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Legally Blonde The Musical – Sheffield Lyceum

4Mar

By NewsdeskNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Legally Blonde The Musical – Sheffield Lyceum

‘Legally Blonde: The Musical’ took Sheffield Theatres’ stage by storm. An absolute tour de force, it is a hilarious, dazzling night of entertainment for all. Amber Davies stars as Elle Wood, the chihuahua wielding, pink-wearing, fashion-obsessive sorority queen who embarks on an adventure in pursuit of status and legitimacy (or what her ex-boyfriend Warner refers to as ‘seriousness’). Davies is remarkably adept in the role, possessing great comedic sensibility and offering a very precise and focussed portrayal of the unlikely, unlucky-in-love law student. She is excellently matched by George Crawford’s Emmett who provided an equally as pointed and complete performance. Adam Cooper’s Callahan is formidably authoritative and delightfully antagonistic. Jocasta Almgill’s Brooke is refreshin...

Jeffery Bernard is Unwell – Coach & Horses

4Mar

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Jeffery Bernard is Unwell – Coach & Horses

The tempting novelty inherent to this production of Jeffery Bernard is Unwell by Keith Waterhouse, is the fact it’s staged in Soho’s Coach & Horses pub on Dean St. This iconic boozer was once a magnet for bohemian artists, day drinkers and creative ‘characters’ such as the journalist Jeffery Bernard who worked for The Spectator. Bernard’s column, popular throughout the 1970s, was titled Low Life and described by Jonathan Meades as a “suicide note in weekly instalments.” Bernard was still alive when this play first hit the West End in 1989, and the production proved a hugely successful vehicle for Peter O’Toole in the leading role. The show returned a year later to the Old Vic, where it enjoyed a sell-out run and was filmed in front of a live audience. It’s hard to imagine a theatre ...

4Mar

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Fairytales ’26 – Traverse Theatre

IDS Theatre take us back to the dark roots of storytelling, in this work-in-progress sharing of three intersecting short plays. Each play is staged as a monologue, with one actor playing multiple roles. Cleo, My Little Baby tells the story of the “perfect woman”, an AI robot created to comply with men’s desires without asking for anything in return. Cleo escapes from Darren, a bullying creep who calls her mummy in bed, and sets out to discover her origins. My heart broke for Cleo, played with vivacious humanity by Samuela Noumtchuet. Personally, I am rooting for the robot uprising sequel. In The Ginger Girl, we meet Mark (Kieran Lee-Hamilton), a young washing machine repairman and committed misogynist. Mark is chronically online, finding community through the so-called “manospher...

4Mar

By Jenn McKeanNo Comments

North West

Dear England – Liverpool Empire

As someone who can’t bear football, because it is forced upon them so much, I was as shocked as everyone to find how intrigued I was by the Dear England play. Euro ’96 is probably the first big tournament I remember and Gareth Southgate’s penalty being the prevailing moment. And I think that was what made me want to see him and cheer him on as he managed to turn things around over the last decade as manager of the England men’s team. The play starts with that missed penalty that knocked England out of the Euros in 1996. It then cuts to 2016 and Sam Allardyce ‘mutually deciding’ to leave the post with the FA, after being in charge for one singular game. We get to see Southgate being asked to become the Interim manager and follow how he managed to take the team to heights we’ve n...

Someone’s Knockin’ at the Door – Traverse Theatre

4Mar

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

Someone’s Knockin’ at the Door – Traverse Theatre

Kicking off this season of A Play, a Pie and a Pint, is Someone’s Knockin’ at the Door. Written by Milly Sweeney, this play features grandparents Kathy (Maureen Carr) and Jack (Jonathan Watson) recounting to their granddaughter how they met music legend Paul McCartney in the rural landscape of the Mull of Kintyre. Moving between sit-down interviews with the couple separately talking to their granddaughter, to flashbacks of the couple’s camping trip in 1976, Someone’s Knockin’ At The Door evokes heavy nostalgia and sentimentality. Exploring not only the personal journey of the couple, but how the political landscape in Glasgow actively shaped their relationship. Sweeney has a knack for tackling a myriad of different themes without complicating the narrative or gleaning ...

Friends! The Musical Parody – Hull New Theatre

4Mar

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Friends! The Musical Parody – Hull New Theatre

Friends graced our TV screens from 1994 to 2004, so you would surmise that many of the iconic moments from that period, acted out in Friends! The Musical Parody, which has been running since 2022, would be long forgotten. The show arrived at the Hull New Theatre on Monday as part of a UK and Ireland tour, and, judging by the audience’s reactions during the performance, there were many whose memories didn’t need to be jogged re the shenanigans of Rachel, Ross, Joey, Chandler, Phoebe and Monica - the friends in question. There is a long gap between the end of the original TV series to the 2021 Reunion TV Special, an unscripted celebration of the iconic show. But Friends is now streamed on TV, maybe spawning a new crop of fans. Photo: Pamela Raith Monday’s show revealed a stage se...

4Mar

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Events – Traverse Theatre

There’s something quietly disarming about walking into the Traverse and finding the choir already in place. No theatrical reveal, just a community gathered on stage, singing, moving joyously, and dispensing hot drinks to the audience. Behind them, in a broad horseshoe, columns of stacked chairs rise like an improvised colonnade, orderly, architectural, faintly ecclesiastical. Later, those same chairs are winched into the roof, clattering against one another in a moment of metallic chaos, a striking image of rupture of ‘the event’ that lingers long after it settles. David Greig’s The Events, first staged in 2013 and winner of a Fringe First that year, returns here as a welcome re-emergence of a modern classic. Its revival demonstrates that it has lost none of its edge. If anything, ...

28Feb

By Klervi GavetNo Comments

London

Last and First Men – Coronet Theatre

At a time when humankind seems increasingly determined to write itself out of its own timeline, Neon Dance’s Last and First Men feels uncannily well placed. This 65-minute movement piece is a resonant speculative journey, with at its heart an act of listening: to the future, to the deep past, and to the fragile thread that still connects them. Based on Olaf Stapledon’s visionary 1930s sci-fi novel, the piece imagines a far future in which the last remnants of humanity reach back across two billion years to address us, the “first men”. Under the inspired direction of Adrienne Hart, the dancers — Fukiko Takase, Aoi Nakamura and Kelvin Kilonzo — perform with an otherworldly, masterful precision that feels recognisably human yet unmistakably other, as if the genus Homo had remained while th...

28Feb

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

16 Postcodes – King’s Head Theatre

Like all big cities, London has always been a challenging place to live and work. Smog, sewage, soot and squalor have held the city together for centuries. However, the past 20 years has seen a dramatic escalation in factors that largely render the capital an exclusive urban enclave. London’s once cosmopolitan centre is now only affordable for a super-rich, culturally hollow, elite echelon of society. The shocking expense of being alive, blended with a housing crisis, stagnant wages and a generous slug of austerity, means that a simple day out in London becomes a Hunger Games battle for sanity and a surviving bank balance. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution has become crueller than nature, with gentrification, zero-hours contracts and inherited wealth skewing the odds. Writing review...

28Feb

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

Savage – White Bear Theatre

Savage is admiral in its efforts to spread information about the atrocities committed by lesser-known Nazi war criminal Carl Værnet, and his post-war escape to Argentina. Værnet was a Danish doctor who attempted to “cure” homosexuality, and his methods involved human experimentation on concentration camp inmates. After the war, he was captured and detained in a British prisoner of war camp, but was able to escape, with the British and Danish governments perhaps even aiding him in starting a new life in Argentina. Gay conversion therapy, of which Værnet was a proponent, is legal in the UK and Denmark. Despite the play’s noble intentions, Savage is not particularly enlightening or powerful. As an exposé of Værnet, it provides only the most surface level information, and as a drama it fall...