London Theatre Reviews

Review - Equus

Call me an old cynic, but I can't help feeling that someone just couldn't resist the opportunity of making shed loads of cash by having Daniel Radcliffe - the young actor who's played the lead in all the Harry Potter films to date - get his kit off in this play. With the enormous media coverage the production has already received, I'm sure I could write about a totally different play here - as indeed every other reviewer and critic could too - and it wouldn't make even a minor dint in the...

Thriller Live Review

There's no question that Thriller Live is a genuine crowd-pleaser. But is it the answer? It depends on what you want the West End to stand for. Is it a place to showcase the best in world theatre, or just a home for mindless but colourful variety spectacles?Actually, let's not to be too snobbish. There's room for both. I may personally miss the fact that the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue -- one of the best, most perfectly proportioned playhouses in town -- has been lost to straight plays...

Disney's Beauty and the Beast

This fairytale story concerns an old beggar woman who offers a spoilt, selfish prince a rose in return for shelter from the cold night, but he refuses. She warns him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within. However, when he does not help her, she turns in to a beautiful woman and then casts a spell on the young prince, turning him into a beast and casting a spell on his castle and all his servants, who are turned into utensils and furniture! She leaves him the rose and...

The Glee Club

The Glee Club has arrived in the West End after an extended sell-out run at the Bush Theatre. Set in the summer of 1962 the story concerns the lives of five miners and a Church Organist that sing variety hall music songs in working men clubs. We meet the six men as they prepare for their annual appearance at the local Gala.Phil the Church Organist is trying to cope with being a homosexual in a small Yorkshire mining village at a time when there was little acceptance or toleration of sexual...

Blood Brothers

Note: These are old reviews and the cast has now changed!! The cast I saw consisted of Lyn Paul, Keith Burns, Andy Snowden and Mark Hutchinson. Lyn Paul, as Mrs Johnstone, has joined after playing the role in the national tour, and she is perfect in the part. Her singing voice is just right, and all the emotion she put into the show seemed real. Her laugh when Mickey and Eddie went off to see "Nymphomaniac Nights" and "Swedish Au-pairs" could have been genuine, and if it wasn't, her tears during...

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Review 1996

Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf? is about a frustrated, explosive woman called Martha, who taunts her quiet, stewing husband, George, about his failures in life. However, when Nick & Honey, a young married couple, come to visit for a drink late in the evening, they get entwined in Martha and George's hurtful games that they play.Edward Albee proves you don't have to have a lot of action in a play to make it effective. You only need great writing, and Albee without doubt wrote a gem with this...

Romeo and Juliet - The Musical

'Romeo and Juliet' is one of the most famous and tragic of the Bard's plays. A love affair that is doomed to end in tragedy due to the hostilities between the lover's families. Turning Shakespeare's script into a romantic musical with mass appeal seems an impossible task, and indeed it apparently is, which is why this musical does not attempt to do so. The book written by David Freeman and Don Black, for all intents and purposes ignores Shakespeare's text, and has merely borrowed the plot and...

The Play That Goes Wrong Review

The theatre loves nothing more than itself, especially when things aren't going to plan: this kind of self-sustaining narcissism has made hits of everything from The Producers and Spamalot to Michael Frayn's Noises Off. And in The Play That Goes Wrong, we're here to prick the pomposities and artifice of theatre yet again in a bustling portrait of an amateur dramatic company from Cornley Polytechnic, as they attempt to put on a 1920s murder thriller called Murder at Haversham Manor.The result is...

Matilda The Musical Review

Note: There has been cast changes since this review!We are rapidly drifting into that peculiarly English time of year when even the sanest of actors and production companies seem to take leave of their senses. Men dress up as women, women dress up as men and well-worn jokes that never ought to have seen the light of day in the first place are resurrected with abandon.Yes, panto season is with us once again. But 'Matilda The Musical', even though it is being aired during this silliest of seasons,...

The Pillowman

Profoundly disturbing and intensely macabre, Martin McDonagh's new play provokes an ambivalent response. On the one hand his inventive imagination and ear for naturalistic dialogue is as sharp as ever, commanding both respect and attention but the sheer intensity of the horrors related will curdle all but the strongest of stomachs.As the play opens a young writer sits blindfolded in a cell, clearly awaiting interrogation. A detective (Jim Broadbent) enters and asks the prisoner Katurian (David...