Wednesday, October 21

Tag: Tony Gayle

Sylvia – Festival Theatre, Edinburgh 
Scotland

Sylvia – Festival Theatre, Edinburgh 

This is some show! Having watched Jersey Boys at the Edinburgh Playhouse the previous evening, I thought I had witnessed musical theatre at its most polished and professional. Twenty-four hours later, Sylvia at the Festival Theatre took the whole business to another level. The comparison is fascinating. Jersey Boys has the considerable advantage of being built around songs that generations already know and love. Recognition and nostalgia do much of the heavy lifting. Sylvia has no such luxury. We arrived knowing none of its songs, yet for two hours and forty-five minutes this extraordinary production held our attention almost without respite. That is no small achievement. Written by Kate Prince and Priya Parmar, with music by Josh Cohen and ...
White Christmas – Sheffield Crucible
Yorkshire & Humber

White Christmas – Sheffield Crucible

‘Alistair David’s choreography is simply the ‘glitter glue’. Originally a 1954 film starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Vera Ellen and Rosemary Clooney, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas as become a staple of our festive celebrations. The title song was originally written for the musical Holiday Inn and is a multimillion copy seller with Bing Crosby’s version making up half of the sales. Sheffield Theatres bring this classic to the stage at their Crucible Theatre (in-the-round) and it has a stellar cast who are both in tune with its sentimentality and its splendidly relentless song and dance spectacle. The story includes a retired General who is now an Innkeeper in Vermont and two of his former platoon members Bob and Phil, who are now successful entertainers. Their paths cross again as ...