ajhlovestheatre

JEEVES TAKES CHARGE

 

by P G Wodehouse 

 

Adapted by James and Edward Duke

 

Co-adapted and directed by Hugh Wooldridge

 

Charing Cross Theatre, London – until 6 September 2026

 

Running time: 2 hours including interval

https://charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/theatre/jeeves-takes-charge

 

Connoisseurs of a certain gilded camp silliness that is peculiarly English and entirely inconsequential, should hasten to Charing Cross Theatre, where Jeeves Takes Charge, first seen in the West End in 1980, emerges as though suspended in champagne jelly like a shiny, semi-precious relic from a bygone era. Distilled from P G Wodehouse’s popular though thoroughly archaic Jeeves and Wooster stories, chronicling the misadventures of a bumptious but well meaning early twentieth century high society bon viveur and his wry, all-seeing butler, it doesn’t amount to much beyond amiable, gentle light entertainment, boozy and woozy. 

This revival is exquisitely, lovingly, produced, and features an athletic tour de force solo performance from Sam Harrison. It’s unlikely to gain Wodehouse any new fans but it will be delightful for anybody who books tickets knowing exactly what they’re going to get. Caite Hevner’s set and video designs are particularly impressive. The scenery is a fairly standard fireplace, bay window and sofa arrangement, but the astonishingly precise and technically accomplished video embellishments are extraordinary. A London drawing room transforms in a heartbeat to Brighton seafront, a breathless journey through the countryside, a cosy but naff fete…the list goes on. It’s all beautifully rendered and lends the text an interest that it probably wouldn’t have unaided. 

Script devisers Edward Duke (who starred in the first production, winning an Olivier award) and James Duke have done a capable job of filleting Wodehouse’s madcap original material and compressing it into a series of anecdotes, put over with irrepressible verve by the indefatigable Harrison. He embodies both leading characters, and also the motley crew of other privileged, exotically monikered creations of Wodehouse’s imagination, including Gussie Fink-Nottle, formidable Aunt Agatha and Wooster’s stridently bossy financée Lady Florence Craye. His physical comedy skills are a joy (look out for his attempts to rouse himself from a sofa while severely hung over), and he bites into Wodehouse’s baroque, literate language with a relish that proves contagious.

Personally, I could have lived without the pair of over-enthusiastic public schoolgirls apparently escaped from Daisy Pulls It Off and employed to put up bunting and whip up flagging audience enthusiasm. Hugh Wooldridge’s production probably outstays its welcome by at least ten minutes, and, at least on the night I saw it, was punctuated with rather less helpless laughter than one might have hoped. 

Still, Harrison is superb, the show looks very pretty, and the whole production is suffused with such affection it’s hard not to be charmed. Times have changed but Bertie Wooster remains twinklingly out-of-touch and Jeeves retains his lugubrious wit.

ABIGAIL’S PARTY

by Mike Leigh 

directed by Nadia Fall

Harold Pinter Theatre, London – until 19 September 2026

running time: 2 hours including interval

https://www.haroldpintertheatre.co.uk/shows/abigails-party

“We’re not here to hold conversations, we’re here to enjoy ourselves” – yes Mike Leigh’s Beverley Moss, that mid-1970s gorgon of upward social mobility, suburban marital warfare and aggressively over-the-top home entertaining, is back. This time she’s in the magnetic glamazon form of Tamzin Outhwaite who may just be delivering career-best work in Nadia Fall’s extravagantly kitschy but ultimately dramatically potent revival. 

Abigail’s Party, with its excessive drinking, quips about rape, cheesy pineapple festive snacks, and Demis Roussos references, feels as though it’s locked in a time capsule harking back to the decade that taste forgot. It defies updating and, honestly, if this production wasn’t quite as good as it is, one might be tempted to wonder what relevance it has to today. 

Wisely, Fall allows the script to speak for itself while subtly injecting it with a couple of new emphases that make the characters read slightly differently. The most obvious one is in making the younger neighbours, over-eager nurse Angela and taciturn former footballer Tony (Lauren Patel and Omar Malik), into an Asian couple. As far as I can tell, not a line of dialogue has been changed, but their heritage adds an extra comic piquancy to Angela’s complaint that they never have curry because Tony can’t stand it. More significantly, it lends a new unease to the section where Laurence (Kevin Bishop), Beverley’s increasingly desperate estate agent husband, questions older local resident Sue (Pandora Colin) as to whether she has noticed any significant changes in the area. Bishop, brilliant, lards Laurence’s low level racism with real covert nastiness, spitting out the word “cosmopolitan” like it’s poison. 

Initially, it looks like production the might be on the verge of overdoing the 1970s garishness, especially at the first reveal of Peter McKintosh’s busy, retina-bruising living room set. Remember, when this play was first done in 1977 it was a contemporary piece, nailing the foibles and pretensions of the newly moneyed lower middle classes of the time, not a big ole camp fest. Despite a few overly broad strokes, Fall’s version swiftly hits its comic and dramatic strides most pleasingly. 

Beverley, especially as played here, could be seen as a precursor to the shallow, wealthy TOWIE vulgarians who’ve achieved celebrity status in the last couple of decades. Outhwaite, astonishingly, succeeds in banishing all memories of Alison Steadman’s vivid, borderline grotesque original creation, giving us a Beverley in love with the sound of her own voice, relentlessly self-dramatising but with an edge of sour unhappiness that becomes more and more strident as the gin starts to flow. She’s a suburban diva who sees her lavishly appointed living room as her own personal stage, with anybody else who comes into her orbit as mere bit part players. Her lascivious objectification of hunky Tony is hilariously done, but it’s clearly in reaction to a deeply unsatisfying intimate relationship with the hapless Laurence. It’s a multi-layered performance, laugh-out-loud funny but never at the expense of some sort of manic truth,  and she’s strangely endearing in her lack of empathy and self-awareness. It’s a performance that straddles the divide between barnstorming and brutal reality, with a side-order of spite and camp fabulousness. It’s impossible to take your eyes off this combination of fishwife and suburban queen as she delivers the excruciating banalities in Leigh’s endlessly quotable script with majestic aplomb and total conviction.

Patel’s Angela, pushing a bit hard for the humour at first but eventually becoming hugely endearing, and Malik convince as a couple whose mutual communication is permanently running on empty. Intriguingly and crucially, they achieve, in the play’s harrowing final minutes, the feat of showing us why this pair really do work well together, despite all the odds. Colin, in the least rewarding role as divorcee Sue whose daughter’s unruly gathering down the street gives the play its title, is squirmingly awkward perfection. 

This really is Outhwaite’s show, and she’s so sensational she’s not even upstaged by her wig (at least one assumes it’s a wig) which looks like a cross between a blonde Barbarella-era Jane Fonda and The Wizard of Oz’s Cowardly Lion. Judging from the ecstatic audience reaction, there’s still plenty of life in this 1970s throwback of a play, and it’s hard to imagine a better revival than this one. Other people behaving appallingly are so seldom this much fun. 

BURY THE HATCHET

written by Sasha Wilson

directed by Vicky Moran

an Out Of The Forest production 

Southwark Playhouse Borough – The Little,  London – until 5 September 2026

running time: 75 minutes no interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/bury-the-hatchet/

Bonkers, brief and enjoyable, Out Of The Forest’s Bury The Hatchet is a unique, surprising fusion of cabaret, Grand Guignol horror, courtroom drama and rollicking good fun. This exploration of the Lizzie Borden legend, equal parts factual and fanciful, has been knocking around fringe stages for some eight years, but honestly it’s not hard to see why it keeps coming back. 

The question of whether Lizzie actually did murder her father Andrew and stepmom Abby in the rural family home in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892 is something that has fascinated storytellers and true crime specialists for decades. Furthermore, Bury The Hatchet (there’s a moderately funny running gag that Lizzie can’t tell the difference between a hatchet and an axe) is a fun time in the theatre where you might actually learn something (unlike, say, the 2009 rock musical Lizzie which had two runs here at Southwark but where it was hard to work out what was going on over all the shrieking and posturing). Plus, this must be comparatively cheap to produce (three performers on a unit set) and proves a grand showcase for talent, requiring the trio to be multi-roleing character actors, comics, compères and versatile musicians.

Writer Sasha Wilson leads from the front as an acerbic Lizzie, calm and composed on the surface but convincingly, and alarmingly, unhinged when required. Her sidekicks, Lawrence Boothman and David Leopold, are equally impressive playing everyone else, from a stern judge to Lizzie’s disapproving older sister and the flighty but vaguely sinister Irish maid Bridget. All three are terrific, versatile folk musicians and vocalists.

There’s a vivid pink identifying label attached to every prop, including the fatal hatchet (or is it an axe?!), a period telephone, and sundry other items to aid the storytelling, as well as to the fiddles, guitars and banjos employed by the cast, making them look like a camp cross between exhibits in a museum and pieces of potentially incriminating evidence being used in a forensic investigation. 

The principal visual impact (set by Damien Stanton, costumes by Helen Stewart) is of a sort of low budget, gothic stylishness, and it’s pretty effective. I can’t help but wish Will Alder had found another way of lighting the show by shining lamps straight into the eyes of audience seated in the central section. It may all look wonderfully atmospheric when viewed from an angle but, seated head on, the main visual takeaway is one of acute physical discomfort. 

The story shifts perspective several times between corroborated facts and suppositions about what might have happened, and how Lizzie’s life later turned out. The initial concept of setting the audience up as the jury is only fitfully alighted upon as the show goes on, but the wit of the writing, the sheer theatricality of Vicky Moran’s staging and the quality of the performances collectively provide such an acid rush of pleasure that it doesn’t overly matter.

Bury The Hatchet doesn’t necessarily add anything to the Lizzie Borden narrative that we don’t already know: the Sapphic overtones, intimations of family abuse, the dichotomy between a moneyed, luxurious life and criminal activity of the most heinous order…it’s all here. But it’s presented with such originality and skill that it’s impossible not to be grimly enchanted.

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST

by William Shakespeare 

directed by Indiana Lown-Collins

Shakespeare’s Globe, London – in repertoire until 13 September 2026

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/loves-labours-lost/

Even the most ardent of Shakespearean aficionados struggle to work up much enthusiasm for Love’s Labour’s Lost. This is the seldom performed comedy where the middle word of the title can sometimes feel like an unfortunate summary of the whole exhausting tale of foresworn romance, territorial conflicts, and deception. It’s lovely then to report that Indiana Lown-Collins’ flamenco-infused new distillation for the Globe is an unexpected delight, as heady and light of heart as it is stomping of foot and strong on bawdy, broad comedy. 

I use the word “distillation” deliberately: the original text has been so cut and messed about with that this Love’s Labour’s Lost feels more like a gorgeous cousin to the Bard’s original than a faithful rendering. Frankly, I’m not complaining, as this play can so often feel precious, dense but deeply tedious. Not this time though, where Lown-Collins and her team serve up Shakespeare with tangy Spanish atmospherics, full-on belly laughs and a bonkers joie de vivre that only the most miserable of curmudgeons could fail to respond to. 

Lown-Collins’ version is both fiery and airy. It’s set in a Spain replete with garish ceramic tiles, sparkling toreador costumes, castanets, a bullfight (mercifully, only simulated and stylised but with real theatrical flair), and where the Princess (a wonderful Norah Lopez Holden, authoritative but multi-layered) is no longer from France and has her sights set on Aragon instead of Aquitaine on behalf of her ailing father.  

The performances are excellent throughout, but it’s the women that are really powerful. Aside from Lopez Holden, who is fast turning into one of the most exciting Shakespeareans of her generation, Bea Segura excels as an enigmatic, strongly accented Rosaline with Jimena Larraguivel like a spitfire in human form as a wild, lovable Jaquenetta. If occasionally the accents obscure the language it’s a fair trade-off given the Spanish authenticity they lend.

The teacher Holofernes has been deliciously reimagined as an insufferable yet strangely irresistible female English tourist, complete with naff outfit, massive cultural insensitivity, and “I Loveth Navarre” beach bag. Katy Stephens is a swaggering, chorizo-chomping delight in the role, and she has form with this sort of thing, having played an equally off-the-wall crowd pleaser as a singing, gender-swapped Leonata in the wartime-set Much Ado in 2022.

The central quartet of scholars – Ned Costello as King of Navarre, Philip Arditti’s Berowne, Philip Labey as Longaville, and Jax Guerrero’s Dumaine – register as potent individual characters and as a charmingly quirky team. The scene where each expresses their love/lust through modern pop songs is a particular highlight. Joshua Hill is likeable and tremendously sexy as cheeky stablehand Costard, whose affection for fellow worker Jaquenetta unleashes all sorts of mayhem.  There’s terrific work, very funny but unexpectedly nuanced, from Daniel Crossley, doubling as an uptight constable and a witty, flamboyant diplomat.

The ravishing design work of Katie Lias and flamenco choreography by Carmen Igarza, as well as a band of musicians as characterful as they’re melodic, add immeasurably to the appeal of a production that turns a play that often seems like hard work into an entrancingly good time. The back of the programme has the quote “if you deny to dance, let’s hold more chat” from Act V, scene two…..but this glorious show definitely favours the dance, and I, for one, am not complaining. 

CATS

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber 

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

directed and choreographed by Drew McOnie

Regents Park Open Air Theatre, London – until 19 September 2026, then touring

running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval 

https://openairtheatre.com/production/cats

Although it has been superseded by Phantom in terms of longevity and universal popularity, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s eclectic 1981 score for Cats -by turns bouncy, menacing then melancholic and often far more musically interesting than it’s given credit for- comes up fresh and frequently thrilling in the open air. It’s probably the single most successful aspect of this Regents Park version, which fields a cat-ophony (I’m sorry) of fine voices and a superb twelve-strong band playing Lloyd Webber and David Cullen’s 1980s-tinged orchestrations, under Adam Fisher’s crystal clear sound design. If aurally this new Cats is wonderful, visually and conceptually it is something of a mixed bag.

There are several things working against Drew McOnie’s well meant, athletic but only fitfully effective revival. The biggest is probably the shadow of Dame Gillian Lynne’s unsurpassable dance and movement for the original production, recreated globally and in numerous revivals plus the 1998 video version. Lynne was so much more than just a choreographer-for-hire in Trevor Nunn’s initial vision, instrumental in the very fabric of the bonkers but magical Cats that authentically took the West End and Broadway, as well as almost everywhere else that musicals are staged, by storm in the 1980s. Lynne it was that synthesised ballet and jazz dance with feline movement in a way that encompassed story telling, raw emotion and sheer showbiz brio, and her work was as, if not more, essential to what made Cats such a phenomenon as Lloyd Webber’s music, John Napier’s extravagant rubbish dump set or the ear-tickling ‘Old Possum’ poetry by T S Eliot that form the basis of the text. Her contribution cannot be over-estimated: take that away and it’s interesting to see how much “there” is there.

The newly shuttered The Jellicle Ball on Broadway demonstrates successfully (artistically if not financially) that there is more than one way to skin a cat (sorry, I just had to) but only by totally reinventing what the show is. McOnie isn’t positing his Cats as a radical new concept: it’s essentially the same idea as the original but with less dramatic potency and some disappointingly underwhelming visuals. There is a symmetry and intermittent passion to his choreography (executed with exemplary commitment and precision, by the way) but it’s seldom as galvanising or memorable as what Lynne gave us. It also, crucially, only sometimes looks like feline movement. For some of the show, the talented cast appear to be engaging in high level group exercise activities: undeniably attractive to watch but not really suggestive of this most graceful, volatile and sometimes feral of domestic animals.

There is a popular school of thought that Cats is essentially plotless, but, while it’s hardly Ragtime or Les Mis, themes of rebirth and redemption run through it, in the Jellicle’s quest for one of their number to be chosen to ascend to cat heaven, or the Heaviside Layer, as Eliot characterised it. Along the way, their leader Old Deuteronomy is abducted by terrorist Macavity, only to be returned with the help of “the original conjuring cat”, Magical Mr Mistoffolees. All of this is put over in such a perfunctory fashion here though that if you blink you’ll miss it, the repeated prioritisation of speed and athleticism over storytelling blunting any emotional impact. 

There’s little world-building in Sami Fendall’s stark, borderline ugly designs for set, costumes and wigs. The giant shattered crescent moon setting is a sort of industrial rust colour, while the pallet for the scrappy costumes incorporates that hue while also extending to blacks, greys and whites. It’s just not very interesting to look at, or at least it isn’t until Jessica Hung Yan Yun’s impressive, mood-shifting lighting kicks in. These weird human-feline hybrids, some sporting headdresses that look like swimming caps with ears tacked on to them and most made up to look less like cats than RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants forced to go onstage before completing their ‘lewks’, appear to be designed primarily to withstand all weathers. That’s understandable perhaps but one can can’t help hoping they all get a major overhaul before this production heads off around the country to tour indoor venues.

There are some beautiful dancers in this cast, and one of the most successful aspects of McOnie’s work is how he makes this bunch of Jellicles feel like an authentic community, or tribe. There’s something primal and tender in the way they all bed down together, or the way they move as one when dealing with a perceived threat. In a terrific ensemble, where everyone is singing and dancing at full throttle throughout, individual performances manage to pop, despite what the cast are given to wear.

Gary Wilmot is genuinely heartbreaking as Gus The Theatre Cat, dreaming of his former glory days upon the stage (and interestingly, he gets to wear the distinctive multi-coloured patchwork costume as originally designed by John Napier, which has the unfortunate effect of showing up the creations around him for the half-baked monstrosities they are). Lucie-Mae Sumner is just lovely as Jellylorum, his sidekick-cum-carer. Millie O’Connell and Katie Dunsden are sexy, sassy and fabulous delivering the jazzy, irresistible ‘Macavity’ number. Briana Craig and Danny Nattrass bring the house down as a pair of witty, stunningly acrobatic petty criminals (“Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer….we are highly efficient cat burglars as well”) despite being saddled with strange costumes that make them look like frogs rather than felines.

On press night, recent drama school graduate Taziva-Faye Katsande subbed for an ailing Rachael Wooding as ‘Memory’-haunted Grizabella, the downtrodden, faded Glamour Cat. She’s clearly very talented, as evidenced by a glance at the programme and noting how many roles she’s covering, with a warm, rangy voice of considerable power. At just nineteen years old though, she simply doesn’t yet have the requisite emotional range or gravitas to do justice to this tragic role, but it’s a creditable turn. Somewhat bizarrely, Melanie La Barrie, wonderful as a gender-swapped Old Deuteronomy, the venerable leader of the Jellicles, is wigged and costumed like a ‘traditional’ Grizabella from the Nunn-Lynne-Napier original (Fendall’s design for the character here is like a Disney princess down on her luck), and would actually probably knock the show’s most famous number right out of the (Regents) Park.

Cats is much more than just a one-song show though, and it is an undoubted pleasure to hear this score ‘live ‘ again. It’s a shame that this strange production only occasionally comes within a whiskers distance of the magic of the original, and one wonders what people here encountering the show for the first time will think it’s actually about. For all my misgivings though, Drew McOnie’s Cats is still ten times better than Tom Hooper’s misconceived film version: now that is a Memory best forgotten. 

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. Mostly though, by that stage of an interminably long evening, I just wanted to get out of the theatre.

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.