It's wonderful to see conductor Freddie Tapner with the haircut and enthusiastic shoulder action of a young Andre Previn, urging them to greater and greater heights. But, to misquote Dickens…
We should applaud productions brave enough to kick against the seasonal schmaltz. From exciting trap doors in floors and cupboards, to a talking disembodied head and spectacular floods, Tom …
The trouble with The Woman in White is that if you dissect the elements Andrew Lloyd Webber fused into the show, they're all perfectly fine. You could also add that Thom Southerland's produ…
It takes a lot to put me in the mood for Christmas. But if anything can, this inventive A Christmas Carol does, pulling together tip-top modern stagecraft, a venerated story, and our proude…
Everything good rests on the broad shoulders and Borat-like moustache of director, writer, star and Sheffield export John Savournin. Not only does he have the best jokes and costumes as 'Lor…
The actors playing the teens are very fine, but top of the class are John McCrea as a spectacularly well-sung and well-observed Jamie, and Josie Walker as his mum with the only really heartf…
Eleven years since opening at the Apollo Victoria, Wicked is a well-oiled machine but the newest cast show the same enthusiasm and energy as at that unusual first night in 2006 when so many …
Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross " not a tartan bonnet in sight, it's an All-American play set in Chicago in the 80's " is about ruthless competition between real estate salesmen, paid largely on…
Two old muckers run a semi-professional club in the Northern League " John Bowler's wonderfully poetic Yates, a deeply loyal ex-player with the stamp of Nobby Stiles, is the 'kit man' who do…
Hoping to contribute to the 'conversation' about death in a time of rapid medical advancement, Jon Spooner and Chris Thorpe's Am I Dead Yet? will leave you asking yourself the same question.
The Diary of a Nobody is one of those books you're convinced you've read, until you see it staged and realise that either you've forgotten it, or the director had a completely different idea…
It's a clever idea by Richard Bean, to envision a story set when Karl Marx was an impecunious migrant living in the 'squalor' of Dean Street in Soho, caught between the pawnbrokers and the b…
It might be too early for pantomime, but it's never too soon to see Mel Brooks' ingenious updating of Young Frankenstein delivered as a spoof both of the horror movie genre and of the theatr…
The first crime uncovered in Witness for the Prosecution is that this amazing space, the glorious council chamber of the LCC then GLC at County Hall has not been pressed into service for sit…
It doesn't help that everyone's so unlikeable " younger Oliver (Joshua Silver) is a self-centered underachieving queen with Disney fantasies, partner Daniel (James Lance) is an ex-heterosexu…
A Woman of No Importance is the most Shavian of Wilde's plays " in fact with a slight reshuffling of the cast the same company could present Bernard Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession also produ…
James Graham is on an electoral roll: There's certainly a surfeit of election nights in Labour of Love and Martin Freeman's bright boy Blairite David Lyons
No 'turn' unstoned? The fourteen young performers in Hair certainly give a credible impression of being out of their skulls on psychedelic substances while still managing to deliver some sh…
A starry home team enthusiastically play up the comedy. Sarah Tynan is one of ENO's most technically perfect sopranos but she's also their wittiest actress and her Rosina is effortlessly sun…
We should never be afraid to attack sacred cows. And when sacred cows are also cash cows, we should never be afraid to kick them in their milky udders
Filth, farce and absurdism are individually difficult to pull off so combining all three in a ripely uncensored 50th-anniversary version of Joe Orton's Loot is high risk, but when it works i…
Jordan Tannahill's taut, 75-minute darkly comic real-life social drama Late Company draws two Toronto couples into God of Carnage country as they attempt to broker closure over the suicide o…
Antic Disposition's RayBan-and-head-mike-modernised Richard III contrasts the glorious 12th century setting of Temple Church, with a terrific crash course in modern ensemble acting and a boo…
Against the odds, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ is an energetic, sharp and witty triumph. I say 'against the odds' because, in the over-extended franchise Olympics, Adrian Mol…
I started to wonder whether being cast with an all Indian company " to reflect the population of a typical Lancashire street of terraces nowadays " might better highlight the characters' iss…