ajhlovestheatre

SLAM FRANK

Music and lyrics by Andrew Fox

Book by Joel Sinensky

directed by Sam LaFrage

Orpheum Theatre, New York City – booking to 30 November 2026

running time: 1 hour 50 minutes no interval

https://www.slamfrankmusical.com/

Anne Frank, the German-born Jewish diarist murdered by the Nazis while still a teenager, reimagined as a rapping, pansexual Latinx named Anita? Um, er, ok. One of the first things to realise about this literally sensational show, which has Jewish creatives by the way, is that it’s essentially offensive to almost everyone (neurodivergent folks, toxic males, Black divas, non-binaries, feminists, pretentious artists, bleeding heart liberals: they’re all lambasted with indecent relish). So, if you can get on board with nobody emerging unscathed, it’s possible to have a hell of a time at Slam Frank. If not, then maybe it’s not the show for you.

Inspired by a series of bonkers 2022 social media posts discussing whether Anne Frank ever acknowledged her white privilege (yep, seriously), this is certainly the most talked-about new musical in New York right now, and it’s not hard to work out why. First seen last year at Asylum, the same underground venue that premiered Titanique straight after the pandemic (pandemique?!), this edgy yet gleeful off-Broadway confection has been expanded and cosmetically enhanced to fit the still-intimate but more obviously theatrical Orpheum over in the East Village. 

Storied American dramatist George S Kaufman famously opined “satire is what closes on a Saturday night”. However, this provocative tuner, centred on “a highly respected and forward-thinking” (for that, read painfully right-on) regional theatre company attempting to filter the Anne Frank legend through a bunch of modern hang-ups and mores, eclectic cultural and social influences, and barely any grasp of good taste, feels like it could run and run. It’s as joyful as it’s outrageous and, just occasionally, profoundly disturbing.

American humour can tend either towards the extremely obvious or the jawdroppingly offensive without too much in between. With Slam Frank, writers Andrew Fox (songs) and Joel Sinensky (book) have created a show that encompasses both extremes, then enhanced it with authentic musical theatre know-how, a rambunctiously queer sensibility, and a gift for melodic parody that’s as bracing as it is cheeky. The MT references come thick and fast, but the biggest influence (heavily acknowledged, incidentally) must be Lin-Manuel Miranda: a section derived from In The Heights proves almost as exhilarating as the real thing, and the Slam Frank logo bearing an uncanny resemblance to that of Hamilton is surely no coincidence. Fox writes great tunes in his own right though, inflected with hip hop, calypso, rock, salsa, folk and occasionally full anthemic-pop bombast. His lyrics have a tart, potty-mouthed wit that occasionally leave us with our jaws on the floor.

Fox, Sinensky and their tremendous director Sam LaFrage really aren’t afraid to freeze the smile on audiences faces, leaving them reeling in genuine discomfort and shock. There’s a strong sense that these prodigiously talented equal opportunities offenders, in tandem with a cast stuffed with wild, crackerjack talent, know exactly what they’re doing, even if the sublime chaos they’ve created occasionally threatens to bewilder more sensitive onlookers.

Olivia Bernábe’s caffeinated but charming, and thrillingly sung, Anita (Anne) is a major palliative between some of the show’s wilder excesses and those wedded to their traditional view of our doomed heroine. Equally engaging and, in their own way, sympathetic, are Austen Horne as her mother, here reconceived as a fiery, fabulous Black woman because, well, why not (“mighty gurl, you can’t panic / Cause every woman is a Jew / Hiding in her own attic”), and Rocky Paterra, adorable as unexpectedly neurospicy, deeply closeted, father Otto Frank. 

Amelia Louise Barr demonstrates serious pipes and comic dexterity as reserved, devout sister Margot and Anita’s insistent Abuela. John Anker Bow is masterfully, queasily hilarious as the theatre company’s self-regarding artistic director, embarrassingly unable in an introductory speech to remember the name of the Native American tribe upon whose land this bad taste musical is about to be performed (“okay, well, whoever they are, they were here first, and we are here now, and shame on us”). He’s also magnificently horrible as prototype chauvinist Van Daan whose family is sharing the Amsterdam attic with the Franks, and in a late show cameo reminiscent of, but perhaps not quite as funny as, Mel Brooks’ The Producers (come see to find out).

Alex Lewis is terrific as Peter, his conflicted non-binary offspring, and potential partner for Anne/Anita, his full-throated ‘Fighting Expectations’ cri de cœur and costuming a sly nod to Evan Hansen: “out there there’s blood and gore / in here there are hard conversations”. As the compliant (initially anyway) kewpie-doll-like Mrs Van Daan, Jaz Zepatos seems to be channelling Ellen Greene’s Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors (the Orpheum’s longest running tenant until Stomp moved in, and the kookiness and anarchic spirit of which infuses this current offering). She’s an absolute scream, and ‘Herstory’, her Wilson Phillips-adjacent anthem of female empowerment (“they are brave, they are strong! Women are never wrong!”) rightly brings the house down.

Scenic designer Adam Koch has clearly had a ball turning the Orpheum auditorium into an immersive, ramshackle dual level riot of colourful graffiti, metallic staircases, upturned boxes and platforms, with extensive (and hilarious) use of video (by Zack Lobel) that sometimes looks like a grungy knock-off of Jamie Lloyd productions and at others like a Disney fantasia. LaFrage and choreographer Esosa Oviasu keep the action generously spread throughout the house, and the staging throughout is fleet, funny and wildly inventive. It’s all lit with flash and primary colours by Jamie Roderick, and Gage Baker’s sound design is pleasurably overwhelming but, crucially, still allow us to hear the words. Sarah Lockwood’s costumes may look deliberately tacked together but they are very witty. The show is spoofing community theatre but the stagecraft on display is actually top drawer, and the visual aesthetic is more cool downtown NYC than 1940s war-torn Europe.

You’ll notice I haven’t talked in detail about the content of the show and there’s a reason for that; the surprise value is vital. You can get a feel of it from listening to the (excellent) cast album but nothing can, or perhaps should, prepare you for the way this bonkers spectacle takes a wrecking ball to expectations and sensibilities. For a piece that is huge fun, Slam Frank confronts some pretty fundamental questions over human beings and their ability to co-exist, and what the limits of tolerance really are. The victims of the satire are emphatically not the Frank family, who are presented with equal parts affection and fanciful irreverence. Almost everyone else is fair game though….

Will you feel offended at times? Probably: there is a brief section in the last twenty minutes that really pushes the envelope and you can almost feel the temperature in the theatre drop….I’m still processing it days after seeing it. Will you be hugely entertained and invigorated by a concentration of bracingly fresh theatrical ingenuity? Oh absolutely. It’s pretty dumb and puerile and yet it’s also fiercely intelligent and sophisticated. Honestly, it could lose a couple of sight gags and about ten minutes playing time and be none the worse for it, but it still has more true originality and vitality than anything currently playing on Broadway. 

Be part of the conversation, and have a rollicking good time in the theatre while you’re at it. Slam Frank is post-woke and worryingly irresistible. 

HAY FEVER

by Noël Coward

directed by Emily Burns 

Wyndham’s Theatre, London – until 12 December 2026

running time: 2 hours including interval 

https://hayfeverplay.com

It’s almost inconceivable that it’s only now that Christine Baranski is making her West End debut. With her willowy elegance and martini-dry wit, plus a sly, underlying hint of real naughtiness, she is, on paper at least, an ideal Noël Coward leading lady. She’s presumably the main raison d’être for this sumptuous if hardly revelatory revival (the sixth in London in thirty years) by Emily Burns of Coward’s crowd-pleasing ‘Comedy of Bad Manners’.

In Hay Fever, Baranski plays starry former stage actress Judith Bliss, blasting and sashaying through her idyllic rural retirement with the help of her eccentric novelist husband (Richard E Grant) and Simon and Sorrel (Will Close and Ophelia Lovibond), her equally histrionic grown-up children. It’s a peach of a role, ripe with opportunities for high camp self-dramatisation and comic excess. 

The biggest surprise about Baranski’s performance is just how understated she is. Instead of the selfish yet irresistible grandstanding glamour-monsters many of her predecessors (Penelope Keith, Maria Aitken, Judi Dench, Lindsay Duncan, Diana Rigg, Felicity Kendal) have delivered, this Judith is more sweet and dotty, often archly funny but seldom lethal. Her voice is fascinating, ranging from the timbre of a breathy flute to the basso profondo of an aggrieved bullfrog whenever she’s especially outraged or offended. Her comic instincts are, as expected, sublime (she makes something gloriously off-kilter out of the line “David’s been a good husband to me, but he’s wearing a bit thin now”) and she’s incredibly lovable, maybe too much so.

Her accent sometimes verges on mid-Atlantic but that works perfectly well, since there’s nothing in the text to dictate that Judith should be native English, and anyway the character was inspired by the veteran American actress Laurette Taylor. But she’s just a bit too sane and nice to really satisfy. There should be an unhinged savagery lurking just underneath the actress’s grandeur and verbosity, and Baranski seldom lets us glimpse that. It probably doesn’t help that, in the role of vampish Myra, invited for the weekend by besotted Simon, Nancy Carroll possesses every single attribute required to be an absolutely outstanding Judith. 

With a central performance that tends more to subtle rather than barnstorming, Hay Fever feels like much more of an ensemble piece, despite Baranski’s undeniable presence, and that ensemble is, on the whole, excellent. Carroll is sublime and so is Charles Edwards as another suitably appalled house guest. Grant is winningly strange and socially clueless as eccentric writer David. Lovibond and Close nail the volatility and self-absorption of the offspring, although the characterisations will feel very mainstream to anybody who caught Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Freddie Fox in the same roles in the 2012 Lindsay Duncan-led revival where the Bliss kids were hilariously reconceived as a pair of gawky, near-feral bohemians.

There’s excellent work from Ash Hunter as Judith’s hunky, eager-to-please guest Sandy, and from Lucy Karczewski, unrecognisable from her West End debut in last year’s Stereophonic, as a nervy, uptight flapper David is studying for research purposes. As often happens in Coward revivals of recent years, the ‘servant’ role comes close to stealing the show, and so it proves again here with Jo McInnes getting lugubrious comic mileage out of Judith’s former dresser and now housekeeper Clara, the kind of taciturnly judgemental but low level bonkers woman accustomed to huge swathes of her life in the backstage gloom. 

As if to point up the theatricality of Judith’s moneyed existence, Frankie Bradshaw’s utterly gorgeous setting is an extension of the Wyndhams auditorium’s own decor, down to the powder blue wallpaper, golden cornices, twinkling chandelier, and the deep navy of the carpets. Her costumes are equally opulent and pleasing to the eye.

Director Burns gives Hay Fever to us straight. There’s no attempt to comment or recontextualise or, as in the aforementioned Howard Davies-directed 2012 production which presented the Bliss country pile as a wildly disarrayed, barely functioning house of artsy squalor, find any psychological depth. This is a solid, attractive staging, the kind of show you talk about for about fifteen minutes at dinner afterwards then barely remember the next day. It’s fun, and glamorous, and starry…and for many people that will be more than enough. 

COSMETICS OF THE ENEMY 

 

Adapted from Amélie Nothomb’s novel and directed by Benedetta Scuto

 

Seen during a developmental run at Bread and Roses Theatre, London – September 2026

 

A thrum of unease and a tang of surreal humour runs through this short, sharp, gender-flipped stage version of Amelie Nothomb’s 2021 novel Cosmétique de l’ennemi. Being set entirely in an airport, the book lends itself especially well to theatrical adaptation, and author-director Benedetta Scuto has done a capable job of balancing dramatic tension and the ennui of the departure lounge. What starts as a Pinter-esque verbal cat-and mouse game between a pair of travellers awaiting developments on their delayed flights takes several unexpected, bizarre turns before exploding into recriminatory, thriller-like territory. 

Businesswoman Jenna Angust (a magnetic Jessica Mattarelli) just wants to read her book in peace but Jiminy Cricket-like, strangely named fellow passenger Texta Texel (Meghan Mabli) has other ideas. The show gets decent comic mileage out of Jenna’s irritation versus Texta’s bonkers relentlessness but there is clearly something else at play, and it’s consistently intriguing.

 Running at a tense forty five minutes, Cosmetics Of The Enemy is, in its present form, too brief to become fully engrossed in perhaps – the brevity inevitably means that the characters feel more like sketches than fully rounded human beings – but Scuto skilfully creates an atmosphere of chilly sophistication that creeps stealthily into hysteria as the play progresses. There’s a pretty seismic twist which explains some of the unanswered early questions – why is Texta so irritating and why won’t she leave Jenna alone? Who is the enemy she portentously refers to? Why doesn’t Jenna just walk away? – and, for the surprise to really work, it’s better not to have any knowledge of the book or any earlier adaptations. Some of the language and imagery is authentically startling.

 Mattatrelli displays flawless comic timing and impressively conveys undercurrents of real disquiet under Jenna’s elegant surface, goaded into sarcasm and, ultimately, outright aggression by Mabli’s hyperactive intruder. Mabli’s high energy turn as Texta reads more insane than sinister, and might benefit from dialling down the voluble mania in favour of something a little more subtle. To be fair, the play’s brief duration is probably the reason for such a go-for-broke interpretation, and Mabli is an undeniably engaging stage presence. Adam Wadge provides excellent support in a pair of contrasting cameo roles, but the show is really all about the women.

 Another interesting consideration in refocusing this story on women rather than men is that it arguably changes perceptions of what is male pattern behaviour as opposed to female; is the undercurrent of threat more or less acute depending on who’s involved? Scuto’s script and staging – décor-free apart from an airport terminal departures board – doesn’t offer answers, only a troubling but entertaining journey. Cosmetics Of The Enemy unquestionably deserves a further, possibly expanded, life. Invigorating, thought-provoking stuff.

 

 

DARKLING

by Titas Halder

directed by Matthew Xia

Bush Theatre, London – until 24 October 2026

running time: 90 minutes no interval

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/darkling/#about

Is this the most harrowing piece of theatre in London at the moment? Probably… Titas Halder’s solo play looks, with a unique combination of poetic lyricism and painful truth, at the 1984 industrial disaster in Bhopal, India where thousands of people lost their lives (and hundreds of thousands more were permanently maimed or disfigured) when toxic gases leaked from an American-run pesticide factory. Darkling is an angry dream of a play, the leading character’s opening assertion that “I was born under a blue sky / in the city of lakes” coming back to haunt her, and us, by the end of an unsettling ninety minutes.

Halder filters this lamentable event through the eyes and experiences of an unnamed young woman (Linnea Berthelsen giving the sort of performance where you genuinely wonder how she’s going to manage this eight times per week) from infancy to an existence blighted and broken forever by the horrors of what occurred. Halder doesn’t spare the character, or us in the audience, much: the biting poverty of slum life is evoked (the world-building in Matthew Xia’s deceptively unadorned staging is remarkable), family tensions are exposed, including a suggestion of incestuous sexual abuse involving the heroine’s older but still underage sister, a hastily arranged loveless marriage, and the staggering, and ongoing, human cost of the disaster is counted.

It’s a tough sit for sure (any humour leaves the building about half way through and never comes back) but the storytelling is gripping and, in the end, almost unbearably moving. Halder is too intelligent a writer to overly sugarcoat the leading character’s life before the disaster, but, for all its problems and privations, it still seems like paradise compared to what comes after.

The subtle brilliance of Berthelsen’s performance burns slowly. She’s all untethered, borderline unfocused, energy at first, which convinces as a gauche, optimistic child, her voice a brittle, light instrument. She does a decent job of morphing into other characters: a slight stoop and an outstretched hand as her stricken, widowered father (“I, myself, am the lowest of the low for failing you and for failing her”), straightened back and wide, sorrowful eyes as her elder sister, a cheeky bravado for the young man who seems to be a brief respite from her misery. But it’s the subtle transformation that really impresses though: it’s like watching somebody age before your very eyes. Her trauma-fuelled descent into horror, despair and palpable, white-hot anger doesn’t happen suddenly, despite the shock of the accident, and her deterioration is managed with skill and stealth; at the performance I attended many people, me included, were weeping openly for the last ten minutes.

Technically, the production is a marvel. Composer Niraj Chag and sound designer Beth Duke keep a constant thrum of foreboding running underneath the words, and a sole round light on Simon Kenny’s austere but atmospheric set can seem starkly institutional at one moment, then a gorgeous shining full moon at the next. Throughout, Rajiv Pattani’s lighting is a thing of shape-shifting.

Not as much of a thing of shape-shifting wonder as the leading lady though. Some of Berthelsen’s line readings bely the accent of her adopted country of Denmark, which oddly adds to the impression of somebody recounting a litany of things so dreadful she can barely comprehend them. By the end, all hope and dignity destroyed, she wields a shamanic power, a reminder in human form, part vengeful and part hectoring, to those in positions of power and privilege not to forget the future-less victims of their greed and hubris: “stay with me / don’t leave me here / scatter me as I’ll scatter my child”. Darkling is astonishing. 

NIGHT CITY

 by Max Wilkinson

 directed by Ebenezer Bamgboye

 Southwark Playhouse Borough – The Little, London – until 3 October 2026

 Running time: 85 minutes no interval

 https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/night-city/

The financial and professional instabilities prompted by the “gig” economy that forces workers into ad hoc contractless jobs, a murky nocturnal metropolis steeped in excitement and with a simmering undercurrent of danger: welcome to Night City. Max Wilkinson’s episodic but engaging drama is receiving its world premiere in an abstract, boldly inventive staging by Ebenezer Bamgboye. What it lacks in coherence and clarity, it (mostly) makes up for in sheer theatrical bravura.

Three superb actors play a varied selection of London dwellers trying to carve out their best lives, or at least survival, in an unsympathetic city. Some of them (such as Helena Pipe’s tough but warm carer Tamara) are admirable, even when up against the ropes of an increasingly dehumanising existence, some are appalling (the unscrupulous entrepreneur, played with villainous relish but some subtlety by Jack Ambrose, who sees human welfare as just another commodity to be exploited) and some ping-pong between good and bad as necessitated by what life throws at them. Chief among those are ambitious Tia (Bex Smith), working, for now, as a waitress but only until her ambitions are realised, and cab driver Jack (Ambrose again), whose morality may be malleable but his conscience less so. 

Each creation is vividly sketched and, on the whole, pretty interesting, although the frenetic flash of Bamgboye’s production, which rushes at us with the urgency of a missile, means that it can sometimes take a few moments to work out who is supposed to be who, and what on earth is going on. Spoken lines overlap each other, actors change character within seconds… More elucidation within the chaos would be welcome: the best way to enjoy Night City is probably just to let it wash over you and not worry too much if you’re not getting everything. 

The apparently random plot strands, some of which defy plausibility, do get more-or-less tied up by the end of play, one of them, involving a cantankerous, celebrity name-dropping older woman, played with relish by Smith, particularly satisfyingly. The inclusion of the creation of last year’s Employment Rights Act is vital but could be woven into the text a little more seamlessly, as could a late lurch into courtroom drama. Whatever else, Night City is certainly never boring.

In terms of energy and visuals, it’s dark, sleek and dynamic. Olivia Jamieson’s set of hanging neon tubes encased in chains and all-black costumes frequently suggest a night club, an impression reinforced by Rose Ryan’s frenetic, if slightly overused, choreography. Arnim Freiss’ stark, moody lighting and monochrome video designs of a bustling but vaguely sinister capital add immeasurably to the visual appeal. 

The actors work their socks off, and are generally very impressive, even if the breakneck speed of the character changes occasionally threaten to overwhelm them. Pipe radiates a selfless goodness combined with brusque practicality that rings entirely true for carer Tamara, and Smith has a magnetic presence and lithe physicality. Ambrose is quietly riveting as lost soul Jack, finding real power in his mercurial mood switches and strange but relatable combination of kindness and go-for-broke hedonism. 

If Night City feels more style over substance, and would benefit from a more disciplined approach to storytelling, it is nonetheless a work of considerable ambition and originality. Some of Wilkinson’s writing has a potty-mouthed poeticism that is a bracing delight, and the brilliance of much of Bamgboye’s staging matches it. The show as a whole feels slightly overlong but occasionally undernourished, yet it’s too compelling to write off. Overall, it isn’t a total success, but it’s well worth a look.

KIMBERLY AKIMBO

Book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire based on his own play

Music by Jeanine Tesori

directed by Michael Longhurst 

Hampstead Theatre, London – until 7 November 2026

running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval 

https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2026/kimberly-akimbo/

Deserved winner of the 2023 Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book and Best Original Score, Kimberly Akimbo is a deeply unconventional musical, and a thoroughly delightful one. It’s a far cry from what one might traditionally expect a Broadway musical to look and sound like, but it’s original yet accessible, small in scale but mighty in craft, ambition, and sheer, beautiful heart. We are so lucky to have it in London.

 New Jersey teenager Kimberly (Maria Friedman in a triumphant stage return) is a musical theatre heroine unlike any other: on the cusp of turning sixteen, she has a rare genetic disorder, affecting one in fifty million, that causes her to age four to five times faster than the average person. “Getting older is my affliction / getting older is your cure” she sings to her classmates at one point, with understandable frustration but an admirable absence of rancour. Note the undramatic way she asserts that people with her disorder usually don’t make it much past the age of sixteen: “it’s just an average though” she trills.

 David Lindsay-Abaire, the author of the original 2010 play, also provides the book and lyrics for the musical which may explain the extraordinary richness of the characters -a bunch of flawed, troubled yet relatable people elbowing their way through life as best they can- and the mastery of a variety of themes and tones that frequently promise one thing then deliver something quite different. Lindsay-Abaire clearly loves this bunch and, by extension, so do we. 

God, these people are messy though: heavily pregnant Mom Pattie (Niamh Perry) is a narcissistic hypochondriac, both arms in plaster from a carpal tunnel syndrome operation and forever making videos for the unborn child she clearly prefers to the under-appreciated diamond she already has, while Dad Buddy (Peter Hannah) is a feckless drunk, albeit one with a big heart. Plus there’s Aunt Debra (Alice Fearn), a convicted felon with a money-making cheque rinsing scheme and a serious lack of accountability, newly returned to the family to upset the moral and ethical apple cart. With this lot at home, it’s no surprise that Kimberly is so taken with her goofy but kind, probably neurodivergent, class mate Seth (Gilli Jones, adorable), who turns out to be an unexpected source of support.

 For Kimberly Akimbo, Lindsay-Abaire teams up again with Jeanine Tesori, his collaborator on the underrated Shrek The Musical. Tesori’s quirky, magical work here feels like a sister score to her stunning compositions for Caroline, Or Change and Fun Home whereby sophisticated, choppy, character-driven sections give way to pastiches of late twentieth century pop and folk that inform the period and characters. 

Thus Kimberly gets a bittersweet “I want” song near the top of the show, then there’s ‘Father Time’, breathtakingly performed by Perry, who is delivering multi-faceted, career-best work here, a gorgeous lullaby for Pattie’s unborn child and possibly for the troubled Kimberly, that goes from whimsical to profound within a few bars, and ‘Better’, a rambunctious, belty, poppy paean to consistently doing entirely the wrong thing with which Fearn stops the show cold. Hannah’s dead-beat Dad gets an improbable patter song that wouldn’t disgrace Gilbert and Sullivan, and the second half features an inspired section that pits a family dispute against a glitzy show choir rehearsal. It’s impressive theatre music that lingers in the memory, and not a single note is wasted.

 Lindsay-Abaire’s writing never descends into sentimentality or sensationalism and is frequently rollickingly funny. When it’s sad though, it really goes there: watch Friedman’s Kimberly’s face when her pregnant mother expresses hope that her next child will turn out better. It’s one of several moments when authentic pain seeps through and the poignancy is almost too much to bear.

Unusually, the UK premiere, directed by Michael Longhurst for Hampstead Theatre with consummate showbiz flair and an absolute mastery of the complex emotions and irresistible humour involved, is more physically elaborate than the Broadway original. Whereas Jessica Stone’s New York staging still bore traces of its modest off-Broadway origins, despite being amplified to such a level that suggested it was aiming to be heard in New Jersey from Manhattan, Longhurst and team have gone all-out, but mercifully the sound design (by Paul Groothuis) is more low key allowing us to hear the often brilliant lyrics.

Designer Soutra Gilmour recreates an entire three storey New Jersey house onstage, then revolves it to become a school corridor, a classroom, a neon-lit ice rink, with Nigel Lilley’s terrific band fully visible on either side of the action. It’s quite an eyeful, dominated by a giant clock as if to remind us that we’re all running out of time, albeit not as fast as poor Kimberly. The garishness of the late 1990s, when the show takes place, is evoked but never mocked.

The London cast is every bit the equal of the original New York company but are sufficiently different that comparisons are invidious. The writing is so good that there are several valid ways to play each role. Victoria Clark won the Tony for her unforgettable Kimberly and it’s hard to imagine that Friedman’s gawkier, more animated, but still very moving take on the role won’t be the front runner for this year’s Olivier award. 

Niamh Perry as her deeply dysfunctional mother is perhaps the biggest revelation here; she has a fabulous voice of course but she also reveals herself to be a comedienne of the highest order, balancing a degree of manic self-absorption with a deep well of feeling suggesting that, in her own screwed-up way, she’s as upset as anybody about her daughter’s health issues. Unlike with the original production, Perry and Fearn actually look as though they could be sisters. Where Bonnie Milligan -another deserving Tony winner for this show- made Debra into a lovable rogue, Fearn plays her feral. She is biliously funny but there’s an unsettling undercurrent of genuine desperation and threat.

Hannah also achieves the remarkable feat of melding together grotesque comedy and heart-rending truth in another sensational performance, and Gilli Jones as the well meaning youngster with innate kindness but a penchant for saying the wrong thing, really tugs at the heartstrings. Sara Hajizadeh, Ronav Jain, Robin Simões da Silva and Aviva Tulley are incredibly endearing, and often laugh-out-loud funny, as a sort of Geek/Greek Chorus of four teenagers, plus their voices really soar.

Primarily, Kimberly Akimbo becomes a show about grabbing life and squeezing every last drop out of it while you still can, and if that doesn’t gladden, then threaten to break, your heart, maybe book an appointment with a cardiologist to check if you even have one. This is life-enhancing theatre, a show you don’t just watch, you fall in love with. To quote one of the best numbers in the score, although pretty much every one is a gem, this’ll “make your shitty life better”. London has an exhilarating new must-see hit.

JANE EYRE

Music and lyrics by Paul Gordon

Book and additional lyrics by John Caird

from the novel by Charlotte Brontë

directed by John Caird and Megan McGinnis

Southwark Playhouse Elephant, London – until 26 October 2026

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/jane-eyre/

This musical adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s beloved novel had a world premiere in Toronto in the late ‘90s (the 1990s, to be clear) and then over two hundred performances on Broadway in 2000/1, and now – finally – arrives in London in a stripped back, stylish staging. Shorn of the bombast and scale of its earlier iterations, John Caird and Paul Gordon’s Jane Eyre emerges as a captivating if relentlessly dark (in every sense) chamber musical, full of terrific music and with some serious dramatic heft, even if it seldom fully realises its emotional promise.

It’s no coincidence that Caird was also one of the co-directors and key creatives on the original English language version of Les Misérables; the pleasurably lachrymose shadow of that epoch-making tuner and subsequent big shows influenced by it during the last couple of decades of the twentieth century, hangs heavy over this show. Jane Eyre as a musical, in 2026, feels decidedly old-fashioned, but not in a “set in the nineteenth century” sort of way, but more that it harks back to the shows of the 1980s and ‘90s when every life setback was marked with a power ballad, irony was not a thing, and everybody was wearing their heart on their period costumes’ sleeves.

This isn’t necessarily a criticism, by the way: composer Paul Gordon writes genuinely memorable tunes, some of the most persuasive and haunting ever created in this melancholic pop sub-genre actually. Listening to these Brontë characters emote full-throatedly in song is frequently a huge pleasure, especially when the voices and arrangements (by Brad Haak and Steve Tyler) are as good as they are here.

Perhaps due to budgetary constraints or maybe to mitigate against comparisons with other productions set in a similar time period, designer Morgan Large hasn’t gone all out with historically accurate costuming or wigs. Bar a few extra bits of dressing (a full length coat for Ashley Gilmour’s film-star handsome Mr Rochester, pinnies and caps for the domestic staff, a white veil for the unfortunate woman in the attic…) everyone is stylishly clad in timeless black, as though permanently cocktail party ready. It’s all a bit, well, sexy, which isn’t automatically a word one might associate with Jane Eyre.

Similarly, there’s no point in trying to recreate the North Yorkshire moors upon which Jane wanders on Southwark Elephant’s stage, so Large, with lighting designer James Whiteside, opts for a striking hybrid of hazy but effective video design, minimal props and furniture, and lots of luscious, mysterious darkness. Caird and co-director Megan McGinnis keep the action moving fluidly, sometimes dynamically, relying on audience imagination to fill in the blanks.

This is a very good-looking show, and that extends to the cast as much as the production. Charlie Burn is so luminously beautiful as Jane that the references in the text to her being “plain” are rendered nonsensical. More importantly though, she effectively conveys the character’s innate goodness and resilience, and if her constant piety can get a little grating that is a feature of the original novel. Vocally, the role is an absolute beast but Burn is equal to it, investing solos such as her galvanising, questing ‘Sweet Liberty’ with a gorgeous combination of purity and power. 

Gilmour makes a dashing leading man, and also has a superb voice. If both he and Burn seem, from a dramatic point-of-views  a little uncomplicated and two-dimensional in these central roles, it may be that the adaptation doesn’t give them an awful lot to work with, beyond sparring gently then belting their faces off while gazing into the middle distance.

In an excellent supporting cast, Gemma Page makes a strong impression as two contrasting older influences on Jane, Eve Shanu-Wilson is glitteringly nasty as the money-fixated Blanche Ingram and Clare Greenway delivers a lovely cameo as the domestic servant privy to the Rochester family’s most shameful secret. Hannah Lindsey and Jonathan Andrew Hume impress in a variety of differing roles and Isabelle Methven makes something fine and affecting out of Helen Burns, the saintly orphanage girl who shows kindness to youthful Jane (Poppy Jason at the performance I saw, and quite wonderful) and instils religious fervour into her. The singing thoughout is, without exception, outstanding, and the vocal arrangements make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up with their sheer beauty. 

Caird’s book does a decent job of recreating Brontë’s frequently grim tale in the first act, but the second act seems over-stuffed with plot. The dalliance with would-be missionary St John Rivers (an ardent Melad Hamidi) is dealt with perfunctorily, as is the matter of Jane’s unexpected financial inheritance. It sometimes feels that each plot point is plonked down in front of us just because it’s in the book, and one can’t help but wonder if excising some bits extraneous to the central love story mightn’t have been beneficial.

Emotionally, the show never really connects as much as it should. There’s a world of unreason and pain lurking in this distressing story encompassing maltreatment of children, untimely death, severe mental illness and trauma, but the musical, for the most part, skates serenely over the surface of it all. It’s a ravishing little jewel of a show for sure, with a huge amount to enjoy, but it’s Jane Eyre-lite. That will be more than enough for many people though, and, short of letting a full symphony orchestra loose on it, the score is unlikely to ever sound better than it does in this version.

THE STORY 

by Tracey Scott Wilson 

directed by Clint Dyer

National Theatre/Olivier Theatre, London – until 24 October 2026 

running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval 

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/the-story/

It has only taken twenty three years for The Story, Tracey Scott Wilson’s hybrid of thriller and race-driven social realism, first seen at New York’s Public Theater, to cross the Atlantic. Watching Clint Dyer’s strident yet leaden UK premiere for the National, I’m not sure it was worth the wait.

 Partially inspired by the disgracing of Washington Post journalist Janet Cooke for fabricating an incendiary news story in the early 1980s, The Story centres on ambitious young Black writer Yvonne (Letitia Wright) determined to make her professional mark unencumbered by perceptions and prejudices related to her skin colour. She starts working at Vanguard, a fictional newspaper, under the watchful, not always approving, eyes of an uncompromising editor (Lorraine Touissant) whose fierceness belies a complicated history with the Civil Rights movement. A white schoolteacher is murdered in a predominantly Black neighbourhood, and Yvonne is all over the story, driven by an encounter with a random young woman named Latisha (Aliyah Odoffin), who appears to have one foot in the urban streets and the other in the more rarified world of advanced education (she speaks multiple languages).

 Scott Wilson tells her story in short, sharp bursts, often having scenes happening concurrently on stage, lines and exchanges criss-crossing between different locations and time frames. It’s not confusing, but it starts to feel like a gimmick pretty early on, one that neither illuminates the plot nor ups the theatrical ante. It does however play havoc with the pace as it becomes awkwardly obvious that actors are waiting to pick up their cues from each other across the vast expanses of the Olivier stage, thereby lending an unhelpfully tentative air to a piece that should come at us like a train. Dyer punctuates these moments with staccato flashes courtesy of lighting designer Paul Anderson and sound designer Benjamin Grant, but it feels more like desperate attempts to enliven a plodding script rather than anything essential or exciting.

 The thinly drawn characters seem more like mouthpieces than flesh-and-blood people, and the stiff, declamatory acting style doesn’t help. The performers appear to have mostly been directed to melodramatically bawl their lines facing front, barely connecting with each other. On the night I saw it, this bizarre delivery and the overwrought dialogue resulted in a couple of unfortunate moments which, though intended to be dramatic and serious, had sections of the audience roaring with unseemly laughter. The plot includes a major second act twist, but the storytelling is so muddy that the effect is more shrug-worthy than revelatory. 

Wright, so good in last year’s Not Your Superwoman at the Bush, appears all at sea on a much larger stage, projecting little more than ongoing irritation for most of the evening, although she achieves a degree of power when Yvonne’s civilised mask slips.  The chemistry between her and Wilf Scolding, otherwise excellent as her white, wealthy boyfriend, is non-existent. Toussaint fares better, and has undeniable stage presence, although there’s only so much anybody can do with a role whose main characteristic seems to be that she’s permanently in a bad mood. Ashley Thomas strikes the same relentless note as a scheming rival journalist, but Odoffin creates something intriguing and authentic out of the mysterious Latisha. 

Schisms within the Black community, social mobility, and journalistic integrity should be fascinating subjects. Here though, they ultimately get flattened by flavourless writing and a staging apparently more concerned with flashy tricks than meaningful substance. The would-be-epic civil unrest final scene is strikingly staged, but cannot disguise that Scott Wilson’s script and the show as a whole ran out of steam long before this point.

Anna Fleischle’s angular, ugly scenic design, which looks conceived for the more traditional proscenium arch stage of the Lyttelton next door rather than the massive open circular space that the Olivier offers, sets the whole play in a school gymnasium. There’s no intelligible reason for this, other than that a couple of the flashback sequences take place in a deprived inner city school, and it just seems like another misfiring aspect of a production that can’t get out of its own way. I didn’t much care for the misconceived Sandra Oh Misanthrope earlier in the summer, but The Story brazenly steals that show’s crown as the National Theatre’s biggest dud of the year.

ANNIE WOBBLER (REVISITED)

                

by Arnold Wesker

 

adapted, directed and performed by Nichola McAuliffe

 

Finborough Theatre, London – until 26 September 2026

 

Running time: 75 minutes no interval

https://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/productions/annie-wobbler-revisited

 

The term “tour de force” gets bandied about with wearisome regularity and frequently some inaccuracy. However, if you want to see what a genuine tour de force looks like, head to the Finborough where award-winning actress and writer Nichola McAuliffe is resurrecting, after forty five years, a series of monologues created for her by that master of unflinching theatrical realism Arnold Wesker.

 The women who comprise Annie Wobbler are variations on the theme of female identity and the masks people adopt, or are forced to wear, to deal with the world at large. In a performance of chameleonic brilliance and with the energy of a dervish, McAuliffe embodies recent graduate Anna, brimming with a relatable combination of self-doubt and bubbly confidence preparing for a hot date and dumbing down her natural intelligence so as not to intimidate the man she’s seeing. 

Then she plays three versions of best-selling author Annabella, the first a genteelly whimsical Irish-accented boozer, the second a fiery, cougar-ish Scottish woman, and the last a sensitive, lonely upper crust matron. If it’s not clear why we are being treated to a trio of contrasting iterations, McAuliffe’s acting and the jagged elegance of Wesker’s language ensure that the confusion is entirely pleasurable.

 The final, and most effective, creation is the eponymous Annie Wobbler, a wistful, garrulous homeless woman, pushing her pitiful cart of possessions around a mainline railway terminus, her fractured mind suspended somewhere between a rosily remembered past as a home help and a dislocating present, adrift in a cosmopolitan modern city she barely recognises. McAuliffe is devastatingly good; neither she nor Wesker patronise Annie, investing her with a bruised, busy dignity and, in her memories, a palpable joy. Annie drinks, not fastidiously, but with the practical, habitual manner of somebody who constantly needs to blunt the edges. 

There are hints of unspecified past trauma (why did she never hold down a job longer than a certain period of time?) for Annie, and McAuliffe conveys a boatload of feeling and barely comprehended memory just by staring into space. She’s spiky too, but her barbed references to foreigners and Jewish people, though deliberately jarring, sound less like prejudice and more like somebody trying to make sense of an increasingly bewildering, unfamiliar world. When she refers to the need for herself to be rubbed out and started again, it tears at your heart. We might feel sadness for Annie Wobbler, even while marvelling at her indomitable spirit and ripe humour, but she never feels sorry for herself. 

In the original production, Annie was costumed by designer Pamela Howard like a Dickensian crone, but this time around she wears a shiny hat vaguely resembling a crown, and that feels more appropriate: this damaged survivor is a queen of sorts, and, in this mighty performance, she haunts our imaginations. McAuliffe never lets her, or us, off the hook…and this is a performance which every drama student in London needs to see.

In all honesty, the attempts to bring Wesker’s gritty, witty text bang up-to-date feel a touch hamfisted. References to the internet and social media are just cosmetic, in a script that actually has a timeless quality: the constraints upon all three women depicted here haven’t, unfortunately, changed very much across nearly five decades. Having Annie Wobbler disport next to a station lavatory sign that includes the non-binary symbol seems more like lip service than anything else, but at least it doesn’t detract from the grim vitality of the writing or McAuliffe’s sensational performance. 

Alex Jennings, James Naughtie and Peter Straker provide striking pre-recorded vocal turns as various men in the various Annie’s lives. Richard House’s lighting and Sebastian Frost’s sound are sharp and sensitive. Ultimately though, this is all about Ms McAuliffe, which is just how the late great Arnold would have wanted it. She’s a thrilling technician with heart, intelligence and, like her author, a deep understanding of flawed humanity, and she holds the audience in her outstretched hand. Do not miss her.

A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY 

by Brian Friel after Ivan Turgenev 

directed by Lyndsey Turner 

Donmar Warehouse, London – until 3 October 2026

running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval 

https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/events/a-month-in-the-country/?instance-type=standard#content-overview

Disappointment, ennui, romantic and erotic yearnings, half-truths that make the day-to-day living that bit more bearable…. all of these things are suffused like smoke though Turgenev’s mid-nineteenth century tragicomedy, revived at the Donmar in Brian Friel’s widely seen 1992 translation. Friel and Turgenev are a good match: A Month In The Country is full of the elegiac indolence and bitter humour that characterises much of the Irish master playwright’s output. It’s also similar to the work of Turgenev’s contemporary fellow countryman Chekhov, who Friel has also extensively adapted, although this never quite matches the depth and universality of the mighty Anton at his best.

Audiences longing to wallow in atmospherics and elegant savagery will find plenty to enjoy here, but anybody in search of something with a bit more oomph may find their patience tested. It’s all mood and no action. Director Lyndsey Turner has form at the Donmar with Friel, having directed several of his plays here including, a decade ago, a heart-stoppingly fine version of his Faith Healer that deserves to be the benchmark by which all future productions for a generation are measured.

This adaptation is exquisitely written and finds the sweet spot between stylishness  and misery so essential to the original script. On a rural Russian estate, sundry malcontents pick away at their unexpressed feelings, guard or bemoan their social standings, and are presided over by landowner’s wife Nataya Petrovna (Sophie Okonedo) who assuages her chronic boredom by meddling in the lives of others.

One of several curious things about Turner’s production is that the actors, while individually fine, sometimes seem to be inhabiting different worlds from each other. Okonedo is brisk, mercurial and often very funny as scheming Natalya, even if her motivations and quicksilver mood changes aren’t always easy to comprehend. 

Thomas Arnold is sensitive, touching and sincere as Arkady, her misused husband, while Patrick Gibson’s gauche, impassioned academic Belyayev and Rachelle Diedericks as the young woman falling for him both seem to be going for a modern realism that gives a jolt of electricity to the proceedings but isn’t mirrored elsewhere.

Daniel Rigby is manically humorous but undeniably effective as a self-serving local doctor while Alastair Petrie plays Rakitin, Natalya’s most ardent admirer, as so low energy that he almost disappears before our very eyes. Amanda Wilkin, all gawky physicality and staring eyes, works hard as a rebellious, snuff-addicted lady’s companion but it comes across as more of a comic turn than a fully realised characterisation, while Jessica Brindle and Jonathan Livingstone paint the lusty servants in similarly broad strokes.

They’re as nothing though compared to the bumbling, mispronouncing German interloper Herr Schaaf, played by Mark Hadfield like something from a 1970s sitcom. The most satisfying performance, by quite a long margin, comes from Susan Brown, utterly perfect as Arkady’s soignée but no-nonsense mother. The scene where she lets on a seismic family secret to her flailing son is beautifully handled. Michael Hodgson finds real pathos in a socially awkward local landowner reduced to being a pawn in other smarter people’s games.

Turner and designer Leslie Travers have updated the time period, possibly by about a century, but not distractingly so. Visually this Month In The Country is a feast of rich autumnal hues (Tim Lutkin’s lighting is particularly evocative) in rueful harmony with the melancholy inner lives of the characters. Travers’ set ingeniously marries the opulence of Arkady Islayev’s house with the verdant landscape of the country estate surrounding it (drawing room furniture is placed directly onto the green lawn, a horizontal cascade of reeds and florals frame a grand arch leading to other interior locations). 

It all looks lovely, and it would perhaps be churlish in a play like this one to complain that there isn’t much in the way of pace, but much of the blocking is pedestrian and the constant raising and lowering of leaf-covered walls to indicate passage of time and scene breaks is rather awkward. The decision to occasionally have Natalya and Rakitin’s inner thoughts booming over the sound system for them to respond to, is an odd one, awkwardly straddling comedy and melodrama; it’s also inconsistent, as though it had been floated during the rehearsal process then neither fully abandoned nor properly explored.

For all these reservations, there is much to savour here. It’s handsomely mounted, and most cast members get moments to shine, albeit seldom in tandem with each other. A quality piece of theatre for sure, but not one that suggests Turgenev’s work has anything startlingly relevant to offer modern audiences. This may not feel like a whole month in the country, but it sure felt longer than just over two hours.