ajhlovestheatre

MASS

by Fran Kranz

directed by Carrie Cracknell

Donmar Warehouse, London – until 6 June 2026

running time: 1 hour 40 minutes no interval 

https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/events/mass/?instance-type=standard

Based on his own 2021 movie, Fran Kranz’s Mass, currently devastating audiences at the Donmar, is a powerful reminder of why the arts matter, of how they can speak to important issues and reflect healing, understanding light back on to them. It should be required viewing for every parent, and for everyone who still believes the gun laws in the USA are acceptable. It’s also unmissable for anyone who wants to see the kind of raw, humane performances that entirely transcend artifice and barely feel like acting.

Reminiscent of, and equally as impressive as, last year’s multi award-winner Punch, it’s about the aftermath of an almost unbearable tragedy and the turbulent road to acceptance and forgiveness. It’s an emotional rollercoaster that never feels manipulative or contrived, and you leave the theatre moved to wonder at what human beings are capable of finding in their hearts.

Set in an anteroom of an Episcopalian church in an unnamed American town, Mass focuses on an uneasy meeting between two couples: Gail and Jay (Lyndsey Marshal and Adeel Akhtar) lost their teenage son in a school shooting perpetrated by the son of Linda and Richard (Monica Dolan and Paul Hilton). What plays out is so much more complex, emotionally satisfying and dramatically rich than simply recriminations flying around and vengeance being invoked however. Kranz’s script, subtle yet meaty and marbled with welcome seams of humour and warmth, picks at the thorny issues of how much responsibility can be laid at a parents feet once their offspring reach a certain age, and also how well we ever truly know those closest to us.

Carrie Cracknell’s hyper-focussed, note-perfect staging, the table around which the couples sit, revolving barely perceptibly as they talk, confront, remember and feel, is technically much more sophisticated than it initially appears, but puts the central quartet front and centre, which is exactly where they need to be. Akhtar’s journey from chipper chumminess to raw anger rings completely true, and Hilton delivers a remarkable, magnetic portrayal of an urbane, professionally successful man on his guard but well informed yet utterly at sea with the horrors he has been exposed to.

It’s the mothers that really pierce your heart here though. I doubt I’ll ever forget the look on Dolan’s face as she all but pleads for the right to take some pride, some love in the memory of the child who wrote the tragedy in which they’re all now embroiled. I’ve always enjoyed Marshal’s performances but I’ve never loved her like I love her here as a beacon of damaged goodness and almost superhuman forgiveness. There’s a moment near the end when Gail and Linda embrace and it will break you, but in the best way.

The play’s title refers to a mass shooting but also to the religious music being rehearsed elsewhere in the building of the setting by an unseen choir. As the play draws to its conclusion, sunlight floods in through the overhead skylights, the doors are opened and the room is bathed in an almost celestial sonic chorale (composer Katrina Rose, sound designer Donato Wharton and Guy Hoare’s lighting all delivering world class work here). It could be cheesy or sugary but in practice it just feels like healing, hopeful, putting a theatrical button on a play that deals, unflinchingly, with the messy disarray of humanity. 

Everyone here is singing from the same hymn sheet (pun intended), from the superb supporting performances of Rochelle Rose as a guarded mediator, and the lovely, edgy dynamic between Amari Bacchus and Susie Trayling as a pair of contrasting church workers, to Anna Yates’ vividly realistic set and unshowy costumes. Everything about the production, performances and writing does exactly what it needs to be doing, and the ultimate effect is searing, transformative and unforgettable. They’re preaching to the choir in terms of the difficult subject of the right to bear arms, and I would imagine the long term goal of this brilliant production must be American stages where it will hit with even more white-hot force, although it’s hard to see how these central performances will ever be matched.

Unquestionably one of London theatre’s must-sees of 2026. Essential.

BECKY SHAW

by Gina Gionfriddo

directed by Trip Cullman

Hayes Theater, New York City – until 14 June 2026

running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval 

https://2st.com/shows/becky-shaw

Gina Gionfriddo’s 2008 Becky Shaw, only now receiving its Broadway bow in an exceptionally well cast production courtesy of Second Stage Theater, is a fascinating but frustrating play, one that considers interdependence and mutual responsibility in human relationships with a forensic precision, but is populated by a quintet of wildly unsympathetic characters. This new production by Trip Cullman doesn’t sugarcoat any of Gionfriddo’s cynical but acute observations and his magnificent cast make no attempt to endear their roles to us; the result is a bracing evening, often bitterly, even shockingly, funny, but an undeniably chilly one. It teases, worries and entertains, but never delves as deeply as it might.

The first scene takes place in a New York hotel room where self-centred post-graduate psychologist Suzanna Slater (Lauren Patten) is being comforted, or at least handled, after the death of her father by the acting family financial advisor Max (Alden Ehrenreich), who she grew up alongside when Pa Slater effectively adopted him as a child to get him away from his less than ideal parents. Not that Suzanna’s parents were any picnic either: Suzanna’s late dad may have been having a gay affair with his previous finance man, and mom Susan (Linda Emond) has descended on the city from her well-appointed Virginia home, like an acerbic, elegant Black Widow with toy boy lover in tow, much to Suzanna’s annoyance and disgust, and wielding her ongoing MS condition like it’s a weapon. Susan and Suzanna can’t even agree on how long Slater has been dead, and Max has a chronic if entertaining (for us) empathy problem, advising grieving Suzanna to enter the upcoming estate negotiations with “no crying. Big dick.”

It becomes swiftly apparent that there is more to Max and Suzanna’s relationship than meets the eye but fast forward eight months to Providence, Rhode Island and she has married aspiring writer Andrew (Patrick Ball), a slightly younger man with a penchant for ‘saving’ apparently fragile women then leaving them (“he hears ‘I want to hurt myself’ like a fucking mating call”). One such woman in crisis is the eponymous Becky Shaw (Madeline Brewer), a co-worker acquaintance of Andrew’s, and whom the newlyweds are planning on taking on a blind double date with Max. The implausibility of setting up anybody who doesn’t have the hide of a rhino with the emotionally savage Max needn’t be dwelt upon, but the stage is set for some serious fireworks.

Those fireworks don’t fully materialise, or at least not in the way one might have expected, and one of the interesting things about Gionfriddo’s tell-don’t-show script is how our expectations and assumptions about this flawed bunch are repeatedly confounded and shifted. It’s a static, talky piece but the complexities and casual cruelties in intimate relationships are put over with biting humour and some truly delicious writing.

It helps that the five performances are so on point. Screen star Ehrenreich (Hail, Caesar!, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Brave New World) delivers a knockout Broadway debut, deservedly in the running for this year’s Tony award for Featured Actor in a Play (although arguably this is a leading role). More obviously traditional ‘alpha male’ perhaps than the late, great David Wilson Barnes who similarly slayed in this role in Peter DuBois’ original off-Broadway and 2016 London Almeida stagings, Ehrenreich nails Max’s unsettling sociopathic combination of charisma, self-interest and sheer bloody mindedness. Although Ball’s role isn’t as coruscatingly well written but he’s excellent. 

Patten’s tetchy chemistry with both her leading men is brilliantly done and her ability to make Suzanna relatable even at her most unpleasant is impressive. Brewer is wonderful as Becky, by turns sympathetic then infuriating, smug, unknowable and, possibly, extremely dangerous. The majestic Emond makes such a strong impression as poisonous, pragmatic, smart Suzan, the kind of woman who says things like “when someone with damage -as we have damage- courts a lover, we must be like the pedophile with the candy. Lure with candy no matter how frightful your nature and your intent” and whose view of humanity can be reduced to the observation “some people are retarded and they eat paint, others split atoms and write symphonies“. She’s an appalling human being but she’s such compelling theatrical company that you actively miss her when she’s not on stage.  

There are several different locales required by Gionfriddo’s script but David Zinn’s set unhelpfully and confusingly places almost everything in a black void resembling a corridor punctuated by doors. It’s pretty ugly to look at until the final scene when the play shifts to Susan’s house in Richmond, Virginia and the design suddenly and inexplicably opens out into something airy, opulent and naturalistic. Kaye Voyce’s costumes are spot on throughout. 

The laughs to gasps ratio in Becky Shaw is pretty equal, and the erudite, ferocious script is unlikely to ever again be cast as perfectly as it is here. It’s great that Gionfriddo’s work is finally on Broadway and here’s hoping that the critical and popular enthusiasm for this one prompts further reappraisals of her body of work, but perhaps especially her 2012 Rapture Blister Burn which is, arguably, a more engaging and colourful piece than this one. Still, if it’s provocation and faultless acting you’re after, it’s right here.

DOG DAY AFTERNOON 

by Stephen Adly Guirgis 

based on the Warner Brothers film, and the LIFE Magazine by P F Kluge and Thomas More

directed by Rupert Gould

August Wilson Theatre, New York City – until 28 June 2026

running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval 

https://dogdayafternoon.com

I suspect the best way to enjoy Stephen Adly Guirgis’ stage adaptation of Dog Day Afternoon is to try to forget about the 1975 Sidney Lumet movie starring Al Pacino. That’s easier said than done though when Jon Bernthal, in a sensational Broadway debut as Sonny, the bungling bank robber with a surprisingly good heart, looks so uncannily like Pacino at moments in Rupert Goold’s flashy, propulsive staging. The award-winning film is a fascinating, painful mixture of social document and crime drama, inspired by a real Brooklyn bank raid that went wrong, and has cultural significance for its warts-and-all depiction of a New York in crisis, barrelling towards bankruptcy and with crime on the rise, and also for sensitive LGBTQ+ representation at a time when that was scarce. The play, with the inevitable softening glow of the footlights, is still potty-mouthed and reasonably unflinching but leans much more into the comedy. That may be problematic for some, but, taken on its own terms, it’s a cracking entertainment, outrageously funny but with a warm, beating heart and a lot of grit; it’s also supremely theatrical.

There’s an undeniable thrill when David Korins’ Tony-nominated set first rolls on, a fully realised mid-1970s bank interior and exterior, complete with tellers’ desks, lounge chairs, corridors off into other parts of the building, and that punishingly functional decor redolent of the time period. It’s an absolute eyeful, and theatrical world-building of the highest order, made immersive by Goold having actors as cops prowling the aisles of the August Wilson and, at a crucial point, the audience corralled into playing the crowd of approving rubberneckers waiting outside on the Brooklyn street waiting to see how the bank robbery and subsequent siege plays out. Brenda Abbandandolo’s sometimes garish but entirely realistic costumes (also Tony-nominated) and Isabella Byrd’s acidic lighting add to the sensational visual impact.

Perhaps inevitably constrained by having to adhere to the beats of the screenplay, Guirgis hasn’t produced a script to rival his very best work (Jesus Hopped The A Train, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, the Pulitzer winner Between Riverside And Crazy) but Dog Day Afternoon on stage, despite a couple of sequences that threaten to run out of steam, has a manic energy and grim vitality that compels and intrigues. Goold’s production is populated by a bunch of terrific New York character actors who invest their roles with such a world-weary authenticity that you can almost feel the exhausted ache in their feet from perpetually pounding the pavements. It’s a feast of wonderful acting, without vanity or sentimentality, but alive to every last scrap of unease, spite, spiky kindnesses and caustic humour in these flawed, jaded humans.

Jessica Hecht, an actress incapable of turning in a bad or even indifferent performance, is on fine, laconic form as head teller Colleen, initially scathing but becoming more and more sympathetic to the desperate Sonny as the bank siege continues. Andrea Syglowski, Wilemina Olivia-Garcia and long term Guirgis collaborator Elizabeth Canavan are all vivid and superb as her professional underlings. John Ortiz brings a grizzled warmth to Detective Fucco, attempting to mediate between the force and the would-be bank robbers, and Spencer Garrett is deliciously horrible as Sheldon, the fellow cop hell bent on disparaging and discrediting him, repeatedly and deliberately mispronouncing his name as “Fuck-o”. Michael Kostroff adds potent comic value as another bank employee and Danny Johnson is genuinely affecting as a former military vet now working as a security guard who becomes collateral damage. There’s firecracker work, witty, full-throttle and eccentric, from Esteban Andres Cruz as Sonny’s lover Leon. 

Ebon Moss-Bachrach, the other above-the-title star, plays Sonny’s sidekick Sal and he delivers an alarming, accomplished portrait of an unstable, unhappy chancer who’s as much to be pitied as feared. Bernthal is stunningly good, mining his role for every ounce of caffeinated macho desperation, exasperated humour and unexpected tenderness.  Magnetic and multi-layered, he’s a one-man powder keg of explosives and it’s impossible to take your eyes off him and not to root for him.

It’s impossible to make much of a case for Dog Day Afternoon as a great play, but as a unique theatrical experience, one that brings back to life a specific period in New York history, evoking the atmosphere and feel of a city on the verge of breakdown, it’s a considerable success. Edgy, hilarious and strangely charming, it also seems to be a bona fide crowdpleaser: at the performance I attended, the audience roared their approval and enthusiastically joined in with the chants of “Attica! Attica!” as Bernthal’s Sonny whipped them up into a frenzy of joy and righteous indignation.

CATS: THE JELLICLE BALL

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

based on ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ by T S Eliot

additional lyrics by Trevor Nunn and Richard Stilgoe

directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch

Broadhurst Theatre, New York City – open-ended run

running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval 

https://catsthejellicleball.com

The word ‘revival’ scarcely does justice to the transformation effected by directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, and choreographers Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s legendary extravaganza based on the T S Eliot feline poetry. Cats was a sensation back in the 1980s, the late Dame Gillian Lynne as choreographer proving, finally, that us Brits could actually create a full-on dance musical, rather than just looking wistfully across the pond at the work of people like Bob Fosse and Michael Bennett. This new iteration, set in the world of urban queer ballroom, caused almost as much of a stir when it premiered nearly two years ago downtown at World Trade Center’s PAC NYC. Now it arrives on Broadway like a bolt of rainbow-coloured lightning or a breath of fragrant air (with perhaps a musky hint of good, honest sweat).

Not even Cats’ greatest admirers (guilty as charged) could make much of a case for its coherence as drama though, preferring to be swept along by the outlandish spectacle and sheer exhilaration, little of which was captured in the 1998 filmed version, and best to entirely draw a veil over the disastrous 2019 movie. Cats: The Jellicle Ball makes no attempt to address the barely-there book but transplants the Jellicle cats of Eliot’s imagination from John Napier’s iconic moonlit rubbish dump of the original to a makeshift venue where a multiethnic, multi-gendered crew gather to walk their ball, voguing and death-dropping as though their lives depend upon it. 

Just as the New London (now the Gillian Lynne) in London and the Winter Garden on Broadway were elaborately transformed to create what was one of the first immersive musicals (although the Hair team’s Dude and Harold Prince’s reinvention of Candide both predated it on Broadway), so set designer Rachel Hauck has turned the Broadhurst into a space where this new kind of Jellicle Ball can happen. There’s a runway where the orchestra and most of the front rows would be, a DJ podium, cabaret-style tables and chairs in the boxes, audiences in onstage bleachers, a plethora of glittering black beaded curtains, a disco ball the size of a small planet, and, as with the original, these Jellicles spend as much time prowling the aisles as they do on stage. It has a deliberate, hardscrabble grit to it, the kind of place that would probably look pretty stark when viewed under less forgiving light than the gorgeous, colourful creations of Adam Honoré. 

That sense of creating something fabulous with limited resources but unfettered imagination carries through to Qween Jean’s Tony-nominated costumes, which are a riot of colour, invention and sexiness. There are a couple of nods to cats ears in the headwear but that isn’t really the aesthetic being aimed at here. Nikiya Mathis’ wigs and Rania Zohny’s make-up designs are exactly what they need to be: extravagant and eye-popping. 

Given what a radical reinterpretation The Jellicle Ball gives us of the physical world of Cats, you might be surprised how little messing about has been done with the music (orchestrations by David Wilson and Lloyd Webber himself). The overture, with its wailing synths, fugues and roundelays, is still there in all its thunderous, playful, slightly weird glory, Brittany Bland’s projection design even including a delightful homage to the ‘cats eyes’ logo that internationally characterised the original. Elsewhere, certain numbers have been given stronger, more insistent beats but it’s still very much the Cats we all knew and loved, or at least put up with, and most of the singing is terrific.

Wiles and Lyons’ choreography is exhilarating and feels like something truly fresh on the Broadway stage. It also becomes a tad repetitive: there’s only so many times over a nearly three hour long show that you can watch dancers dipping on cue and not wonder about them injuring themselves and what the physio bill for this production must be like. During the climactic Jellicle Ball itself, here a series of competitions in different vogue ballroom styles, I found myself missing the elegance of Lynne’s original ballet and jazz-inspired creations, for all the athleticism and sassy charm on display. Judging from all the screaming (actively encouraged by the way, this ain’t Lincoln Center) and fan-snapping all around me, I was in the minority.

That’s not to say though that Cats: The Jellicle Ball isn’t a rollicking good time….it absolutely is. You just need to be prepared to overlook that these wired, sensational New Yorkers are spouting the London place names (“in Launceston Place and in Kensington Square”, “the grimy road of Tottenham Court”, “up up up past the Russell Hotel”) of Eliot’s poems, for no very intelligible reason (if you can make out the words at all, that is), and that there are sections where there’s as much noise coming from the audience as there is from the stage or the loudspeakers.

Another casualty of this bracing new approach is any sort of pathos. Because Ken Ard’s glorious DJ Griddlebone has whipped the audience into such a ‘yasss kween’ level of frenzy, moments like the entrance and subsequent dismissal of Grizabella (‘Tempress’ Chasity Moore), the glamour cat, or rather former House Mother in this iteration, who has fallen on hard times) goes for very little, where it should break your heart. Real feeling does creep in though, welcomely, at the top of the second act where the contemplative ‘The Moments Of Happiness’ sequence has been turned into a beautiful celebration, complete with slide show, of the queer and trans people who lit the way for others to follow. 

The sense of community amongst the large ensemble is palpable but certain performers inevitably stand out. Chief among them are Broadway veteran and all-round treasure André de Shields as a witty, warmly imposing Old Deuteronomy, the leader of the Jellicles, and ballroom legend Junior Labeija as an elaborately attired and infinitely touching Gus the theatre cat. Nora Schell’s roof-raising, booty-shaking, body-positive Bustopher Jones is a knockout, as is Sydney James Harcourt’s smooth, sexy-as-hell Rum Tum Tugger. Dudney Joseph Jr is a smashing MC as Munkustrap and I also loved the sweetness of Teddy Wilson Jr and Bryson Battle as two of the gentler members of the tribe, and the lithe grace of Robert ‘Silk’ Mason as a drastically reinvented Mr Mistoffolees. By contrast, Leiomy is a barnstorming delight as a not-that-mysterious Macavity, and Bebe Nicole Simpson is flat-out hilarious and vocally impressive as one of her sidekicks.

Victoria the white cat here becomes literally the sole white girl at the ball, and Baby Byrne is utterly entrancing. Emma Sofia, like a human fireball, almost stops the show as a Latina Skimbleshanks, now a NY Metro worker. Moore’s Grizabella is one of the most beloved performances of this Broadway season, but she doesn’t fully work for me. In this new concept there never feels as though that much is at stake for her, and the catharsis that should come from the renowned ‘Memory’ just isn’t there. It doesn’t help that her singing is below par, or at least it was the night I saw the show. She gets a standing ovation and a spectacular exit, different from, but related to, that of Grizabella in the previous Cats, but it feels more because it’s the ‘Big Number’ and that here we finally have a Black trans leading lady on the Great White Way, which is indeed an awesome accomplishment. 

Quibbles aside, this is a cracking piece of musical theatre, an explosion of queer joy and riotous colour. They’ve taken an established favourite, and a favourite of the establishment, and given it an anarchic edge and energy. It’s not like anything else playing in New York or London, and injects mainstream theatre with a jolt of electricity and outrageousness.  

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

by Arthur Miller

directed by Joe Mantello

Winter Garden Theatre, London – until 9 August 2026

running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval 

https://salesmanbroadway.com

On paper, a sombre dramatic warhorse of the American theatre where there’s seldom more than four people in any one scene, headlined by an actor known more for comic and musical roles, on the stage of one of the most cavernous houses on Broadway, isn’t necessarily an appealing proposition. In practice, Joe Mantello’s production of the Arthur Miller classic Death Of A Salesman, starring Nathan Lane as Willy Loman, with the incandescent Laurie Metcalf as his long-suffering wife and hot (in every sense) young TV stars Christopher Abbott and Ben Ahlers as their sons, is an utter triumph, and a major flare up the behind of a moribund season on the Great White Way.

Less a revival and more a radical reappraisal on a par with what Stephen Daldry did to An Inspector Calls or Ivo van Hove did to Miller’s own A View From The Bridge and recently in London All My Sons, Mantello’s version frees Salesman from naturalistic trappings and takes us into the failing mind of Loman, the ageing salesman whose ability to make a living is running out as fast as his grip on sanity. Chloe Lamford’s set is a giant garage, dominated by forbidding pillars, dusty window panes, an ominous-looking metal door and the car Willy travelled around in to hawk his wares. 

That car in itself is interesting and a clue to the unusual approach this staging takes: it’s a 1960s Chevy while the play originates from 1949, it’s also not the car Willy describes for himself. This isn’t sloppiness on the production’s part, it’s a specific choice that marks the fluidity of time and the unreliability of Willy as a guide through it….and it proves far more than just a gimmick. Anachronisms abound but never proclaim themselves – in a kitchen scene Linda Loman produces a modern milk carton from the fridge, Willy’s entrepreneurial brother Ben (Jonathan Cake) sports 1970s fashions, Willy’s exasperated employer Howard (John Drea) carries a plastic coffee cup straight out of a contemporary Starbucks or Tim Hortons – to collectively create a picture of a world where chronological time has no meaning: literally timeless in fact. 

Just as memory is a jumble where the mind can juxtapose a recalled moment from decades ago with something that happened just last week, so this production picks up and runs with the concept of every aspect of Loman’s flawed, diminished life closing in on him at once. The focus and pacing are sheer perfection and every technical aspect (Jack Knowles’ moody lighting, Mikaal Sulaiman’s dream-like, unsettling sound, the Tony-nominated score by Caroline Shaw, Rudy Mance’s unobtrusively clever costuming) is on board the same train to cathartic oblivion. 

Mantello’s staging is also infused with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it magic that feels entirely appropriate to the overall vision: a golden pocket watch disappears into thin air, figures emerge from, or disappear into, the omnipresent car as naturally as though they’re walking into another room. The theatricality is all, but never at the expense of Miller’s towering text, a life’s hopes, jealousies, betrayals, disappointments and kindnesses etched in acid, poetry and, just occasionally, full-on belly laughs. At a time when it seems more and more Americans are concerned about making enough money to even put food on the table, the play has an unwelcome relevance that adds to the overall urgency.

Any doubts I had about Lane, usually a brilliant clown with an edge of fascinating aggression and a true treasure of the American theatre, taking on Willy Loman were dispelled within about two minutes of him taking the stage. He completely disappears into the role, creating a figure whose brokenness is patched over with a certain arrogance. Lane finds the joy in him, or at least the echoes of it, and also the bewildered pain of somebody who can’t quite grasp that he is no longer at the height of his powers. His outbursts of impotent rage are horrible, but essential, to watch, and  there’s a telling, pitiful moment where, having advised his son not to pick up a dropped object during a job interview as it would suggest lack of status, Willy does just that when Howard’s coffee cup lid falls on the floor as this battered salesman is pleading for his livelihood. It’s an unforgettable moment in a performance full of them.

Opposite him and entirely matching him, Laurie Metcalf finds new colours, of genuine affection, soul-sucking grief but also of surprising viciousness, in Linda that take the breath away. There’s not a single note of this indomitable, faithful, multi-layered woman that Metcalf doesn’t express. She even makes the moments when Miller allows himself to lapse into purple prosed-sentimentality (“he’s only a little boat looking for a harbour”) feel completely organic. Two mind-blowing performances in one Broadway season (the other was in last fall’s Little Bear Ridge Road) is great going by anybody’s standards: Metcalf is the real deal, although we already knew that.

Ben Ahlers, in a sensational Broadway debut, also gives womanising younger son Happy a texture and magnetism I’ve never seen before. If Christopher Abbott as older, and preferred, son Biff doesn’t make as much impression at first, that’s of apiece with the idea of a young man lost even to himself, but he galvanises into a heart stopping final confrontation both with his broken dad and his own tortured psyche that leaves the audience open-mouthed in shock. In an unusual move, this version employs a pair of excellent younger actors (Jake Termine and Joaquin Consuelos) to play the younger versions of the brothers, which adds to the overall tension.

Such is the quality of the production, every single role feels inhabited fully and convincingly. There’s beautiful work from K Todd Freeman as the concerned but realistic neighbour who tries to throw flailing Loman a lifeline (having an African American actor play this role casts a fascinating, terrible pall over Willy’s line “I just can’t work for you”) and from Michael Benjamin Washington as his kind, measured son. Tasha Lawrence is a vivid and compelling as the blousy mistress Loman finds on the road, and the aforementioned Drea (previously so good with Metcalf in Little Bear Ridge Road) invests dismissive boss Wagner with a knotty, dynamic mixture of irritation, self assurance and low level guilt. There’s not a single false note in any of the acting.

This Death Of A Salesman, which unsurprisingly has more Tony nominations (nine) than any other play this season, uses “attention must be paid”, Linda’s desperate cry when speaking of her tormented husband to her bewildered sons, as it’s advertising tagline. Audiences lucky enough to experience this embarrassment of riches are not just paying attention, they are pinned to the back of their seats, sobbing in grief and shock. It really does feel like seeing this masterpiece for the very first time. Absolutely stunning.

SCHMIGADOON!

Book, music and lyrics by Cinco Paul

based on the Apple TV+ series created by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio

directed by Christopher Gattelli

Nederlander Theatre, New York City – until 3 January 2027

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://schmigadoonbroadway.com

Schmigadoon!, Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio’s affectionate TV spoof of the Golden Age of musicals finds its rightful home on the Broadway stage. Awards aren’t the be-all and end-all of theatre-making but the number of Tony nominations just lavished on this adaptation (twelve, the highest of any show this season apart from The Lost Boys, which got the same) gives an indication of how much love there is for a beautifully produced and performed tuner that celebrates the art form of the American musical while also skilfully sending it up. Frankly, it’s not hard to understand the enthusiasm. 

Schmigadoon! is the kind of show you watch with a great big goofy grin plastered across your face, and then realise you have a tear or two trickling down your cheek at its feel-good conclusion. Its basic plot (a modern city dwelling couple whose relationship has started to sour go on a rural camping holiday only to happen upon a timeless mythical village where every gingham and brocade cladded inhabitant is living their best high-kicking, thigh-slapping, high note-trilling lives in a classic musical comedy) is utterly preposterous, but no more so than that of Lerner and Loewe’s Brigdaoon from which it so clearly borrows. 

Musical lovers will get a massive kick out of spotting the references to beloved shows and films that Cinco Paul, seamlessly working as composer, lyricist and book writer, has strewn so generously throughout this gorgeous evening. There’s a fairground barker à la Carousel, a town flirt who’s a dead ringer for Oklahoma!’s Ado Annie, a set of stuck-up local dignitaries that could have wandered in from The Music Man, an all-knowing Finian’s Rainbow-style leprechaun….the list goes on and on. Wait til you see the Sound Of Music parody which effectively subverts a ‘Do-Re-Mi’ type song into a hysterical paean to the female anatomy, and the arrival of the Baroness, here Countess von Blerkom, played with elegant aplomb by Afra Hines (“of COURSE I’m a Nazi!”) ….but the ingenious thing ultimately is that even if you’re not musicals-mad, you’re still likely to get swept along by the breezy wit of the script and the sheer exhilaration of the numbers. 

Director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli marshals a glorious cast made up of Broadway stalwarts (Alex Brightman, Brad Oscar, Ann Harada. Max Clayton), stage and screen crossover names (Sara Chase, Ana Gasteyer, Maulik Pancholy, Ivan Hernandez) and rising stars (McKenzie Kurtz, Isabelle McCalla), plus a tightly drilled ensemble full of vim and sunshine. The contrast between the performance styles of Brightman and Chase as Melissa and Josh, the smart, cynical urbanites, and the heightened, energised work, exquisitely redolent of ‘old school’ musicals, of everyone else is superbly managed. It’s high camp of course but played with such a persuasive combination of knowingness and heart that it’s hard not to become invested in this merry band of lovable naifs and sincere lunatics. The high-precision execution of the Agnes de Mille-inspired dances, by turns graceful then rabble-rousing, is Broadway at its most exhilarating, and a big tap number in the second half rightly brings the house down.

Between his work on the Lincoln Center classic revivals, the diva-fuelled romp that is Death Becomes Her and now this delightful confection, Gattelli is increasingly seeming like the principal flame-keeper for traditional showbiz know-how on the Great White Way. Paul’s pastiche score is buoyant and manages to feel simultaneously fresh and familiar. His zinger-filled script is (mostly) family-friendly but never bland, and gets a lot of comic mileage out of looking at the wholesome but dated tropes of yesteryear entertainment through a distinctly 21st century lens. For instance, when Chase’s winsome but independent-minded Melissa asks Oscar, playing the repressed, clearly closeted Schmigadoon town Mayor, if he’s gay, his response is “well, I try to be” before reeling off his reponsibilities to the local residents. If occasionally there is a feeling of everything being hurled at the wall to see what sticks, perhaps that is inevitable when a whole TV series is being squeezed down into a two and a half hour stage musical.

The casting top-to-bottom is an absolute treat, a group of people with authentic funny bones, fabulous voices and a collective deranged joie de vivre energy that’s infectious. There’s no cuter curmudgeon than Alex Brightman, his droll detachment in amusing contrast with the all-in attitude of the insanely enthusiastic Schmigadooners, and when he finally sings his heart out at the end, it’s actually pretty moving. Opposite him, Sara Chase is a tremendously likeable modern leading lady, full of warmth but certainly no pushover. Isabelle McCalla is piquant perfection as the sensible schoolma’am with fire burning under her icy exterior while McKenzie Kurtz is adorably unhinged as a coquette who’s more innocent than she looks.

Ann Harada is kookie and hilarious as the mayor’s wide-eyed, perpetually frustrated wife, and Ana Gasteyer raises passive-aggressive sanctimoniousness to an art form in a rip-snortingly funny turn as the town’s self-appointed moral guardian. I’m not usually the biggest fan of kids on stage but, oh my goodness, Ayaan Diop is a tiny gem as lisping Carson. Brad Oscar’s Mayor, Maulik Pancholy’s hen-pecked clergyman and Ivan Hernandez as a doctor in urgent need of social reconstruction all make invaluable contributions. Max Clayton, rugged, entrancing athletic…and clueless, stops the show as the strapping Danny Bailey, like Billy Bigelow on MDMA, and proves once and for all that he is bona fide leading man material.

This is possibly the prettiest show currently on Broadway: Scott Pask’s hand-painted backdrops and set pieces exude old fashioned magic and are partnered by Linda Cho’s elegant, detailed costumes. It’s as though a technicolor movie has burst into real life then dialled everything up to ten. If the tunes are more generic than memorable, Doug Besterman and Mike Morris’ orchestrations wrap them in the glint and sparkle of a mountain stream, and the orchestra sounds generously full.

I had a lovely time at Schmigadoon! It knows exactly how much tongue to leave in cheek and is studded with enough pockets of real feeling to make for an entirely satisfying couple hours on Broadway. It’s the theatrical equivalent of receiving a warm hug from somebody special who then whispers something naughty into your ear. Irresistible.

THE LOST BOYS

Book by David Hornsby and Chris Hoch

Music and lyrics by The Rescues

based on the Warner Brothers film, story by James Jeremias and Janice Roberta Fischer

directed by Michael Arden

Palace Theatre, New York City – open-ended run

running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval 

https://www.lostboysmusical.com

In a Broadway season where the more prominent musical openings included the import from London of modest two-hander Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York), a wan stage adaptation of Beaches, and the mighty, if historically troubled, Chess reduced to an over-choreographed concert on a unit set, there’s something satisfying about new tuner The Lost Boys swaggering in confidently at the eleventh hour to blast the Great White Way with bombast, staggering visuals and a pleasing conflation of budget and artistry. Its scale and ambition has just been rewarded with twelve Tony award nominations, the highest of any show this year, except Schmigadoon! which also managed a dozen nods.  

It’s not that The Lost Boys, directed by the award-winning Michael Arden (Once On This Island and Parade revivals, Maybe Happy Ending) and based on Joel Schumacher’s 1987 film blockbuster about teenage vampires terrorising a Californian coastal town, is a great musical – far from it.  However, it does represent a return to lavish production values that authentically go some way to justifying the eye-wateringly high Broadway seat prices, and there’s a palpable excitement around it borne of fans of the beloved original property thrilled to see their celluloid memories brought to thunderous theatrical life.

In a commendable case of giving the people what they want, Arden’s staging is chock-full of shuddering suspense, jump scares and eye-popping spectacle. Figures float and soar the full height of the Palace’s vast stage, which designer Dane Laffrey, probably the production’s single biggest star, fills with a multi-level set evoking a night time boardwalk garishly lit with multi-coloured bulbs and neon, abandoned warehouses and fairgrounds, a suspension bridge, a whole house…. Giant scenic pieces descend from the flies or burst through the floor, a working lift travels up and down, characters appear from apparently nowhere in the shadowy twilight, dry ice billows, and the titular boys slumber upside down like bats suspended high above the stage or engage in a balletic, enthralling motorbike race through the murky night (the aerial choreography, exceptional, is by Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant, while Arden and Jen Schriever are responsible for the stunning, shape-shifting lighting). 

Costume designer Ryan Park and hair/wigs creator David Brian Brown have wisely kept Tony nominee Ali Louis Bourzgui, inheriting Kiefer Sutherland’s macabre mantle as the Lost Boys’ leader David, in the peroxided mullet and black leather, and elsewhere produces 1980s styles that are vivid but a lot less parodic than they might  have been. Adam Fisher’s ear-splitting but generally effective sound design seems to owe more to stadium rock than musical theatre, but in a house and show this large, that doesn’t feel inappropriate.

So, technically then, this new musical is breathtaking, and if the score, which is surprisingly ballad heavy despite several numbers that really do rock, by LA-based band The Rescues, and David Hornsby and Chris Hoch’s book, were a bit stronger, and the second half didn’t have such a bewildering change in tone from the first (more on that shortly), The Lost Boys would be an absolute triumph. As it stands, it feels like a show that would have benefitted from an out-of-town tryout (although the complex production elements might have precluded this) or maybe another developmental workshop. The plot strands that should tug at the heartstrings (the mother and teenage boys escaping from an abusive patriarch, Maria Wirries’ semi-vampiric Star re-discovering her soul and conscience when she falls for Michael, the older of the sons, played by a suitably tortured L J Benet) plod along adequately but without ever becoming truly engaging, despite the efforts of the talented cast. 

Between the melancholic musings and endless belting, a degree of ennui sets in and you may find yourself waiting for the next piece of inventive visual extravagance or Bourzgui’s weird, malevolent charisma to reignite the night. The production certainly delivers on that front but the second act misguidedly attempts to have it both ways by suddenly becoming a big ole campfest, with results more irritating than delightful. Michael’s younger sibling Sam (a spirited Benjamin Pajak) falls in with the tiresome would-be vampire hunters the Frog brothers (Miguel Gil and Jennifer Dudak) and they perform a bizarre comedy number with multiple ensemble members done up as Mel Brooks-esque Draculas that seem to have slinked in from another show entirely. Young gay Sam also gets a lame coming-out number ‘Superpower’ with a selection of caped and masked superheroes in all the colours of the LGBTQ+ rainbow and that too feels like something that should have been cut in previews. 

It’s a shame because when the show works, it works extremely well. The always reliable, and golden-voiced, Shoshana Bean is hugely likeable as Lucy, the boys’ embattled mother. She makes something fine and touching out of ‘Wild’, the musical’s finest ballad, a soaring lament for lost youthful vitality, which Bean belts to the Palace’s rafters. Arguably the book’s most inspired deviation from the original screenplay is turning David and his gang into a locally revered rock band, and their anthemic opening banger ‘Have To Have You’, performed in front of a raucous mosh pit that rises out of the orchestra pit, is genuinely spine-tingling, especially as put over by the dynamic Bourzgui.

Benet and Wirries both field terrific voices and have just about enough presence and edge for their characters to cut through all the sound, sights and fury that constantly threatens to swallow individual figures whole. Paul Alexander Nolan initially seems wasted in the role of Lucy’s geeky new employer and potential suitor, but delivers an intense surprise that also, albeit too briefly, showcases his astonishing voice (his Jesus in the 2012 Broadway Superstar revival remains one of the most fearless and impressive I’ve ever seen). 

In all honesty, some of the effects are more likely to blow your mind if you haven’t seen Stranger Things: The First Shadow, currently playing right across Times Square from the Palace, but this is still a great-looking production. Individual elements (the souls of victims dropping silently into oblivion through the stage floor, the blind panic of a cop distracted from his investigative work by a mysterious force, the persistent defying of gravity by the undead gang members) linger longer in the mind than the overblown whole perhaps, but this is an undoubted crowdpleaser. Real musical theatre fans may be dismayed there aren’t more than half a dozen memorable tunes, but the sweep of the visual storytelling and sheer theatrical bravura go quite some way towards compensating, as does the star quality of Bourzgui.

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN

Book by Terrence McNally

Music by John Kander

Lyrics by Fred Ebb

based on the novel by Manuel Puig

directed by Paul Foster

Studio Theatre at Curve, Leicester – until 25 April 2026

https://www.curveonline.co.uk/whats-on/shows/kiss-of-the-spider-woman/

Bristol Old Vic – 29 April to 16 May 2026

https://bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/kiss-of-the-spider-woman

Mayflower Studios, Southampton – 2 to 6 June 2026

https://www.mayflower.org.uk/whats-on/kiss-of-the-spider-woman-2026/

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

Barely seen since the original London and New York productions in the early 1990s, Kiss Of The Spider Woman was beginning to feel like Kander and Ebb’s great ‘lost’ musical. Whether it was the shadow of an icon like Chita Rivera (the original Aurora/Spider Woman on both sides of the Atlantic) or Vanessa Williams (her Broadway successor) hanging over it, or the gleaming cruelty of Harold Prince’s initial staging and concept being deemed too intimidating to aspire to, or the harrowing subject matter, it was beginning to look like this web was never going to be spun again. 

Rejoice then, musical theatre aficionados and anybody looking for a thrilling, edgy evening in the theatre, because this viciously brilliant show is back. In Paul Foster’s pulsating, searing production, as scintillating as it’s dark, a persuasive case is made for this being acknowledged as a true classic, totally worthy of consideration alongside Cabaret and Chicago, the same writers’ better known hits. Based on the 1976 Manuel Puig novel which later became a movie with William Hurt and Raul Julia, it’s set in a prison cell in a fascistic South American state where the inmates are tortured, beaten and generally treated worse than lower life forms. 

Sharing a cell are macho political prisoner Valentin (George Blagden) and flamboyant gay window dresser Molina (Fabian Soto Pacheco) incarcerated for allegedly attempting to corrupt a minor. Molina is an avid cinema fan, using his celluloid-inspired fantasies to escape from his grim reality and the titular Spider Woman is a signature character of his favourite movie star Aurora, but she’s also a terrifying spectre of death who may actually be stalking the corridors of the prison. 

Terrence McNally’s book is a compulsive, occasionally distressing, mixture of harsh realities, jet-black humour and flights of fancy. Under Foster’s assured direction and in the note-perfect performances here, it plays out with the urgency of a thriller and the tenderness of a great romance, which, in a way, is what it turns out to be. McNally keeps deliberately murky what Molina’s true motivations are until fairly late in the play, and, in this production more than in Hal Prince’s fabled original, the nature of the affection that grows out of conflict between the two men is also more ambiguous.

The lightning fast changes in tone throughout Foster’s staging take the breath away. One moment, the stage is a furious pit of roiling despair, the horrific sounds of prisoners being tortured rending the air, the next we are in an exotic fantasia presided over by Molina’s beloved Aurora and her dancing boys, with Joanna Goodwin’s glorious choreography transporting us to the golden age of movie musicals. This juxtaposition of dark and light is tremendously powerful, the one constantly throwing the other into stark, theatrically electrifying relief. 

It takes a star to credibly portray a star and Anna-Jane Casey, with her megawatt smile, wide-ranging Merman-esque belt, boundless charisma and vertiginous high kicks, fits the bill. Her Aurora floods the stage with joie de vivre, while her sinuous, venomous Spider Woman moves seamlessly from soothing enchantment to snarling malevolence with barely perceptible gear changes. This is career highlight work, even by Casey’s standards, and costume designer Gabriella Slade gives her some opulently outlandish creations.

Pacheco is a wonderful find: his Molina is wounded, desperate, emotionally supple yet with a queenly dignity and sly humour. His renditions of the longing, lyrical ballads ‘She’s A Woman’ and ‘Mama It’s Me’ are as intensely moving as they are musically entrancing. He maybe reads as a little young, but that’s a tiny cavil against this star-making performance. 

Blagden, intense and magnetic, is every bit as impressive, the heat of political fervour mingled with rich, rare humanity. When he lets his ringing tenor loose on the defiant anthem ‘The Day After That’, you can feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Tori Scott is delicate and very touching as Molina’s beloved mother, and Davide Fienauri sensitively sketches in a bewildered waiter Molina was smitten with in the outside world, only to break his (and our) heart later when it’s revealed that his affection was possibly only in the prisoner’s head. Damian Buhagiar is dynamic and deeply horrible as a sadistic guard.

For my money, the score for Kiss Of The Spider Woman is Kander and Ebb’s greatest, most diverse score. From the shimmering foreboding of the title song (delivered here by Casey as an aria equal parts enthralling and downright frightening) through the Latin-inflected production numbers, brassy and fiendishly catchy, to the lyrical ballads, tangos, a wickedly funny Imperial Russian pastiche, and the poisoned whimsy of a morphine-induced hallucination with dreamily dancing medics, it’s a masterful collection of songs. Wildly theatrical and consistently exciting, it’s orchestrated by Sarah Travis to make the excellent six piece band sound appropriately epic.

David Woodhead’s chilly metallic set is constantly transformed by a lighting design by Howard Hudson that brilliantly expands and contracts the space according to whether we are in the prisoners heads or in their horrifying daily existences. Andrzej Goulding’s video design is another vital component in the production’s irresistible impact, linking the hellish prison setting with the Technicolor escapism and sepia-toned nostalgia of the silver screen. Matt Peploe’s sound is fabulous too, rousingly loud but not overwhelmingly so, and fully honouring Fred Ebb’s smart, emotionally resonant lyrics. The creative craft on display, both in the material and its execution here, is formidable.

The resilience of the human spirit over unimaginable adversity has long provided fertile ground for musical theatre (hello Les Mis and Miss Saigon) and Kiss Of The Spider Woman is one of the very best examples. But I wonder if the way it steadfastly refuses to sugarcoat the diabolical horrors of injustice and political martyrdom, even amongst and against all the showbiz dazzle, is why it has never achieved the widespread success it deserves. In as audacious example of a show having it both ways as I can recall, the final sequence is simultaneously exhilarating and unremittingly bleak.

Either way, here it finally is in all its uncompromising, glittering, bloody glory, an example of how devastatingly potent musical theatre can be, but seldom is. Foster’s production gives us a rollicking great time but never lets us off the hook. Drop dead gorgeous. 

 

INVISIBLE ME

by Bren Gosling

directed by Scott Le Crass

Southwark Playhouse Borough, London – until 2 May 2026

running time: 80 minutes no interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Getting older is a privilege denied to many but it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of that fact when you’re staring down the barrel of loneliness, physical aches and pains, ongoing grief and the feeling of invisibility in an ever-more frenetic modern world. Playwright Bren Gosling addresses this in his punchy but charming three hander, given a beautifully modulated production here by Scott Le Crass. Often laugh-out-loud funny, Invisible Me then suddenly floors you with an injection of real, earned emotion that palpably has audience members fighting back the tears. At times, it’s as though a trio of the Alan Bennett Talking Heads have been spliced together. 

Gosling creates a trio of singletons all turning sixty around the same time, and all living within a few Walthamstow streets of each other: timid Lynn (Tessa Peake-Jones) works part time as a chambermaid at the local Travelodge, priapic Alec (Kevin N Golding) is a London cabbie and reserved Jack (James Holmes) is a gay, HIV+ widower whose friends are trying to get him to socialise again. All three share a degree of crippling loneliness, which they each deal with in wildly differing ways, along with valid reasons not to fully trust their fellow humans. Mawkishness is kept at bay for the most part by a sense of humour that occasionally suggests a London-centric Victoria Wood at her most cosily trenchant.

Le Crass directs with sensitivity and attention to detail, but also a sense of real fun and a theatricality that isn’t always apparent in the writing, which is never less than engaging but, taken by itself, is so conversational and intimate that it sometimes feels as though it would work equally well on the telly or the radio. It takes maybe a little too long for these mismatched characters to actually talk TO each other rather than ABOUT each other to us, and, given how well so many people age these days, there were moments where these three felt more like they were turning seventy rather than sixty. If I hadn’t spent more nights than I care to remember watching dodgy late night documentaries on Channel 4, I might’ve found the plot strand about Lynn’s foray into sex work a tad far-fetched, but actually it rings true (especially as played so terrifically by Peake-Jones), even if it’s a bit of a thematic non sequitur.

Peake-Jones and Holmes wring every drop of pathos and humour out of their roles, and when their characters finally connect, you feel the audience collectively exhale. Golding brings a fizzy, contrasting energy to the laddish Alec, and makes endearing a character that in less likeable hands could be really obnoxious.

Invisible Me gives theatrical voice to a tranche of the populace that we don’t often get to see on stage. It has a warts-and-all authenticity and core of genuine kindness, the message that we can all be looking for connection at any stage of life comes through loud and clear. There’s a wonky joy to the dancing finale that stays with you long after the final bows. Lovely stuff.

HEART WALL

by Kit Withington

directed by Katie Greenall

Bush Theatre, London – until 16 May 2026

running time: 100 minutes no interval

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/heart-wall/

Audience participation karaoke on the immersive pub set (designer: Hazel Low) that has taken over the Bush’s main house makes for a disarming start to Kit Withington’s new comedy-drama. It sets a misleadingly playful tone for Katie Greenall’s production which curdles quite drastically as this Mancunian-accented slice of social realism progresses. Heart Wall is richly enjoyable for sure, but it’s equal parts elliptical and accessible, examining the harrowing subjects of grief and fractured families through a booze and pop music-fuelled lens that sometimes blurs focus but is seldom less than engrossing.

Twenty-something Franky (Rowan Robinson) has returned home to the North West for a visit from London, prompted by friends expressing concern that her Dad, proudly working class Dez (Deka Walmsley), is behaving strangely; meanwhile Mum Linda (Sophie Stanton) is spending an inordinate amount of time at her own mother’s, the family pet rabbit has gone missing….and over at the local pub where the landlady hasn’t been seen in months, every night is karaoke night. Withington constructs short, staccato scenes with plenty of humour and heart, that collectively build up a convincing picture of community and people with shared history whose lives are tetchily intertwined.

At times it resembles soap opera, and I mean that as a compliment: the characters have a relatable, ripped-from-life vitality, complete with quirks and flaws, and they express themselves in language that sounds like real people talking, bubbling over with pop culture references and verbal idiosyncrasies. Withington’s dialogue is salty, funny (“have you ever seen your nana’s toenails? Have you ever just caught sight of them, Frank? They’re like little shovels on the end of each foot…She always has her shoes off. She won’t mither with slippers”)…and sometimes gains an expected poetic edge. Amongst all the naturalism, a pervasive strangeness intrigues and troubles. Withington keeps her cards close to her chest until fairly late on as to where all this is heading, resulting in the same must-watch compulsiveness of the finest soaps. If the final revelations are a tad anti-climactic, the journey to get there is entirely worth the taking.

Perhaps surprisingly, the shifts in tone tend to keep the piece fresh and engaging rather than whiplash-inducing. The quality of the acting is undoubtedly an enormous contributing factor to this:  to see a whole company so thoroughly and convincingly inhabit their roles to this extent is a rare pleasure and, honestly, an encapsulation of the magic of theatre. Robinson makes Franky simultaneously needy and independent, a bright, complex young woman with a streak of self-obsession that becomes increasingly apparent and understandable as the story goes on. Walmsley is tremendous as struggling, self-flagellating Dez, his sudden outbursts of volcanic anger breaking through an otherwise stoic exterior. Stanton is so natural as Linda, finding the delicate balance between kindness and exasperated grit, that it barely looks like acting. Olivia Forrest is a knockout, but with unexpected depth, as Franky’s old school friend, and Aaron Anthony is heartwarming yet totally real as the pub barman who has the greatest handle on what’s going on with this disparate group of people. This is ensemble acting at it’s very best.

Greenall’s staging is exquisitely paced, snappy when it needs to be but slowing down to realise, quite beautifully, the play’s more sensitive and sinister moments. That said, the blocking throughout favours the central section of the Bush’s auditorium, giving the unfortunate impression that the show has been directed for a traditional proscenium stage rather than the open one with audience on three sides, where it is actually playing. The karaoke theme sometimes feels a little grafted-on, meaning that fragments of songs are performed throughout. This is mostly great fun, although a rendition of The Pretenders’ ‘Brass In Pockets’ as part of a mother-daughter rapprochement is more baffling and awkward than inspired.

Low’s design, Simisola Majekodunmi’s lighting and Mwen’s sound and compositions are vivid components in the production’s overall impact, turning downright lairy when required. Minor quibbles aside, Heart Wall is an excellent example of a piece that successfully straddles quality drama and popular entertainment. It’s laugh-out-loud funny and, ultimately, genuinely moving, never mawkish. Withington’s love for her mouthy, fallible characters is palpable, and this dream cast bring them to vibrant life. Recommended.