ajhlovestheatre

I’M EVERY WOMAN – THE CHAKA KHAN MUSICAL 

written by Nia T Hill

directed by Racky Plews

Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre, Wembley – until 27 September 2026

running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval 

https://www.imeverywomanthemusical.com/

On paper, a stage musical inspired by the life of Chaka Khan must have seemed like a good idea. After all, it worked for Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, Frankie Valli and Cher. With her triumph over abusive marriages and decades of drug abuse, family estrangements, fascinatingly mercurial professional fortunes, and being responsible for some of the greatest R’n’B and Soul classics across nearly half a century, Khan’s life story surely looked like a slam dunk for a meaty musical drama in the vein of Jersey Boys or Tina. I’m Every Woman – The Chaka Khan Musical ain’t it though, despite a world class band and a dignified central performance from Alexandra Burke.

It doesn’t help that it’s being staged in the cavernous Troubadour Wembley Park, a venue with all the warmth and atmosphere of an aircraft hangar. This puts Racky Plews’ production at a disadvantage before we even get to Nia T Hill’s painfully literal script, which repeatedly favours telling over showing, to ever more deadening theatrical effect. The writing leap frogs from one dramatic development to another without providing enough, if any, connective tissue to provoke empathy or even interest. For instance, one moment Chaka is seen being stretchered off to hospital after a life-threatening overdose, and the next she’s getting dressed for her second wedding. We learn that she’s great mates with Prince (Miles Anthony Daley, for some reason wigged-up to look more like James Brown), and that she’s got a dysfunctional relationship with her budding musician daughter (Charlotte St Croix), but we mostly have to take the book’s word for it, as there’s not much evidence in what we’re given to watch. 

Similarly, Chaka and her sisters sit around and chat brain-fatigued dialogue about how hard it is for a Black woman in the music industry, but we never get to see that, and by the end of the scene, one of these women is now Khan’s manager. As career progressions go, that actually seems extraordinarily easy. Facetiousness aside, Hill’s book barely hints at Chaka’s unique fire and drive, or at just what a seminal contribution she has made to popular music. It’s simultaneously over-stuffed (with extraneous characters and plot strands) and under-nourished.

It’s also so poorly constructed that the plot twist that explains why the normally excellent Chrissie Bhima, playing Chaka’s annoying AF bestie and enabler, appears to be in a different show from everybody else, comes across as more of a non sequitur than a revelation. With eye-rolling repetition, scenes begin with actors playing Khan’s famous friends and colleagues greeting each other by exclaiming their full name (“Stevie Wonder!” “Luther Vandross!” “Whitney Houston!”) solely to clue the audience in on as to who they’re supposed to be. As storytelling goes, it’s pretty rudimentary.

Burke has authentic star presence and looks sensational, but she’s too cool, too elegant to convey Khan’s formidable feistiness. She has a stunningly good voice but, while powerful and frequently exhilarating, it has a floating purity and sweetness at odds with the earth and tang of the real thing. It’s also unfortunate that there are a couple of supporting cast members who look rather more like the real Chaka Khan than the leading lady does.

Despite all this, certain aspects of the staging impress. Act one includes an interesting, galvanising sequence highlighting Khan’s early involvement with the Black Panthers Civil Rights movement. The singing is top-to-bottom fabulous, and the musical supervision, arrangements and orchestrations by Mark Crossland really do justice to the wealth of terrific songs (“Ain’t Nobody”, “I Feel For You”, “You Got The Love”) connected with the artist, even if, across a chronically overlong show, it can get a bit relentless, prompting the thought that maybe you can have too much of a good thing. Chris Whybrow’s exceptionally fine sound design ensures that every instrument and lyric is heard and when it seeks to turn up the intensity, you feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

The visuals, with sliding scenic panels and heavy use of video design, are more gritty than glam but mostly work well. Ebony Clarke’s choreography feels comfortingly familiar but has a dynamism and vitality that successfully shakes up a sometimes sluggish evening. That said, a risible interpretive dance section designed to show Chaka’s tempestuous marriage to abusive Richard Holland should have been cut in previews, as should the deeply eggy moment he breaks into song when he realises she has overdosed. 

Still, it’s a thrill to hear the Grammy winning Stevie Winwood track “Higher Love” done with gusto, and to see the seminal “Ain’t Nobody” repurposed first as a slow, angsty Blues number for Holland (Daley again, singing his heart out) before becoming a joyous declaration of adoration in an inventively staged fairground sequence. The long-awaited title number goes for disappointingly little in the context of the show but is restored to full roof-raising majesty in the obligatory megamix. The final couple of minutes, when the dreadful script is abandoned and Burke leads cast and band through some of Chaka’s greatest hits to the roaring crowd, are so uplifting it’s hard not to wonder if I’m Every Woman – The Chaka Khan Musical might not have fared better as an upmarket tribute act.

MIDNIGHT AT THE NEVER GET

Book, music and lyrics by Mark Sonnenblick

directed by David Cromer 

Menier Chocolate Factory, London – until 12 September 2026

running time: 100 minutes including interval 

https://www.menierchocolatefactory.com/tickets/midnight-at-the-never-get/

Midnight At The Never Get, the crafty, compelling off-Broadway tuner receiving its UK premiere at the Menier, features one of the cruellest and most powerful coups de théâtre I’ve witnessed in quite some time. It adds an extra layer to an already rich cake that marbles together the easy charm of late night cabaret, the trauma of being gay in a time and place (early to mid 20th century in the USA) where it wasn’t legal, and an exploration of the unreliability of memory and the lies that we tell about ourselves. I’m not going to reveal here what the surprise is, but suffice it to say that it lends an extraordinary emotional punch to the conclusion of David Cromer’s richly enjoyable production, and explains why the cast list in the programme doesn’t include the character names.

The show also marks the London theatrical debut of Broadway’s Ben Platt, and he’s giving a performance that equals if not surpasses his original Evan Hansen and his more recent turn as Leo Frank in the Main Stem revival of Parade. Platt plays Trevor Copeland, a night club singer in 1960s looking back with a combination of regret, bitterness but predominantly joy at his romantic and professional partnership with songwriter and musician Arthur Brightman (Gregor Milne, absolutely wonderful).

The Never Get of the title is the name of the divey underground cabaret club in Greenwich Village where Copeland and Brightman perform their set of elegant lounge/easy listening songs with a gay twist, the underlying threat of NYPD raids a constant. Award-winning designer Scott Pask has had a field day turning the Menier’s entire auditorium into an intimate, atmospheric night club, a thrust stage fronting a curtained bandstand, dining tables and chairs in the central section, grimy mirrors and plush banquettes punctuated by tiny drinks shelves with lamps all around the sides. All that’s missing is the sound of a cocktail shaker and the tug of smoke. The utterly gorgeous lighting is by Heather Gilbert. Visually, it’s all so redolent of nocturnal old school New York that it’s quite the shock to emerge out into still partially sunlit Borough. Frankly, the technical elements (punchy, precise sound by Paul Groothuis, elegant costuming by Jonathan Lipman and attractive, full-blooded orchestrations by Andrew Resnick) are such that the production would be worth seeing, even if the piece wasn’t as good as it is (and it really is good).

In Mark Sonnenblick’s script, the contrast between bouncy, charming Trevor and watchful, volatile Arthur is vividly rendered, and Platt and Milne have such palpable chemistry that they genuinely convince as a couple, whether bickering or executing Lynne Page’s charmingly airy, loose-limbed choreography. Sonnenblick also created the score, a collection of swinging numbers and haunting ballads that would not disgrace Cole Porter or Bobby Darin. There’s a biting, rueful wit to a song like ‘Boy In Blue’ performed with mic-swinging aplomb by Platt as a cheeky semi-erotic ode to the cops who would arrest Copeland and Brightman simply for existing, while others, such as the bluesy ballads ‘When It’s Spring Again’ or ‘The Mercy of Love’ clutch at the heartstrings with their intimations of romances conducted in the shadows.

Cromer’s masterly staging strikes a perfect balance between escapism and the harsh realities of leading lives under constant low level threat. The concept of the whole thing being a night club act with Trevor and Arthur’s relationships being played out in flashback feels bracingly original, even if the storytelling could sometimes be a little clearer. The creeping realisation that Platt’s brilliantly fleshed-out Copeland, his down-home Idaho roots and sense of wonder often just perceptible under his New York showbiz brio, may be a less-than-reliable narrator is effectively managed. So are the tragic, yet self-serving compromises Brightman needs to make to fully realise his professional potential.

Perhaps controversially, I find Platt a stronger actor than singer. His truthful, quirky choices and ability to turn on a dime from cocky showmanship to sinking so far into himself as to become almost invisible are fascinating to behold, and his emotional availability is devastating. His singing voice is a superb, wide-ranging instrument but with just a touch too much vibrato in the ringing higher register for my taste. That’s nitpicking really though: this is a tremendous performance, and London is so lucky to have him, especially to see this level of work at such close quarters.

Milne complements him perfectly, in a magnificent, multi-layered turn that’s as dramatically true as it is musically impressive. West End veteran Barry James contributes an invaluable, haunting cameo.

This is very special indeed. A classy, highly original piece of musical theatre that’s as entertaining as it is ultimately heartbreaking. I suspect the Menier Chocolate Factory has a massive, and deserved, hit on its hands. Get yourself to The Never Get.

THE JONATHAN LARSON PROJECT

Music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson

conceived by Jennifer Ashley Tepper

directed by John Simpkins 

Southwark Playhouse Elephant, London – until 22 August 2026

running time: 90 minutes no interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/the-jonathan-larson-project/

There ought to be a rule in theatre to the effect that if you’re doing a rock musical then it needs to be thrillingly loud. The idea of a quiet Spring Awakening, a muted Hedwig, a gentle Superstar, or a hushed Rent is anathema. That last show, something of a global phenomenon and due back in the West End later this year, was the work of Jonathan Larson, the creative whose storied premature death in 1996, aged just 35, robbed the theatre of a major voice who, on the basis of Rent and its unfinished sister show Tick Tick Boom, should have been one of the architects of the future of the musical.

The Jonathan Larson Project, conceived by New York based writer and producer Jennifer Ashley Tepper and seen off-Broadway last year, collates seldom or never heard songs from the prodigiously gifted composer-lyricist into a ninety minute format; it’s not a musical as such but a song cycle, and the material, although displaying an impressively eclectic range of influences, has a potent rock sensibility that cries out for blasted, face-melting amplification. There should be light and shade of course, but this is music that should really smack you in the face. A significant disappointment in this London premiere, helmed by original NYC director John Simpkins, is that the whole thing sounds so anaemic. It’s clearly not that sound designer Alistair Fenman doesn’t know how to turn the volume up – the play-out music, performed ‘live’ by Livvi van Warmelo’s terrific band, has a satisfyingly bombastic depth and edge – but for most of the show, there’s an aural landscape that feels like the theatrical equivalent of paddling with your wellies on. 

The reduced sound levels at least mean that the intricacies of the orchestrations can be appreciated but, surprisingly, have little impact on the lyrics, of which only about 40% , at a generous estimate, can be deciphered. That’s perhaps not an insurmountable problem for park-and-bark solos but renders numbers like the comic ‘Hosing The Furniture’ about (I think) a clean-obsessed housewife manically breaking down, or another that satirically spoofs the electoral system, into bewildering, incomprehensible messes, despite the energy of the performances.  It’s a shame, mainly because Larson was an earthy, witty lyricist, capable of profound depth when required, but also because, shorn of context and meaning, these songs en masse can get a little relentless. Where a revue like Side By Side By Sondheim, showcasing numbers take out of context of their original musicals, works because each one is like a mini-play, frequently with a strong sense of character identity, this one falters as only a couple of the songs, which collectively scream early career potential, have that level of specificity and theatricality. 

For all the attempts by director Simpkins to inject theatrical life into the proceedings (there’s insistent, superfluous choreography by Taylor Walker, and an artfully grungy set by Nate Bertone that, with minimal tweaking, could easily host a production of Rent) there were a couple of moments where I did wonder if I might not equally have enjoyed listening to the album at home rather than watching the actual show. The origin of individual songs is briefly (too briefly) projected above the stage, but you have to be pretty quick to catch them. 

Although the lighting by Sam Biondolillo is nicely evocative of a shadowy, twilit New York, most of the visuals consist of having the cast of five clasping hands and gazing at each other meaningfully, or staring soulfully into the middle distance while belting soulfully. On the night I caught the show, some of the singing was more enthusiastic than accurately pitched, but the company (Marcus Collins, Max Harwood, Natalie Kassanga, Michael Mathers, Imelda Warren Green) hurl themselves at the material with commitment. Collins fields a particularly enjoyable rangy pop tenor and Warren Green has pleasing comedy chops on top of a formidable belt, while Kassanga’s warmth and presence is consistently engaging. The show begins and ends with recordings of Larson performing in his charmingly idiosyncratic style and it’s probably a wise move that no impersonation is attempted by any of the cast.

What shines through nonetheless is Larson’s melodic profligacy; at best, his tunes shimmer, stir and soar, lodging in the heart and memory, provoking exhilaration and tears. His musical literacy still takes the breath away, with nods to blues, jazz, calypso, opera etc. that are skilful and seldom self-conscious. There’s a wit and joy to his ability to borrow, openly, from other composers: here it’s Gershwin as the transformative power ballad ‘Rhapsody’ rapturously samples ‘Rhapsody In Blue’, where Rent had Puccini (‘Musetta’s Waltz’ from La Bohème was the inspiration behind struggling musician Roger’s opus) and Tick Tick Boom Sondheim (Sunday but in a diner rather than La Grande Jatte). It’s also fascinating, if you’re familiar with Larson’s two main shows, to note the echoing and foreshadowing in much of the material here, some of it intended as standalone, some of it created for other projects, and some of it previously unperformed.

Not every song is a winner, indeed some of them have more than a whiff of self-indulgence, but then they are examples of quintessentially early work of a man who tragically never realised his full potential but had more melodic invention, mastery of multiple genres and lyrical ingenuity than many other creatives could probably dream of. The Jonathan Larson Project isn’t a wholly satisfying theatrical venture but as a smorgasbord of extraordinary writing talent, and a footnote to musical theatre history, it has much to offer.

TENDER

by Eleanor Tindall

directed by Emily Aboud

Bush Theatre, London – until 1 August 2026

running time: 90 minutes no interval

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/tender-2026/

Returning two years after its successful premiere run in the Bush’s Studio, Eleanor Tindall’s two-hander (now semi-recast) arrives on the main stage of this beloved West London venue, and seems very much at home there, even if it provokes more questions than it provides answers to. An intriguing mash-up of thriller, lesbian rom com and an existential, psychological gruesomeness that reads like a slightly less nihilistic Sarah Kane, Tender is a genuine original: messy (in all sorts of ways), slightly confusing, but also dynamic, imaginative and inescapably disturbing.

Two lonely young women find each other in a bustling, dehumanising capital city impervious to their existences. Ash (a luminous Francesca Amewudah-Rivers) just moved into her own flat, and is trying to launch herself into the lesbian social scene while being cyber-stalked by a seriously disturbed ex-boyfriend. Coffee shop barista Ivy (Nadi Kemp-Sayfi, making an artform out of neurosis), lives with her largely absent boyfriend, has a penchant for self harm and girl-on-girl porn, and is being similarly plagued by calls and messages from her needy, possibly unstable younger brother. Ash and Ivy connect over a shared lighter, and their road to romance, or at least the bedroom, is paved with misunderstandings, fudged overtures and copious amounts of white wine. 

Tindall’s script isn’t satisfied with this being a simple coming-out love story with excess baggage though. Enjoyable and interesting as it undoubtedly is, Tender is over-stuffed with ideas.  A back wall in a vibrant yellow hue redolent of the lilies Ash’s ex bombards her with, pulses and contracts like a living being, suggesting something urgent and threatening concealed behind; there’s an intimation of traumas past controlling us as we attempt to get on with present lives. Ivy, the kind of human who seems to have at least one less layer of skin than regular people, has a fixation with blood and bleeding, never fully explained but sometimes startlingly realised at key moments in Emily Aboud’s production. It could be a metaphor although Ash specifically refers to it at one point, and is possibly tied to the aborting of an unwanted baby that Ivy goes through. 

She’s played by the beguiling, unsettling Kemp-Sayfi as a sort-of cross between a youthful Claudia Winkleman, and Emily Blunt at her most hilariously brittle, a ball of contradictions, hypersensitivities and hang-ups. Remarkably, despite her issues and her selfishness, Ivy never becomes tiresome, which I suspect may be as much due to Kemp-Sayfi’s skills as an actor as it is to the writing. Amewudah-Rivers, new to the cast, is every bit her equal. She conveys a life-enhancing sunniness in Ash but underpins it with a sense of isolation that is supremely affecting; it’s just really beautiful work.

Ellie Sherwood’s booming, jarring sound design and David Doyle’s moody lighting add to the general unease, as does Alys Whitehead’s strange, borderline ugly set, and Aboud directs with consummate focus and sensitivity. Tindall has an unerring ear for snappy, relatable dialogue that sounds like a rip-snortingly funny version of how young-ish modern urbanites talk to each other: sweary, choppy, full of dropped clangers and self-consciousness. It’s so authentic, and performed with such throwaway naturalism by Amewudah-Rivers and Kemp-Sayfi that it takes a couple of minutes to adjust ones listening, meaning a few lines get lost. The sexual chemistry between the actors (excellent intimacy work by Tommy Ross-Williams) is palpable and potent.

The angsty comedy is spliced with lengthy direct address speeches, some rooted in reality and some getting progressively stranger as this baggy yet compulsive play fires off in all directions. The plot hinges on a couple of coincidences that strain credulity, but the two actors are so persuasive it matters surprisingly little when you are watching. Ultimately, I’m not sure what the point of Tender is, or even if it really has one, but it’s a pretty exciting, edgy ninety minutes of theatre, sensationally well performed. I loved the quizzical, sour-sweet ending. Also, how often do you get to see something on stage where hilarity, revulsion and sex co-exist so successfully? I was mystified but I was overall enthralled.

ALLEGRA

by Peter Quilter

directed by Stephen Mear

Harold Pinter Theatre, London – until 8 August 2026

running time: 2 hours including interval 

https://www.allegraplay.com

Maureen Lipman is many things: a formidable artist equally at home on stage and screen, a witty, relatable writer, an outspoken commentator on international politics, a Dame, and a gifted director (her 2017 production of late husband Jack Rosenthal’s cabbie comedy The Knowledge was a treat). She’s a brilliant comedienne and, as seen in the 2023 revival of Rose, Martin Sherman’s monologue of Jewish resilience and survival, a fine actor of extraordinary potency and poignancy. What she doesn’t come across as though, at least on stage, is especially warm, and that’s a problem for Allegra, the song-studded comedy by Peter Quilter now playing a month-long West End season following a brief national tour. 

Lipman plays the title role, an extravagantly eccentric pensioner with a penchant for breaking into song at the drop of a hat, apparently unable, when off her meds (which she constantly is), to perceive the difference between real life and the elaborate song-and-dance numbers in her head. This gets Allegra in a lot of trouble with nearby businesses, where she’s seen as a bit of a menace, and with the local constabulary, much to the exasperation and worry of her slightly younger brother (a game John Middleton). Lipman brings beautiful comic timing and dominating presence to a role that requires those things but would also benefit from a kooky, off-the-wall fragility and sense of wonder. She’s too flinty and knowing, though genuinely moving later on when Allegra gives in to pressure, takes her pills and stops singing, becoming just a husk of the woman she was.

As theatrical premises go, the perception of fantasy versus reality, and the conflict between personal happiness and conforming to the norm, are both ripe with dramatic possibilities. Unfortunately Quilter’s flavourless writing, reminiscent of an undemanding 1980s TV sitcom, explores very few of them, preferring instead a flat, presentational style where the jokes only intermittently land. 

Allegra’s irrepressible joie de vivre in contrast to the humdrum lives around her, and the assumption that a person of advanced years should fit uncomplainingly into a well-behaved box while their imagination and exuberance ebbs away, makes an intriguing but unexplored jumping-off point for a play that promises but doesn’t deliver. Stephen Mear’s visually attractive staging puts La Lipman – resplendent in a pink-tinged fright wig from JJ Wigs and suitably outlandish outfits courtesy of designer Justin Williams – centre stage, but there’s nothing he or his leading lady can do to rescue the wan script.

The dialogue is punctuated by vintage easy listening songs, including a slightly awkward audience participation singalong, that register but never soar as Allegra disappears into her own special world. ‘Tiptoe Through The Tulips’ fares best because at least we get tulips bursting through bits of Williams’ kitchen set and an attempt at showbiz exuberance. ‘Singin’ In The Rain’ gets rainbow umbrellas and cute dance moves (Mear also choreographs, and he is authentically one of the UK’s best), but it’s never clear if the aim is nostalgia or irony.

There’s a lack of magic in the gulf between Allegra’s florid imagination and what we get to see: nothing is as funny, touching or transporting as it should be. Elizabeth Bower and Bailey Patrick work hard as, respectively, Allegra’s Czech carer-cum-housekeeper and an increasingly cheesed-off policeman, but the writing gives them insufficient to play with. With the exception of the title role, the characters are thinly drawn to the point of translucence.

Allegra, the character and the play, should touch the heart of, and connect with, everyone – after all, we all have elderly loved ones in our lives, or at least harbour hope to reach a proper old age – but almost everything falls flat. It’s a star vehicle where the star feels miscast. 

FUN HOME

Music by Jeanine Tesori

Book and lyrics by Lisa Kron 

based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel

directed by Sarah Frankcom

Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester – until 1 August 2026

running time: 100 minutes no interval 

https://www.royalexchange.co.uk/event/fun-home/

Although Fun Home breaks so many of the rules of traditional musical theatre (only a handful of real numbers, although music runs through, under and over the dialogue like an extra character, a female lead who mainly watches from the sidelines, a deeply flawed anti-hero who makes some appalling choices), every time I see it I become more convinced it’s the most perfect modern tuner. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron have created a searing modern classic. Sarah Frankcom’s stunning in-the-round production for Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre matches the brilliance of Sam Gold’s original New York and London versions and Róisín McBrinn’s stylishly sepulchral Dublin staging a couple of years ago. There are certain visual choices dictated by Alison Bechdel in the autobiographical graphic novel upon which this Olivier-nominated and Tony-winning Best Musical is based, that each iteration shares, but every version to date is distinctive and finds new colours in this unique musical. 

Visual artist Alison Bechdel grew up with the suspicion that her father Bruce – teacher, aesthete and a funeral director – was gay, only to have that confirmed when he took his own life within months of her own coming out, and she committed her unconventional family history to a pictorial novel that is part exorcism, part exploration. The title is the jokey name the Bechdels gave to the family undertaking business (funeral home = fun home). Kron’s fine script depicts Alison in triplicate: the older woman, played here by Jodie McNee, an artist sitting at her drawing table, summoning up images and figures from her damaged past, the college kid (Alice Audrey O’Hanlon) joyfully discovering love and her own sexuality for the first time, and the child, exuberant but watchful (Harriet O’Shea at the performance I saw, but the kids roles are alternately played by three different teams). It’s a neat, dramatically satisfying concept and one that becomes almost unbearably moving when the three of them interact, as they do in ‘Flying Away’, the luminous, releasing finale.

Tesori has composed the music to three of the greatest American musical theatre scores of the last twenty years (the others being Caroline, or Change and award-winning Kimberly Akimbo, about to get its UK premiere at Hampstead) and her work is so eclectically in tune with the requirements of situation, character and time period that it almost doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Fun Home pastiches the 1970s TV themes that Bechdel grew up with, mixes it up with folk and pop, and then cross-fertilises with an intensity and lyrical beauty that recalls Sondheim at his most interesting. Kron’s lyrics and book make the transition between speech and song barely noticeable. If a tenet of musical theatre is that characters burst into song when they have no other means of expressing themselves, Fun Home is a prime example of that. The score has sweep and drama, a delightful specificity and, at times, an endearing oddness. Snatches of melody shimmer and tantalise, occasionally blossoming into a full blown number, and nothing ever feels wasted.

Visually, this Fun Home is quietly astounding, employing a couple of revolves and a giant, circular light installation that unfurls like a flower, or, less benignly, like a swirling gigantic hydra that threatens to swallow whole the humans engulfed in painful memories and conflicts below. Peter Butler’s scenic design is pretty abstract, augmented by some pieces of antique furniture and at one point an actual coffin, but still gives a strong sense of time and place. Bethany Gupwell’s lighting bathes much of the action in the warm golden glow of memory before whitening out the colour pallet to something stark and unforgiving as the story approaches its shattering, inevitable climax. Yshani Perinpanayagam’s six piece band, perched on one of the upper galleries, sounds impressive and textured but never overwhelms the voices. 

The show is beautifully cast. McNee’s Alison compellingly puts herself through hell remembering traumas past but also finds a compassion for her late, troubled Dad that is tremendously affecting. She’s wonderful, and so is O’Hanlon’s Medium Alison, so open and confused, then enraptured before imperceptibly toughening up as she realises her own survival may depend on drawing a veil over her troubled home life.

Harriet O’Shea’s Small Alison conveys the serious watchfulness of a child who has seen way more than a person of so few years ever should have, and her version of the iconic ‘Ring of Keys’ number where the little girl gets an inkling of her authentic nature (“Why am I the only one who sees you’re beautiful? No, I mean…handsome”) is superb.

As Joan, the rebellious student who becomes Alison’s first love, Natasha Cottriall is gloriously stroppy yet kind, suggesting both a safe haven and a force of nature. As the various men seduced and captivated by Bruce, Lucca Chadwick-Patel registers potently.

Alex Young subtly astonishes as Alison’s mother Helen, an educator and community theatre actress all too aware of the unconventional nature of her marriage. Young offers a nuanced, painfully honest portrayal of a woman for whom being on edge is her permanent default mode, but who’s smart enough to see the damage being wrought. Every student of acting through song needs to see Young’s extraordinary version of ‘Days And Days’, simultaneously a cri de coeur aria, an admission of complicity and a warning. It simply doesn’t get better than this.

Nigel Harman as Bruce is quite different from any of his predecessors, giving us less the self-hating, pernickety closeted man marinated in shame and disillusion, and more the self-possessed ‘sliver fox’ who on some level feels he’s entitled to have it all. When he sings “I might still break a heart or two” we are in no doubt that he believes it. His arrogance gives way to an almost childlike tentativeness once he realises he and Alison are cut from similar cloth. The sense of a man who imposes painstaking rigour and precision on his restoration of artefacts and antiques to mask his messy and murky inner life is still keenly felt, and his flashes of incandescent rage are utterly chilling. This is career-redefining work, magnificently well sung and shedding thrilling new light on one of the most fascinating and problematic leading roles in all musical theatre.

Ultimately, Fun Home, especially when done as well as it is here, demonstrates that something unremittingly sad can prove utterly exhilarating, with that shaft of light that illuminates the darker recesses of the human soul. This Manchester premiere is an unabashed triumph, a world class version of a beautiful gut-punch of a musical. Do not miss it, and take tissues.

ARCHDUKE

by Rajiv Joseph

directed by Lyndsey Turner 

Royal Court Theatre, London – until 25 July 2026

running time: 2 hours including interval

https://royalcourttheatre.com/events/archduke/

Rajiv Joseph’s rollicking, troubling dark comedy only premiered off-Broadway late last year, so this must be one of the most speedy theatrical transatlantic crossings in recent memory. It’s not hard to see why; despite its theme and setting (it’s a surreal revisionist take on the run-up to the assassination in 1914 Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an event that precipitated WW1), Archduke has an unmistakable urgency and relevance to right now. 

Lyndsey Turner’s gruesomely magical production for the Royal Court is not a replica of the Roundabout Theatre version that New Yorkers enjoyed last year and it is quite a treat, if you’ve got a strong enough stomach. There are echoes of Beckett, Orton, Stoppard and Peter Barnes (fittingly, all writers who have had work produced at the Court) in Joseph’s script, as history, absurdity and bonkers swirl headily together. He plays fast and loose with the historical facts but has a masterly command of macabre, gleeful humour and meatily vivid language. 

Joseph sees, in this tale of three apparently expendable young men with hopeless futures and scant critical thinking skills recruited to carry out a political assassination that will have global repercussions, a metaphor for similarly impressionable people in the present day being groomed and indoctrinated into extremist organisations. (“It’s not your fault you’re choking!..You could have had a life, but now you don’t… someone took your life away from you, son! Someone took it all away. How’s that make you feel?”) He doesn’t belabour the point, couching it in salty dialogue and a gallery of characters ranging from the endearing (if morally questionable) to the downright terrifying.

Stanley Morgan and Chris Walley make a delightful tragicomic double act as Gavrilo and Nedeljko, their youthful lives blighted by malnutrition and tuberculosis, but both possessed of a stubborn vitality that makes you care from the outset. There are shades of a young Vladimir and Estragon, only much funnier, in their naive, periodically aggressive ramblings. They’re joined by Abraham Popoola’s winningly disdainful Trifko, who initially imagines himself their superior but eventually realises he too is a pawn in somebody else’s game. 

The principal player of said game is Serbian army officer and Black Hand gang leader Dragutin ‘Apis’ Dimitrijevic, an actual historical figure manifested here as a rampant comic-horror turn, equal parts bluster, bile and brutality. He brags, with nauseating explicitness, about his murder of the late Serbian King and Queen, and the bullets embedded in his body like a badge of honour beneath his lavishly brocaded uniform (excellent costumes by Evie Gurney). Marc Wootton delivers a brilliant, unsettling tour de force as this reprehensible, vain but fascinating bully, relishing the extravagant speechifying, and the malignant control he exerts over everybody else. Apis comes armed with his loquacious cook (a gloriously deranged Janice Connolly), hell bent on feeding the boys up but complicit and deadly beneath all the surface cosiness. Cherries in brandy are not exactly a common delicacy but I doubt they’ll be on anybody’s menu after watching Archduke…

The tone throughout is of quirky comic lunacy with a constant undertow of simmering threat. Joseph doesn’t overemphasise the parallels between Middle Europe in the early twentieth century and now, but he doesn’t need to. The message that hopeless people can be coerced into doing desperate things registers potently through the ages. The violence, when it comes, has a wild cartoonish edge (outstanding fight direction by Sam Lyon-Behan) but not without acknowledging the excruciating pain being inflicted. 

Designer Es Devlin sets the whole thing in what appears to be a satisfyingly well ordered railway tunnel, murky-dark and snaking just around a corner that we can’t see.  The dark cylindrical void is filled for the final scene with a sumptuous train carriage, carrying Gavrilo, Nedeljko and Trifko to Sarajevo as they head off to alter the course of world history, followed by their prescribed suicides (“it’s not a suicide…so much…but rather an embracing of Serbian National Pride” as Apis helpfully points out). Devlin’s work here is a gorgeous feat of stage design, complemented by lighting by Neil Austin that gives us just enough illumination to see what’s going on, but not sufficient that we can begin to work out how Skylar Fox’s understated but impressive tricks and illusions are effected. The whole production has bags of atmosphere.

For all its cleverness and sinister humour, Archduke ultimately feels slightly less than the sum of its parts. It somewhat runs out of dramatic and comic steam a little before the end, something that not even Turner’s well nigh flawless staging can disguise. It’s a richly enjoyable, thought-provoking evening though, and more accessible than the same writer’s Bengal Tiger At Baghdad Zoo, seen late last year at the Young Vic. If your sense of humour tends towards the gallows, you’ll find a lot to enjoy here.

ARCADIA 

by Tom Stoppard 

directed by Carrie Cracknell

Duke of York’s Theatre (soon to be Tom Stoppard Theatre!), London – until 12 September 2026

running time: 3 hours including interval 

https://arcadiawestend.co.uk

Claimed by some to be Tom Stoppard’s masterpiece, Arcadia has now been entrancing and perplexing theatregoers for over thirty years. Buoyed up by generally stellar reviews and the recent death of the playwright, Carrie Cracknell’s in-the-round staging sold out at the Old Vic and now arrives in the West End, substantially recast, at the Duke of York’s, a venue soon to be renamed for Stoppard. That’s a fitting tribute, given the writer’s outstanding long term contribution to British theatre, plus his legitimate connection to this particular playhouse. His Artist Descending A Staircase played here in the 1990s, as did the transfer of his 2006 Rock’n’Roll from the Royal Court, while a starry earlier revival of Arcadia was a success on this stage in 2009.

The word Arcadia in classical literature and mythology suggests a rural idyll, where humans and nature co-exist in tranquil harmony. Stoppard’s Arcadia is set in an English equivalent thereof, the fictional Derbyshire country house Sidley Park, across two time periods. In 1809, sixteen year old Thomasina Coverly (a sublime Isis Hainsworth) studies mathematics with tutor Septimus Hodge (Seamus Dillane, wry, charming and non-threateningly priapic) while her mother Lady Croom is having the extensive grounds remodelled by a gardener (“Culpability Noakes!”) who has quite different ideas about how the finished product should look. 

Then in the present day, academics Hannah Jarvis and Bernard Nightingale (Nikki Amuka-Bird and Oliver Chris, both new to the cast but inhabiting their roles with ferocious intellectual glee) are working on opposing works about the history of Sidley Park. He’s obsessed with a possible duel fought in the house involving poet Lord Byron while she is concentrating on the identity of the hermit who had inhabited the hermitage on the house grounds, while the present day Coverly family members, still in residence, regard them both with varying degrees of amusement and exasperation. 

One of the delights of Stoppard’s text is how the sections set in the past inform the ones set in the present. As Jarvis and Nightingale theorise and pontificate, we in the audience are often one step ahead of them, a conceit which becomes heartbreaking towards the play’s end when you realise the fate of probably the most lovable character. The tension between intellect and emotion thrums constantly throughout the play, as does the mind-boggling antagonisms between chaos and order, the past and the present, science and literature. 

It is a lot to take in on one viewing, and Cracknell’s production, playing out on concentric circular revolves under a pair of giant interconnecting neon hoops and a canopy of lights suggesting the celestial infinity of the cosmos (striking designs by Alex Eales and Guy Hoare respectively), isn’t always as clear as it might be in helping elucidate this challenging piece. Although beautiful to look at, the abstract visual approach sometimes makes the play even more confusing than it already is, especially when both time frames are occupying the limited space. Trevor Nunn’s original National Theatre staging and David Leveaux’s first revival were more literal and, honestly, more engaging. 

Some of the performances are terrific. Amuka-Bird’s Hannah is a particular highlight, the isolation of the bookish academic tempered with a wicked sense of humour and generous-spirited warmth; it’s a flawless, selfless, beautifully realised performance. Chris is similarly inspired as egotistical Bernard, a sort of intellectual rock star in his own head, a maddening, charismatic but possibly lethal combination of spoilt child and brilliant scholar. These fine actors find an erotic charge between the two that no other pairing I’ve seen in these roles has quite managed since Felicity Kendal and Bill Nighy in the original production, and it adds a welcome heat to a play that, for all its brilliance, can seem chilly and remote. I now long to see this pair as Annie and Henry in Stoppard’s own The Real Thing.

Angus Cooper is absolutely spot on as a modern day Coverly, an Oxbridge academic who may or may not have a bit of a crush on Hannah (understandable); he nails the character’s innate niceness and a genuine sensitivity under the relaxed intelligence. I was less keen on this production’s treatment of Lady Croom (usually Yolanda Kettle, but played on second press night by understudy Peta Cornish). 

As written, she’s one of the funniest women in Stoppard, a baroque, sexy, whip-smart eccentric, a contrast to the dry directness of Hannah, and entirely plausible as the mother of a self-possessed teenage intellectual like Thomasina. Harriet Walter at the National, Julie Legrand in the West End transfer and Nancy Carroll in the last revival had tremendous fun with her, and the erudite campery sat entertainingly alongside the mind-expanding rigours of the rest of the play. In this iteration she mostly comes across as severe and uptight, not the fault of Cornish who tackles the language head on and has notable presence, but the costuming and direction seem calculated to rob this usually irresistible character of most of her joy. 

The soon-to-be Stoppard Theatre is fairly intimate and there are moments when the actors seem to be mic’d for a much larger venue, which takes a few minutes at the top of each act to get used to. It’s perhaps to be expected that a late twentieth century piece that plays around with time will become dated. So it proves (slightly) with Arcadia where the notion that decades of misinformation surrounding a classical poet would make front page news in the tabloid press seems positively quaint. Running at an unfashionable three hours including interval, it’s also a challenge for some attention spans.

For all that, Arcadia retains its power to dazzle as it fuses humanity and curiosity with science and mathematics, and dialogue that’s laugh-out-loud funny and with a rich, empathetic understanding of what makes humans tick. It’s a remarkable work, and one that anybody with a genuine interest in modern English language plays needs to see at least once. One has to hope that the theatre’s change of name happens fully before the end of the run, as having a Stoppard play at the Stoppard would be as wonderful as Arcadia is in its most persuasive moments.

THE GUILTY

by Chloë Moss

directed by Felix Barrett

Donmar Warehouse, London – until 15 August 2026

running time: 1 hour no interval 

https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/events/the-guilty/?instance-type=standard#content-overview

It’s quite the challenge trying to review a piece of theatre where the surprise is its principal raison d’être, but I love a challenge. So, apparently, does Russell Tovey, taking solo command of the stage for the taut, dynamic sixty minute duration of this mini-thriller distilled by Chloë Moss from the critically acclaimed 2018 Danish film Den Skyldige. 

In The Guilty (the title turns out to be tantalisingly ambiguous), Tovey, with his characteristic mixture of tough guy swagger and unexpected vulnerability, plays emergency response police officer Joe, experiencing a dark night of the soul as he juggles work and personal life. Joe is on the eve of a trial for something terrible, the details of which are only revealed later on, and in between fielding calls from the flotsam and jetsam of humanity who contact him in his professional capacity -some in genuine anguish and need, some time wasters- he tries to take comfort in speaking to his six year old daughter and his furious partner. Then in comes a call from a highly distressed young woman who claims to be in a speeding van with a weapon-wielding maniac, and Joe is plunged into a mission to save her while also protecting her daughter, the same age as his own, who he manages to contact by phone, and the second child who’s still a baby. 

If you’ve seen the original movie, or the American remake with Jake Gyllenhaal, some of the twists and turns will be familiar, although Moss and director Felix Barrett complete the play with a coup de théâtre that departs from the earlier versions. Though exciting and theatrically effective, it feels more like showboating than anything vital to the plot or to significantly enhance our understanding of what we’ve been watching. 

Tovey turns in an impressively naturalistic performance, so low key initially that when Joe gives himself over to panic or fury, we’re left in no doubt as to how high the stakes are. The transitions between stoic professional mode and impassioned humanity are managed seamlessly, and the phone conversations with his slightly too-mature-sounding daughter are touching and tender.

Technically, the show is remarkable. Alex Eales’ set and Anna Watson’s lighting are grungily stylish, their monochrome uniformity punctured only by ribbons and pops of blood red light to indicate either a phone call coming in or a moment of extreme stress, sometimes both. The sound contributions by Gareth Fry and Sally Messham are particularly stunning, and essential to the overall impact of Barrett’s hyper-tense and perfectly paced staging. It’s all so well done that it almost distracts from the possibility that a play where the sole visible character is on the phone the whole time can get a little samey. Moss’ writing is probably superior to that of Levi Holloway’s for Paranormal Activity, Barrett’s other recent West End hit (soon to be seen on Broadway), but The Guilty is less satisfying overall.

As a cat-and-mouse game thriller and as an exercise in how live performance can rack up the tension when all the elements coalesce, The Guilty works tremendously well. From a psychological standpoint though, it’s pretty simplistic, even exploitative (although that’s arguably a charge that could be levelled at much of the thriller genre, to be fair) and running at a mere hour, it’s pretty small beer for a complete night out. Still, Tovey is excellent, Barrett’s world-building is very accomplished, and if you like to feel thoroughly creeped out while sitting in your theatre seat, this show will undoubtedly do that for you.