see her performing in what turned out to be her final stage role in A German Life.

I’ve been really lucky in my theatre-going life to see a lot of the acting greats – and great performances. When A German Life was announced – more than a decade after her last stage role, I bought a membership to The Bridge Theatre just to get the priority booking – and the trip was not just me and Him Indoors, but also my sister and her now-husband and my parents too. And it was so worth it.

In A German Life, she played Brunhilde Pomsel, a German woman who had been a secretary to Goebbels during the Second World War. She spent the whole show alone on stage, sitting a chair telling you about her life – and I think it was the most mesmerising thing I have seen on stage. You couldn’t drag your eyes off her – in fact it was only right at the end, that I realised that her chair had been moving forward and the set receding the whole time. She was that good – and she was in her mid 80s. It was just astonishing.

I should also say that I’ve seen her son Toby Stephens live on stage too – twice in fact because I thought he and Anna Chancellor were so good in Private Lives that I went back for a second visit – with Him Indoors and my parents. So as well as being sad for the loss of one of the greats of British acting, I’m also thinking of him and his brother Chris Larkin and the rest of her family. Their statement announcing the death on Friday was very touching.

I’ll be checking the TV listings to see if any of her film performances pop up over the next week or so as a tribute, but in the meantime as well as Death on the Nile I have both Sister Acts on the TiVo, so I’m sure I’ll find a chance to watch that at some point in the coming days.

theatre

Not a Book: Hello, Dolly!

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Another week, another trip to the theatre, and this time to see this summer’s most anticipated and most hyped musical: Hello, Dolly! with Imelda Staunton.

This is the story of Dolly Levi, a widowed matchmaker and meddler who travels to Yonkers to try and find a match for the grumpy and miserly “half a millionaire” Horace Vandergelder, who she’s actually plotting to marry herself and so in the process needs to detach him from his other options whilst also helping his niece marry an artist – a match with Horace is against. Meanwhile Horace’s two clerks at the feed store, who have bene left in charge while their boss is away meeting potential brides, decide they would like to get out of Yonkers for the day and go to New York.

So this is the point where I admit that I had neither seen the whole film of this one before, let alone a live production. I’ve seen bits of the film and I know some of the songs, but nothing had stood out to me enough to get me to watch the whole film and I’d never felt inspired enough to look out a production. In fact I think the only song I’d seen live before was Put on Your Sunday Clothes, which I saw the John Wilson Orchestra do at the Proms which doesn’t feel like that long ago but was actually the summer of 2011. Goodness I feel old. Anyway, I’ve put the link to that at the bottom and now I’m going to talk about this production.

This is the summer musical at the Palladium, which is the biggest theatre in the West End, and I think it’s pretty clear that this wouldn’t have been put on if it wasn’t for Imelda Staunton in the lead role. Yes it’s a classic, but when you’ve got more than 2,000 seats to fill every night, and a show with more than 20 piece orchestra and sets that include a moving train (that is used once) and a street car, you need a big name. And it doesn’t get much bigger. I have seen her previously do Sondheim in both Follies (which I adored and saw three times across its two runs) and Sweeney Todd, but missed her Gypsy because I had loved the production of that that I had already seen (with Caroline O’Connor in the lead) and didn’t want to pay the prices and was hoping for discounts which of course never materialised. I learned my lesson and I bought these early. And I am glad I did because she is giving an absolutely barnstorming performance – she’s funny and touching, but also hard where she needs to be and she sounds great.

The supporting cast is similarly strong – with Andy Nyman (who I saw be amazing as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof a few years ago), Jenna Russell (who I’ve never seen do anything bad) and Harry Hepple (who was in the same production of Follies as Staunton, but who I also saw in Pippin more than a decade ago) doing fine work in the key supporting roles, but really there is no one giving a bad performance.

Now I don’t think Hello, Dolly! will ever be my favourite musical – to be honest, if it comes back around again I probably won’t go unless it’s got a really stellar name as Dolly because Imelda is enough – but if you do love the show (and the stalls this week was clearly full of people who do love it) and you’re in London this summer then you should really try and see it. And if you’ve never seen it before, I can vouch for this being worth your time – a work colleague who also went this week and wasn’t expecting to love it also really enjoyed it – and the good news is, there are still some reasonably prices seats available.

Enjoy your Sunday!

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Kiss Me Kate

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I’ve got another theatre trip to tell you about this Sunday – because I had a fabulous night out at the Barbican on Friday night.

In case you haven’t encountered it before, Kiss Me, Kate is about a warring couple who are working together on a production of a musical version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Fred and Lilli are divorced, and their relationship dynamic somewhat mirrors that of the characters they are playing in the musical. There’s also subplots with the show’s young ingenue, newly arrived from nightclub singing, and her boyfriend Bill who is also in the cast and has a gambling problem that has led him to sign a $10,000 IOU with Fred’s name on it – leading to the arrival of a pair of gangsters at the theatre.

Kiss Me, Kate premiered on Broadway in 1948 and has music and lyrics by Cole Porter. I saw the last London Revival, which was in 2012 at the Young Vic and starred Hannah Waddingham and Alex Bourne, and really enjoyed it so I had high hopes for this production at the Barbican which has Tony-award winning Broadway powerhouse Stephanie J Block as Lilli and Adrian Dunbar as Fred. The Barbican has a good track record of producing big productions of musicals (see Anything Goes with Sutton Foster a couple of summers ago) and this is a show that repays a big production.

And this is A Big Production – you can see the size of the set from the photo at the top, but what you might need to watch the video to see is that it rotates*, it’s also got a big orchestra to blast out those Cole Porter standards like Too Darn Hot, Always True to You in My Fashion and So In Love. It’s directed by Barlett Sher, who also directed the Lincoln Centre Production of The King and I which came to the London Palladium with Kelli O’Hara a few years ago and has been touring the UK recently, and so has plenty of experience with big, classic musicals. And he’s created a really enthralling evening at the theatre – the show within a show means that there is fourth wall breaking, interactions with the conductor and the audience and plenty of general chaos.

And the cast are all giving great performances. It’s hard to single out anyone in particular, but if you forced me, I might pick out Nigel Lindsay and Hammed Animashaun who play the gangsters, who made me laugh the whole night building to a brilliant and nearly show-stealing Brush Up Your Shakespeare. Which brings me to one thing that I had forgotten about Kiss Me, Kate, which is how equitably the songs are spread out – everyone in the main cast gets at least one brilliant song and there’s plots and sub-plots galore.

I went with my mum who absolutely loved it – and I had such a great time I’m trying to figure out if I can go again before the run ends in mid-September. It’s had excellent reviews from the actual theatre professionals too – but there are some really good deals available on tickets at the moment – I suspect because the Barbican is out of the main drag of the West End so it doesn’t get the passing trade that some of the other theatres do (this is also an issue for the Shaftesbury Theatre – which had a bit of a reputation of being cursed for shows a few years back). I got my tickets from TodayTix who I use quite a lot these days, but you can get direct from The Barbican as well. And if you’re buying last minute they do on the day rush for £30 too.

Have a great Sunday – here’s hoping for an England win tonight…

*I love a rotating set – one of my early London theatre memories is of a production of the Wind in the Willows at the National Theatre where the set not only rotated but it came up from the ground, and more recently I loved the production of Follies – again at the national – which had a rotating set – although that just had a front and a back where as this has three sides.

children's books, theatre

Not a Book: The Secret Garden

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This is a fresh version of the Frances Hodgson Burnett classic children’s story that is on at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park for the start of the summer. The core story – about newly orphaned Mary Lennox being sent to live at Misselthwaite Manor after the deaths of her parents and uncovering the many secrets that the house is hiding remains the same – but there has been some sensitive updating done which makes it work a bit better for today’s audiences as well as providing a beautiful inspiration for the stage design and music concepts.

I really, really enjoyed myself watching this – with the trees all around you and birds flying overhead as the sun went down, the setting is absolutely perfect for a play about the healing power and magic of nature. I saw the fourth preview – so there were still a few technical gremlins to sort out (mostly mic cues) but the show itself and the performances were wonderful. In fact my only real grip was that my feet got cold, but that was my own fault for wearing canvas shoes with no socks!

This would make a great show for the kids this summer – but sadly it’s only on until July 20th, which is just as the schools are breaking up in most places, then Fiddler on the Roof takes over in the theatre for the rest of the summer. You can find more details here.

Have a great Sunday