David O’Doherty arrives, as presumably he always has done, seemingly somewhat surprised to see us. The keyboard is at hand, although not used constantly throughout the hour, as he gets distracted by one thought process colliding into another. He warns us, in an entirely casual and low rent way, that he’s getting too big for … >
There’s a very good sketch in the series Big Train in which adoring fans won’t let Ralph McTell escape the shadow of his most famous song. The audience aren’t interested in the new, original stuff, only happy when he’s revisiting old hits. It’s a risk that Frisky & Mannish are acutely aware of – they … >
Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, death is no longer the bar to filling the London Palladium that it once was. Equipped with a technical presentation barely dreamt of when he died in the late 1990s, Sinatra can still own the stage backed by a twenty-five piece orchestra and fourteen dancers. The show is … >
You’ll have heard of Avenue Q before, of course; the delinquent boozy stepchild of Sesame Street from the co-creator of Book of Mormon. Following five years in London’s West End, this supremely confident production (in Brighton all this week) absolutely nails the energetic perkiness and gawsh-darned American-ness that’s required to make Avenue Q work. One … >
Londons’s West End has a history of enthralling magic shows which has seen daring performances from the likes of Harry Houdini, Penn & Teller and, erm, Paul Daniels. With CGI making audiences ever more cynical about what’s real, you’d be forgiven for thinking magic shows had become extinct. But this month, magic and illusion have … >
How do you even begin staging one of the most oft-performed plays of all time? Oscar Wilde’s 1895 masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest has been done with an all-male cast, all-black cast, all-nude cast, with puppets, as an opera, as a musical, and been adapted for film and TV. Well, Adrian Noble’s new production … >
Showcasing the best of Murray Gold’s music from Season 8, plus a few well-known fan favourites, the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular has finally reached the UK. The tour started in Wembley at the weekend before crossing the country to Cardiff, or as Peter Davison described it, ‘the beating heart of Doctor Who.’ Finally the orchestra … >
It’s odd, the boxes we put people in. Joe Pasquale is generally thought of as a squeaky-voiced light entertainment performer, Todd Carty is often considered a depressed barrow boy (or an overly cheerful school kid, depending on your age), and Monty Python is regarded as the summit of all sketch shows. It’s this last that’s … >
Revisiting Kevin Elyot’s 1994 drama, My Night With Reg, after twenty years, it’s striking how the play both epitomises and transcends its period. Telling the story of six friends knit together by a shared history, the shadow of the AIDS epidemic and sexual encounters with the titular Reg, the play sparks with pathos, heart and … >
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is something of a slow starter. This is a contrast with the usual West End musical fare, but as is the scale. It initially feels a little weird to see a musical staged almost like a drama and I was slightly underwhelmed at first by the plain … >