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London Living Large
The City Life Magazine | Reviews & Ratings.

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13 ★★★★ Cadogan Hall | August 31, 2021

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For its exuberant production of Jason Robert Brown's musical 13 , The British Theatre Academy fills the large stage of Cadogan Hall with around eighty young singers, dancers and musicians. The show is extremely age specific and centres on a twelve-year-old boy's quest to get his new school mates to attend his imminent Bar Mitzvah. Whilst obviously young, few of the principal cast appear to be twelve or thirteen. This actually improves the audience's experience as more mature voices suit the songs better and these young performers have terrific voices. The show itself feels like it is actually dealing with an older age group, and with its treatment of a disabled boy, a seemingly unattractive girl, and the class jock's relentless search for pubescent sex it often borders on bad taste. Luckily, Dean Johnson directs with a suitable lightness of touch and elicits excellent performances and plenty of humour from the situations. His work is supported by Corin Miller's jaun
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Salomé ★★★★ Southwark Playhouse | Aug 25 - Sep 11, 2021

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This production of Salomé by Lazarus Theatre Company is stunning in so many ways. Oscar Wilde's rarely performed and bizarre play needs very careful handling. This sumptuous version uses a traverse staging with the audience appearing to be seated on either side of a gigantic banquet table upon which much of the action occurs. Ricky Dukes has updated the play and directs with great confidence; he doesn't shirk from Wilde's tendency towards verbosity and the melodramatic. He has changed the production from that seen at Greenwich Theatre in 2019, eliminating minor characters and returning to Wilde's single act format. Brilliant lighting and sound by Will Thompson and Ben Jacobs create a shattering atmosphere as Jokannan, played by Prince Plockey, prowls incessantly around his prison cell while interjecting occasional ranting outbursts. Re-gendering Salomé to make him a male prince works seamlessly and Fred Thomas brings an ethereal, but evil, calm to his demands. During a
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Tell Me Straight ★★★★ King's Head Theatre | August 17 - 21, 2021

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Paul Bradshaw's Tell Me Straight charms us by recounting the travails of a charismatic gay guy who seeks out straight and 'bi-curious' young men. We meet several of them as they criss-cross his life. A joke is made of the fact that they all look virtually identical – this is no surprise as they are all played by the same actor. Bradshaw has a rare talent for writing relaxed and frequently witty dialogue. Imogen Hudson-Clayton's direction keeps things moving and provides some very funny business, particularly during an encounter in a cinema. The visual production is minimal in the extreme but that allows us to concentrate on the two actors and the occasional voice-over interjections from Stephanie Levi-John. Bradshaw performs his own work faultlessly, getting the maximum laughs out of his plight whilst retaining our sympathy for his somewhat hedonistic lifestyle. His timing is immaculate and he doesn't flinch from self-deprecation. Playing all the men in his life, G
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Jersey Boys ★★★★★ Trafalgar Theatre | Jul 28 - Jan 2, 2022

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Jersey Boys brings doo-wop triumphantly back to the West End in the beautifully restored Trafalgar Theatre. The show shares the touching saga of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons: their rise to fame and their background stories. Unlike many jukebox musicals, these songs don't need to be shoe-horned in. They simply fit naturally into place as the years roll by. No less than thirty-four numbers are listed – several of which come as a surprise – but each one is given full value by this terrific cast. Frankie Valli had a distinctive nasal falsetto sound and newcomer Ben Joyce really hits the spot. For us, "Moody's Mood For Love" is a particular highlight. Adam Bailey, Karl James Wilson and Benjamin Yates join Joyce to make up a tremendous band. Each one sings superbly and artfully creates his own persona. We really feel for these guys as the show progresses. Life on the road wasn't easy. The immaculately sharp suits and snazzy arrangements are often at odds with the
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The System ★★★★ Original Theatre Company (online) | Sep 8 - Dec 5, 2021

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A man is murdered at his own birthday party and the police must interview the suspects. The premise is quite simple. But, starting from that point, Emily Head has set herself a formidable task as both an actor and a writer. It is not a small feat to individuate a wide variety of characters using only minimal props and without the help of costumes. Head does a brilliant job of capturing speech patterns and idiosyncrasies to ensure that the audience can distinguish amongst her creations. If we had any quibble with the production, it is probably with the 'whodunit' genre itself which, because it is plot driven, always makes character development seem secondary. Head creates some fascinating personae but the format and the time constraint left us wanting more. This show does not belong to Head alone, however. Ben Eeley's camera work is quite astonishing. Filming the production in a single shot, Eeley uses his Steadicam to take on the role of police interviewer while also acting
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When Darkness Falls ★★★★ Park Theatre | Aug 18 - Sep 4, 2021

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As thunder clapped and lights suddenly blacked out, the seriously scary ghost stories of When Darkness Falls had the audience jumping out of their seats. The plot seems simple: a historian, John, is recording a vlog with an unnamed guest speaker. We are told a number of tales dating back several centuries, all of which take place on Guernsey and end in gruesome deaths. At times, the play which is written by James Milton and Paul Morrissey (who also directs) comes off as a bit cumbersome but it is generally well constructed. We won't spoil the fun by revealing too much, but there are certainly a couple of clever twists. The story takes a little while to get into its stride but when it does, it really works superbly well. The cluttered set by Justin Williams, plus lighting and sound by Bethany Gupwell and John Bulleid, all help create the ideal atmosphere. Will Barton convincingly plays the historian and several other characters while Alex Phelps' Speaker shoulders the bulk of t
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Leopards ★★★ Rose Theatre | September 2 - 25, 2021

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In the foyer of the beautiful Rose Theatre there are notices urging us not to disclose the plot twists in Alys Metcalf's new play, Leopards . Of course we won't, beyond saying there is a clue in the title. At one hundred minutes this is a rather wordy and frequently repetitive piece. We are being encouraged to consider what it means to be a good person and the author is constantly trying to wrong-foot us. The opening scene in a hotel bar doesn't feel well paced with words tumbling out without any realistic time for thought. Later, the action becomes almost too slow as one bullet point after another is laboriously hammered home. It feels as if the writer has a checklist of issues she must introduce and is ticking them off one by one. Martin Marquez is Ben an internationally renowned figure ostensibly helping Niala, a young woman played by Saffron Coomber, onto the ladder to success. Both actors have the near impossible task of making their characters appear sympathetic. Chri
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Rough Sleeper ★★★ The Actors Centre (online) | September 10 - 19, 2021

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Jo Emery's play Rough Sleeper has been filmed for streaming but having the "Man" in a real street adds little to the audience experience. In many ways this decision detracts from the immediacy of a live actor in a theatre. On stage the audience would be drawn in more easily, and occasional laughs and sighs of sympathy would make us feel closer to the character. Much of the seventy minute piece has Haydn Davis as the "Man" in question recounting his life story. One is naturally compassionate as we learn, how following a series of calamities, he has declined from prosperity to his present state of homelessness and alcoholism. Highlighted by some extremely telling close-ups, he shares with us the loss of his parents and how grieving can descend into tragedy. Unfortunately, similar heartrending stories can be heard along most high streets today, and we felt that using verbatim quotations from actual homeless people might have made for a more hard-hitting, realistic
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Die Walküre ★★★★★ Hackney Empire | August 4 - 7, 2021

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Die Walküre is opera at its very pinnacle and to find it at the magnificent Hackney Empire is amazing – especially when so brilliantly performed. Wagner's Ring Cycle, based on the Norse Völsunga saga, lasts almost twenty hours. Here, we have part two in a somewhat truncated arrangement by the late Graham Vick and Jonathan Dove. Dove's reduction of the orchestra to just eighteen players is nothing short of miraculous. Julia Burbach's production, within Bettina John's set of gleaming steel structures, is clear, incisive and frequently exceptionally beautiful. Wagner didn't write conventional opera with arias and choruses. He used wonderful recurring leitmotifs to represent people, situations and ideas, and when his work is performed as well as this, it is quite marvellous. Towering over the show is Mark Stone's meltingly heartfelt Wotan, imperious, glorious in tone and yet finally a broken man. Laure Meloy brings wonderfully rich singing to her moving portrayal o
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Tommy on Top ★★★★★ Above The Stag Theatre | Jul 28 - Aug 29, 2021

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Chris Woodley's hilarious Tommy on Top is without doubt one of the most side-splitting evenings we've had in the theatre in ages. The plot revolves around the premise that no out gay man has ever won the best actor Oscar. Our hero, Tommy Miller, has been snapped in a compromising clinch with his gay partner, George, and chaos ensues as he is threatened with exposure. The glamorous Alexander Hulme is ideally cast as Tommy from his first appearance in just white CK briefs to his touching tuxedoed closing speech. However, the standout performance of the evening comes from Lucas Livesey as George, the boyfriend. His comic timing is immaculate and he doesn't overplay – much. There is little room for subtlety in this sort of farce but Lucas is almost believable. It's a terrific performance. Subtle is not a word to describe Chris Lane's outrageous portrayal of Eddie, the agent, but he is brilliantly funny even when comatose and being lugged around David Shields' opule
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The City Life Magazine | Reviews & Ratings