Hello, Dolly! is just pure joy at the London Palladium, led by an effervescent Dame Imelda Staunton “Look at the old girl now, fellas” There’s often a place for clear-sighted objectivity in theatre reviewing but sometimes, it’s just all about the feelings. I can’t help but ever watch Hello, Dolly! through the warmest of gazes as it unfailingly brings to mind memories of childhood afternoons spent with my dear Aunty Mary, all hot buttered toast and blackberry picking and snuggling down on the sofa to watch classic movies such as this. But from the glorious 2009 Open Air Theatre production with ..read more

Nassim Soleimanpour’s ECHO is a star-studded end to 2024’s LIFT Festival at the Royal Court “We are whispers from the past, fading into the future” Sondheim recommended that you gotta get a gimmick and having latched onto one through necessity with his 2011 play White Rabbit Red Rabbit, Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour has decided that he really does love a cold read. So as with many of his other productions, each performance of ECHO (standing for Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen, though it’s also the name of his dog) is delivered by an actor who has no knowledge of what it is they are about to ..read more

I Wish My Life Were A Musical has its cake and pretty much eats it, as a musical making gentle fun of musicals, at the King’s Head Theatre and then touring “What is it that keeps you motivated?” Everyone loves a musical, right? Well if that isn’t necessarily the case, it’s surely true that everyone loves to take the piss out of musical theatre when they can. Alexander S Bermange’s I Wish My Life Were A Musical pushes that to the max, poking endless fun at any number of theatrical stereotypes all in the space of an 80 minute fringe musical with added jazz hands. Matthew Parker’s production goes ..read more

SILENCE! The Musical, the notorious unauthorised parody of the Academy Award-winning film The Silence of The Lambs, is bringing its singing serial killers, tap-dancing lambs, and gleefully unstoppable bad taste to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer, followed by a run at The Turbine Theatre in the autumn As rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling matches wits with the brilliant but insane Dr. Hannibal Lecter in an intense serial killer chase, the most horrific of subjects are paired with a chorus of singing lambs narrating the action and breaking out into cheerful show tunes with unprint ..read more

Olivier Award winning Producer, Colin Ingram, the original West End and Broadway producer of the smash-hit musical Ghost, is delighted to announce a one-off special concert at the Adelphi Theatre in the West End on 1 October 2024 at 8pm, starring Lucie Jones as Molly and Oliver Tompsett as Sam. The concert will mark the musical’s return to London’s West End after a 12-year hiatus and will be directed by original Associate Director Paul Warwick Griffin, with musical supervision by Laurie Perkins. Tickets go on sale to the general public at 10am on Friday 19 July, following a prio ..read more

A story of St Augustine of Canterbury, Precarious Theatre’s Conversion seeks to convert us all at the Lion & Unicorn Theatre “It is a moist and dim land” It has to be said you don’t get many plays set in the Dark Ages so for that alone, the folks of Precarious Theatre deserve a look with their new play Conversion. Inspired by historical events, insofar as the historical record for that era exists, writers Marco Biasoli and Liam Grogan spin a tale around St Augustine of Canterbury, a favourite son of the Vatican commissioned by Pope Gregory the Great to convert the English to Christianity ..read more

Jeremy O Harris’ much-heralded Slave Play arrives at the Noël Coward Theatre, determined to make an impact “Our bodies told us that it won’t fit for civ’lized eyes” Over the course of three differently, but equally, intense movements, Jeremy O Harris’ Slave Play is unflinching and uncompromising in its ripping away of the sticking plaster that is barely holding 21st century American society together. As it probes into the many intersections of race, identity and sexuality in eyecatching ways, it makes no effort to cover up what it has exposed, a raw truth that can’t – and shouldn’t – be ignore ..read more

The endlessly entertaining ShakeItUp bring their Improvised Shakespeare Show to The Other Palace ahead of an Edinburgh run “Methinks my trousers are too tight” ShakeItUp – The Improvised Shakespeare Show begins with an amusing and accurate of Shakespearean tropes. In comedies, people marry; in tragedies, people die; and in histories, people – usually called Richard or John – marry and then die. It’s in our hands as the audience to vote for which genre we want, we also get to suggest names of protagonists and locations, which is how we arrived at the premiere (and final performance!) of The Com ..read more

I catch up with The Escape Artist – David Tennant and Sophie Okonedo in fine form in this legal thriller with a bite “Everyone deserves a defence” The Escape Artist kept appearing on my suggested watch items on ITVX but I was sure that I’d seen it, so it has taken me a wee while to figure out that the algorithm knows what it is talking about and that indeed, this would be very much up my street. Dating back to 2013, it was created by Spooks supremo David Wolsencroft and over its three episodes, weaves a tangled web of legal intrigue in the midst of major trauma. David Tennant plays barrister W ..read more

Emlyn Williams’ Accolade remains a surprisingly relevant look at society’s reactions to sex scandals, now playing at Richmond Theatre “If you need me, I’ll be peeling potatoes” Emlyn Williams’ 1950 play Accolade ruffled enough feathers with its frank (for then) discussion of sexuality that it remained unseen for over 60 years after. In 2011, the mighty Finborough gave it its first revival, early work from the ever-excellent Blanche McIntyre, which was then restaged in the early days at the St James Theatre (now The Other Palace). A decade on from that, Sean Mathias directs a new production whi ..read more