ajhlovestheatre

THE PRODUCERS

Book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan

Music and lyrics by Mel Brooks 

directed by Patrick Marber

Menier Chocolate Factory, London – until 1 March 2025

https://www.menierchocolatefactory.com

“It was shocking, outrageous, insulting…and I loved every minute of it.” So reads Andy Nyman’s unscrupulous Broadway producer Max Bialystock from a review of his new show, the astonishingly bad taste “Springtime For Hitler”, which he needs to flop epically so that he can pocket the investors’s cash, having deliberately over budgeted to the tune of $2 million. That same hyperbolic statement isn’t a bad summation of Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan’s musical, receiving its first London revival since the original production at Drury Lane.

You’ve got to hand it to him, Brooks is an equal opportunities offender. This rambunctious slice of Broadway, lovingly adapted from his 1967 movie, takes comic potshots at so many pockets of humanity (senior citizens, gays, Jews, theatre luvvies, Europeans, even Jesus this time around who turns up as a loincloth-wearing cocktail server in an exceptionally camp household) that it’s hard to know what to be affronted by first. Or maybe just buckle up and enjoy the ride of this high octane tuner that is as well-crafted as it’s crazy, and was hailed at its 2001 New York premiere as a glorious example of old school musical comedy in the grand manner. 

Susan Stroman’s original staging of this tale of an attempt to create a bona fide Broadway disaster, was a glossy, huge affair; Patrick Marber, directing his first musical, goes for a much more downbeat aesthetic (Nyman’s Max, for example, looks like Dickens’s Mr Quilp with his scruffy grey hair and greasy-looking jacket) that suits the smaller space perfectly. When Paul Farnsworth’s costumes turn on the dazzle dazzle, such as for the tap-dancing chorines or the statuesque German clichés served up as frothy flights of fantasy in the show-within-a-show section (“don’t be stupid, be a smarty! Come and join the Nazi Party!”) complete with giant pretzels, sausages and steins of beer, they’re a marvel to behold, but overall the emphasis is more on grit than glamour. 

Similarly, Scott Pask’s unit set of a massive metal grid reminiscent of those lightbulb-filled advertising hoardings that sit atop the theatres of Manhattan’s west 44th street, is mainly transformed by a few simple additions, and the inspired use of Richard Howell’s dazzling lighting. When the material and cast are this good, the lack of obvious spectacle matters surprisingly little, especially when Marber’s production, which perhaps leans more into the innate Jewishness of the material than ever before, whips along at such a cracking pace. 

Furthermore, Lorin Latarro, represented recently on Broadway by her inventive work on The Heart of Rock’n’Roll and The Who’s Tommy, is gaining a reputation as one of the Great White Way’s foremost dance creators. Here she comes up with dynamic choreography, energised but mindful of tradition, that brilliantly utilises the limited space, and more than matches Stroman’s original work.

The treatment of the Nazis throughout is (rightly) merciless: Hitler (Trevor Ashley, jawdropping) is carted on as a golden, high camp amalgam of himself, Caligula and sundry Broadway divas (“I’m the German Ethel Merman don’t you know”); we get dancers dressed as U-boats, tap dancing stormtroopers…it’s truly ridiculous. With the global emboldening of neo-Nazis and their extreme views, the show now exists in a very different world from the one that the original production opened in, and this gives Marber’s staging a real edge, even as it admirably demonstrates Brooks’s theory that the best way of disempowering something is by laughing at it. And laugh we surely do, even while occasionally cringing.

This is a show that, for all its snark, is in love with the theatre, and the vivid gallery of characters Brooks created in egotistical director Roger De Bris (Ashley again, firing hilariously on all cylinders: “that whole second act has to be rewritten. They’re losing the war? Excuse me? It’s too downbeat!“), his “common law assistant” Carmen Ghia (Raj Ghatak resplendent in lip gloss, sheer black and a mid-career Liza Minnelli wig) and their household of camp creatives are recognisable tropes. Also, for all his kvetching and bawling, Nyman’s Bialystock feels like a legit theatrical type who takes a bizarre pride in his ability to con little old ladies out of their money to put on his appalling productions.

Nyman is more low key than Nathan Lane and his successors in the original, but he’s very good indeed. There’s a real sense of desperation and desolation about this Max, his comedy (of which there is plenty, most of it delicious) rooted in truth rather than the vaudevillian ‘business’ of his predecessors. He properly stops the show with ‘Betrayed’, the tour de force eleven o’clock number where the jailed shyster recaps the  entire show in three minutes flat.

As the other titular producer, nebbish Leo Bloom, the put-upon accountant seduced by the bright lights of showbiz, Marc Antolin turns in a gorgeous study of somebody in a permanent state of anxiety, his body bent out of shape, his eyes wide and swivelling, his limbs somehow seeming too long for his torso. He’s achingly funny and totally endearing. He even dances in character: a marvellous mover usually, his awkwardness gives way to something fleet-footed and entrancing when he gets together with his beloved Ulla. 

The Ulla character, the Swedish blonde bombshell secretary-cum-starlet employed by Bialystock mainly because he fancies her, was very much a product of the time in the movie (original actress Lee Meredith was required to do little more than go-go dance in a bikini) but thankfully book writers Brooks and Thomas Meehan gave her more agency and material in the musical. Marber goes even further this time around, making her more wise to Max’s lechery and amused by the idiocy of the men she’s dealing with. It’s a subtle change, but it’s welcome, and she is clearly smitten with Antolin’s charming goofball from the get-go. Joanna Woodward brings an irresistible joie de vivre, a preposterous accent and a sensational singing voice to the role, as well as a knowingness that suggests that this stunning young woman is way smarter than Leo or Max realise. She’s utterly fabulous. 

Another interpretation that manages to improve on the original is Harry Morrison’s Franz Liebkind, the lederhosen wearing, tin helmeted Nazi sympathiser (and Springtime For Hitler author) hiding out in Greenwich Village with his pigeons and a massive chip on his Teutonic shoulder (“the führer was BUTCH!”). Morrison plays him like a psychotic manchild who turns on a dime from guileless grinning idiot to gun-waving maniac, with a booming operatic voice and an imposing presence. Crucially, while the performance is alive to the lunacy of its surroundings, it’s infused with an unsettling sincerity and real sense of danger that makes him all the more hysterical. 

Brooks’s tunes sound like something from the Golden Age of Broadway, and Larry Blank and Mark Cumberland’s orchestrations package them with punchy energy but finesse. The quicksilver lyrics, ranging from witty to crude, have a rare brilliance and the beauty of Niamh Gaffney and Terry Jardine’s rousing but never overwhelming sound design is that we can actually hear them. 

The Menier Chocolate Factory had an enviable track record of transferring their more successful productions (particularly the musicals) into the West End prior to the pandemic. This delightful, classily outrageous show feels like a triumphant return to form. The Menier run is already sold out so it seems inevitable that a further life will be announced shortly. The Producers looks set to make a lot more people pleasurably appalled but mostly deliriously happy. As Max’s critical nemesis said, I loved every minute of it.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

Music by Elton John

Lyrics by Shaina Taub and Mark Sonnenblick

Book by Kate Weatherhall

based on the novel by Lauren Weisberger and the Twentieth Century Motion Picture screenplay 

directed by Jerry Mitchell 

Dominion Theatre, London – open ended run

https://devilwearspradamusical.com

Slinging money at something is fine in the short term but doesn’t necessarily work as a lasting solution. Theatrical evidence of that is currently to be found at the Dominion where The Devil Wears Prada, a new musical adapted from the beloved Meryl Streep-Anne Hathaway movie of 2006 and Lauren Weisberger’s roman à clef inspired by her tenure as an intern under Anna Wintour at Vogue, has landed in a sumptuous production, one of the most lavish on any current London stage. It’s not a great tuner but it has a flash and sparkle that will keep many theatregoers happy for now and you certainly won’t be questioning where the cost of your ticket went.

The opulence is all – big cast, expansive sets, mostly gorgeous costumes, fabulous wigs and make-up, ingenious state-of-the-art lighting – but it can’t mask the fact that this feels like a show created by committee (albeit a distinguished one including Tony winners Elton John and Shaina Suffs Taub, both of whom seem to have been asleep at the wheel when crafting this one) with no discernible purpose beyond the fact that nobody else had turned The Devil Wears Prada into a musical yet. It scores highly on slickness and gloss but falls short in many other areas.

This is apparently the season for adapting Meryl Streep movies for the stage what with this opening within weeks of the triumphant Death Becomes Her musical on Broadway. But that thrilling gothic camp-fest scores because it legitimately feels as though those glamorous, overwrought undead divas and their acolytes would express themselves through song, while The Devil Wears Prada’s characters (mostly glamorous, very much alive divas) don’t automatically feel like people who would sing and dance. 

That’s especially true of Miranda Priestly, the tyrannical high fashion magazine editor immortalised by Streep on film and embodied here by Vanessa Williams in a performance remarkably similar to her Whilemina Slater in TV’s Ugly Betty. Williams is divine of course – charismatic, commanding and  unimpeachably elegant – but she has an innate warmth and sense of underlying mischief that suits the imperious Miranda less well than Streep’s infinitely chillier portrayal. Giving her songs (although, interestingly, no big solo) makes things worse as having a character sing gives an insight into their heart and soul, and humanising Miranda in this way compromises her mystique and authority. Still, it’s wonderful to have Williams back on the London stage following the 2020 City of Angels Donmar transfer that didn’t even make it to opening night thanks to the pandemic, and you’ll be in no doubt that you’re in the presence of a true star.

She’s not the only star in Jerry Mitchell’s production. Amy Di Bartolomeo’s passive-aggressive, fashion obsessed personal assistant is a glorious, vivid creation, and one of the few examples of the musical equalling the screen original. Her comic timing is marvellously on point, she sings like a diva and, similarly to Emily Blunt in the film, you like her even when she’s being perfectly dreadful, mainly because Di Bartolomeo, who emerges here as the sort of talent whole productions get built around, suggests a deep insecurity underneath the high gloss bitching. 

Georgie Buckland inherits Anne Hathaway’s mantle as Andy Sachs, the aspiring scribe who sees her position as PA on an upmarket fashion magazine as a mere stepping stone to her loftier literary ambitions, and is principal victim of Kate Weatherhead’s book’s simplification and defanging of the tart cruelty of Aline Brosh McKenna’s original screenplay. Where Hathaway’s Andy was comically befuddled by being such a fish out of water and got some lovely self-deprecation to play, the stage version just comes across as jarringly whiny and self-serving, becoming plain obnoxious when she gets to Paris and discovers she loves the glamour and the limelight. She’s now simply not an interesting or likeable enough figure to carry the generic belty numbers that close each act. Having her apologise for her behaviour to her manipulative boyfriend (Rhys Whitfield, doing his best in a thankless role) near the end feels like another misstep in this day and age. Their playful duet about only loving each other for their bodies is presumably intended to be sexy and ironic, but is mostly just excruciating.

As Nigel, the art director who guides Andy through the Manolos and the Choos, Matt Henry has less to work with than Stanley Tucci in the film but does nicely by his heartfelt number about the gay boy from the sticks who fulfilled his dream of being influential in the fashion business. While obviously musical theatre and the screen are very different mediums, Weatherhead’s stage script quotes whole chunks of the film verbatim while never offering anything revelatory or stimulating in the areas where it deviates from the familiar. 

John’s buoyant but unmemorable music often has a country flavour, which feels strange for a story set almost entirely in Manhattan, and Taub and Mark Sonnenblick’s lyrics are serviceable. The nearest things to outright showstoppers that the show can muster – Priestly’s ‘House of Miranda’ introduction, the title song and Nigel’s aspirational disco banger ‘Dress Your Way Up’ – tend to beat you into submission by sheer volume (Gareth Owen’s sound design is nothing if not forceful) and repetition rather than inspiration. This is a far less ambitious score than John’s Tammy Faye which has just flopped hard on Broadway.

Where The Devil Wears Prada really does soar on stage is in its visual aspects. From Tim Hatley’s gleaming scenery, conjuring up the NYC and Paris of our dreams from deluxe corporate offices to catwalk to elegant supper club, Bruno Poet’s richly textured lighting and Gregg Barnes’s couture-adjacent outfits, this is a real feast for the eyes. 

Probably best not to dwell on the statuesque female ensemble members suddenly being attired in 1940s wear with their shoulder pads, cinched waists and elaborate hats when the show moves to the City of Light (the story’s set in the early 2000s), or that Mitchell’s undistinguished choreography seems to consist mainly of standing about with one arm raised heavenwards, or voguing and pointing. I get it that it’s hard to dance in heels but a little more effort wouldn’t go amiss, especially at these ticket prices. Still, Vanessa Williams’s first entrance, up through the floor in scarlet power dressing and outsize sunglasses, is pure showbiz, and the climactic red, gold and black costume ball that ends the first half, on a gargantuan staircase giving Phantom a run for its money, is seriously stunning.

The Devil Wears Prada isn’t a bad night out, and the sense of occasion that accompanies the arrival of a show on this scale is always exciting, but it does seem disappointingly by-the-numbers as a musical. There’s a latent cynicism in its prioritisation of bombast and easy spectacle over real originality and character exploration: where some stage-to-screen adaptations such as Hairspray, Billy Elliot or the aforementioned Death Becomes Her elevate their source material, this one slightly diminishes it. It’s enjoyable but it ultimately feels like an expensive, beautifully wrapped gift package with very little inside it.

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK – WHAT A WHOPPER!

Written by Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper

Songs by Jon Bradfield

Directed by Andrew Beckett

Charing Cross Theatre, London – until 11 January 2025

https://charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/theatre/jack-and-the-beanstalk

He’s Behind You!’s annual adult pantomimes created by Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper with a distinctly gay slant have achieved something approaching cult status and the team’s offering for this festive season continues that tradition of merry smut and surprisingly high production values. What sets this team’s work apart from that of other purveyors of festive entertainment with a very adult twist is their knowledge of, and respect for, the traditions of panto. Far from just being an endless parade of unbridled single entendres and jokes about anal sex (although there’s plenty of all that), Jack And The Beanstalk – What A Whopper! has, like it’s predecessors, rhyming sections, the obligatory “there’s a ghost behind you” gag, well crafted songs, plenty of opportunities for the audience to boo, hiss and call back. 

Best of all it features the return of Matthew Baldwin, one of the classiest if rudest Dames in the business, this time as retired soap star Dolly Trott, first seen looking like Bet Lynch on steroids with a towering blonde beehive wig, eking out her post-fame days in the rural Northern (Leeds is repeatedly referenced as the height of cosmopolitanism) village of Upper Bottom accompanied only by her power bottom son Jack (an appealing Keanu Adolphus Johnson), their cows Tess and Claudia (yes you read those names correctly), and an unwelcome infestation of cuddly looking beavers. 

Baldwin is just wonderful: screamingly funny yet intriguingly understated as Dolly treats her fellow villagers and the audience with a haughty disdain that gets funnier the more dismissive she becomes. The withering put-downs and catty asides land, and every outrageous outfit and accompanying wig is suitably garish: his Norma Desmond, complete with turban, is a particularly fabulous look. As ever, Baldwin would be worth seeing this for, even if everyone else wasn’t so good.

Regular co-star Chris Lane is equally engaging as a super-camp fairy afraid to use his powers and Jordan Stamatiadis is great value and clearly having a ball as Sloane Ranger-ish, dildo-obsessed Lady Fleshcreep who has manufactured the legend of the rampant giant so that she can buy up the villagers houses at knockdown prices. Laura Anna-Mead as a winningly gormless Simple Simone, Joe Grundy’s closeted local vicar and Laura Buhagiar as a hilariously stroppy harp all add to the general fun.

The first half is an absolute riot but the pace and story slacken a bit in act two after Jack has climbed to the giants kingdom up the glittery, phallic (well, of course it was always going to be) beanstalk in David Shields’s whimsical, brashly coloured set. There’s a vague sense of the writing team resting on their laurels, relying on the aplomb of the performers and the roaring approval of the up-for-it audiences to fill in the gaps, which does mostly compensate, to be fair. 

The sound design could also afford to be punched up a little (does Charing Cross Theatre have neighbours to worry about?!): while it’s great to see a show where the band doesn’t drown the vocals, it would be nice not to have to strain to hear the music. There’s still a lot to love in Andrew Beckett’s nimble production though, especially Robert Draper and Sandy Lloyd’s garish, imaginative costumes, and genuinely exciting lighting by Matthew Hockley.

Quibbles aside, this remains a cheerfully obscene antidote to the slew of family friendly spectacles that dominate festive stages at this time of year. It’s naughty but nice….and watch yourself around Dolly’s emotional support skunk: it squirts, and my programme was ruined.

MAYBE HAPPY ENDING 

Music by Will Aronson

Lyrics by Hue Park 

Book by Will Aronson and Hue Park

directed by Michael Arden

Belasco Theatre, New York City – open ended run

https://www.maybehappyending.com

Here’s something refreshing and rare: a truly original musical. Not just because it isn’t based on a film or novel, nor a pre-existing collection of songs à la & Juliet or Mamma Mia!, the uniqueness of Maybe Happy Ending is due to its subject matter (it’s a sort-of romance between robots on the verge of obsolescence), setting (a futuristic Seoul, South Korea) and staging (Tony winning director Michael Arden makes it flow like a technicolour film). This isn’t like anything on Broadway (or the West End for that matter) currently or within living memory. It’s also utterly delightful.

Will Aronson and Hue Park’s musical was an award-winning success in Seoul in 2016 then received its English language premiere at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre just before the pandemic, and now arrives on Broadway in an entrancing, visually astonishing production. Employing a gliding cinematic fluidity matched with the immediacy and humour unique to live theatre, and fusing state-of-the-art technology with a winning, heartfelt humanity, director Arden has crafted a staging that whisks us off to an alternate world that has relatable, ultimately very moving connections to our own. The story may be ostensibly about robots but they’re essentially a prism through which are refracted universal human truths about love, lifespan and connection.

Darren Criss plays Helperbot Oliver, retired from work as a sort of electronic manservant living out the rest of his existence (at least until he no longer functions) in a tiny flat with only his pet plant named HwaBoon and the jazz recordings so beloved of James, his former master, for company. A particularly touching aspect is that Oliver firmly believes James will come and collect him, even though it’s abundantly clear to us that this will never happen. Criss, with his shellacked hair, too-perfect make-up and slightly jerky movements, brilliantly conjures up a perky human-adjacent creation with a perennially sunny outlook but a hilarious sideline at aggrievance. 

That aggrievance comes to the fore when the Helperbot from next door comes a-knocking asking to borrow his charger (to recharge herself, to be clear) and Oliver balks at her unearned superiority. Helen J Shen’s adorable Claire is a later edition bot which means she’s more human-like (the subtleties between the two leads are exquisitely rendered) with a more highly developed sense of irony, humour and perception. Her battery’s running low though, and with no option for replacement as her model of bot is being discontinued, her obsolescence is likely to arrive sooner than that of the less technically sophisticated Oliver. It’s remarkable how quickly you come to care deeply about the fate of these engaging beings (the chemistry and charm of Criss and Shen helps enormously of course), their relationship and ultimate fate serving as a metaphor for human life, yet it never feels belaboured. 

Seizing the moment, this cute, strange couple set out on a road trip to locate James, with a stop-off to observe the fireflies that so fascinate Claire, who sees in their little self-generating-light-filled bodies a tinier version of herself and Oliver. Cue one of the most heartstoppingly beautiful sequences you’ll ever see in a theatre, encompassing the Belasco’s entire auditorium and Deborah Abramson’s nine-strong band on a swirling, revolving stage, all rapturously ablaze with multiple miniscule illuminations. The tart humour in Aronson and Hue’s book and the idiosyncracies in their unique characters ensure that, despite the overall kookiness, the show never descends to the saccharine; in fact, it’s truly magical.

It does however have a number of false endings – not all happy – which might become enervating if you’re not fully immersed in the show’s outlandish premise. Still, the lyrics are pithy and bright, and the music has a pop sensibility but also a shimmering loveliness that at times recalls Sondheim’s elliptical brilliance in Sunday In The Park With George. 

Visually, it gleams and stuns, candy-coloured set pieces juxtaposed with luscious visions of night (scenic design is by Dane Laffrey, lighting by Ben Stanton, video design by George Reeve, surely all frontrunners come Tony time), with an exhilarating sense of wonder at the sleek, multi-layered showmanship that occurs when everybody involved in a project is singing from the same hymn sheet. The only drawback with the elaborate visuals, where platforms rise and fall, and walls constantly shif to reveal new locations, is that you need to be sitting pretty centrally to fully appreciate it. Peter Hylenski’s sound is its own delight, allowing the two characters to go straight from ‘normal’ speech to imitating the random noises (a ringing phone, for example) or other voices (such as Dez Duron’s smooth lounge singer) that Oliver and Claire randomly hear and are able to recreate at will.

Maybe Happy Ending is a glistening gem of a show, as quietly profound as it’s technically impressive. Criss and Shen will make your heart soar with joy, before gently breaking it. No ‘maybe’ about it, this is entrancing, life-enhancing and unforgettable stuff.

DEATH BECOMES HER

Book by Marco Pennette

Music and lyrics by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey

based on the Universal Pictures film written by Martin Donovan and David Koepp

directed by Christopher Gattelli

Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, New York City – open ended run

https://deathbecomesher.com

Not ANOTHER stage musical based on a movie!?! Actually yes, but Death Becomes Her is unusual…here’s a new tuner that isn’t just a fabulous night out, although it most assuredly is that, but one that actually manages to improve on its source material, the 1992 Robert Zemeckis film starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. The set-up, story and characters are so preposterous and overwrought that it feels entirely appropriate that these people (best frenemies Hollywood actress Madeline and writer Helen, in constant rivalry and now in thrall to a potion that has given them immortality, but no sense of decency or restraint) would burst into song at moments of extremity, and this extravaganza sees them in full cry. It’s a darkly humorous fairytale for adults and if the movie didn’t get the flowers it deserved, despite a venomously camp turn from Streep, this gorgeous musicalisation looks set to make up for that. 

This is a musical that knows exactly what it is and who it’s for, from the moment Michelle Williams bursts all a-glitter through the floor at curtain-up, as the mysterious glamazon Viola Van Horne, leading her scantily clad acolytes in the staccato, anthemic ‘If You Want Perfection’, a sensual yet sinister paean to eternal youth (“I have a secret you would die for”) reminiscent of the title song from Kander and Ebb’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, which feels appropriate. And that’s before we get to “For The Gaze” (say it out loud), Megan Hilty’s opening number as Madeline which sees the Broadway star morph into Judy, Liza and even Julie Andrews’s drag persona from Victor/Victoria. Self-referential in a house full of theatre fans? Well yes. Screamingly funny and ruthlessly well executed? Oh hell yes.

Julia Mattison and Noel Carey’s score is gloriously showbiz, sampling everything from Broadway to big band to disco, and if not necessarily all that memorable at first listen, it’s rollickingly theatrical, with a tang of real unease underneath all the brassiness. The lyrics are genuinely witty too and the segues into song from Marco Pennette’s book suggests that the creatives at work here really know their craft. Pennette has done a terrific job of distilling the macabre lunacy of the screenplay into stage form and has created in Madeline and Helen (“Mad” and “Hel”…geddit?) what will probably be the most sought-after roles in years for musical theatre actresses who have aged out of being ingenues (although Madeline would have you believe otherwise). 

Whoever inherits these parts will have their work cut out to match the brilliance of Hilty and Jennifer Simard though. A luminous stage presence, Hilty can apparently sing anything, employing her sweet power belt and stratospheric soprano notes to magnificent effect, and charting with bravura comic skills Madeline’s journey from monstrous self-regard to despair then back out the other side. Check out her hilariously affected mid-Atlantic accent when Mad is at the height of her powers. Hilty is such a barnstormer that a lesser performer than Simard might risk being seriously upstaged.

Simard plays Helen with devastating deadpan, and finds a bruised melancholy under the bitchy asides (of Madeline she says “I love her like a twin….who stole my nutrients in the womb”). A peerless clown with an immense voice of pure steel, Simard makes something sharp and unsettlingly funny out of Helen’s mania after her former bestie steals her boyfriend, and her transformation into wise-cracking uber-camp glamazon is a particular joy in an evening stuffed full of them. She’s breathtakingly good.

The essential thing about both of these remarkable central performances is that the more appalling and self-serving these women become, the more we adore them. Christopher Sieber as Ernest, the cosmetic surgeon torn between these, er, ladies, is also wonderful, coming close to stopping the show with a drunken second half number in which inanimate objects in his study start singing back to him. There’s terrific, crowd-pleasing work too from Josh Lamon as Madeline’s long suffering assistant and Taurean Everett as Viola’s statuesque manservant. 

Christopher Gattelli has numerous international credits as a choreographer but unbelievably this is his first outing as a Broadway director and honestly one wonders why it took so long. This is an elaborate production but Gattelli marshalls it with pinpoint focus, dynamism and panache, lending equal weight to the comic and gothic horror elements, and giving full rein to the special effects (Tim Clothier’s illusions have been seriously beefed up since the Chicago tryout) but never letting them overtake storytelling and character development. There’s a breadth and consistency of vision here that feels like vintage Broadway, right through to the stunning design work (sets by Derek McLane, costumes by Paul Tazewell, purple-heavy lighting by Justin Townsend), the big bold choreography and orchestrations, and sound by Peter Hylenski that’s suitably bombastic but allows us to catch every lyric and zinger. This is a deluxe staging, and it feels like money very well spent.

The women’s final number, ‘Alive Forever’, a belty, soaring duet with an almost operatic intensity as the women grimly acknowledge their eternal codependency, is a gleefully venomous riposte to Wicked’s ‘For Good’ or Side Show’s ‘I Will Never Leave You’ and gets the exhilaratingly full-throated treatment from Hilty and Simard. It segues into a surprisingly touching final scene, which I won’t spoil here, that differs from the film and is a perfect button on a supremely satisfying evening.

I caught Death Becomes Her during its Chicago tryout and it was already a thumping good night out, but now it’s a truly memorable one. Savagely funny and garishly beautiful, it’s sensational entertainment and joins Hells Kitchen and The Outsiders as a current example of mainstream Broadway at its absolute best. It’s a big fat hit and one imagines that the plans to roll out international productions is already underway.

MY FAIR LADY

Book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner

Music by Frederick Loewe

adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and the screenplay by Gabriel Pascal

The Curve, Leicester – until 4 January 2025

https://www.curveonline.co.uk

Lerner and Loewe’s beloved classic gets trotted out fairly often (Opera North and Leeds Playhouse co-produced it earlier this year and the New York Lincoln Center version played a summer season at the London Coliseum in 2022 before touring extensively) and its choice as Leicester Curve’s 2024 Christmas musical seems like a sure fire bet to get bums on seats. Director Nikolai Foster and an outstanding creative team don’t treat My Fair Lady like a museum piece however, breathing vibrant life and projecting interesting insights at a show that, while exquisitely crafted, runs the risk of over-familiarity. There is clearly a lot of respect for the original material here but also a bracing freshness that interrogates it with intelligence and affection.

Any production stands or falls by its Eliza Doolittle, the Covent Garden flower girl who transforms into a society lady, and Professor Higgins, the phonetics expert who navigates that transformation, and Foster’s new version has struck casting gold. Molly Lynch’s dazzling Eliza has unique passion and fire tempered with the suggestion that she is already a somewhat damaged soul (observe the way she reacts when she thinks she’s about to be hit) desperately clinging to this one-off opportunity to rewrite the story of her life. She’s tremendously loveable but also tough, it’s the most complex and satisfying reading of the role I’ve seen to date, and watching her progressing empowerment is exhilarating. Vocally she’s absolutely thrilling, seamlessly traversing from chest to head voice with sweetness and power. It’s a demanding sing, nearer to opera than musical theatre with the demands it makes on the soprano, but Lynch makes it seem easy. This is a genuine star performance.

Equally sensational is David Seadon-Young as a more youthful than usual Higgins. Seadon-Young plays him like a restless child, petulant and impetuous, somebody who lives entirely in the moment, regardless of the consequences for himself or others. This doesn’t excuse the character’s frequently appalling behaviour but it certainly makes it fully credible. Unlike many of his predecessors in the role, Seadon-Young sings the role as written and does so exquisitely. He’s also surprisingly moving, turning the song ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face’, usually merely regretful and reflective, into a full blown cri de cœur to stunning effect. His physical relationships with two of the senior women in his life is very telling: note the way that, energy spent following a tantrum, he rests his head on the shoulder of his housekeeper (a wonderfully warm Sarah Moyle who also doubles as a hilarious society matron), or how his mother (Cathy Tyson, coolly commanding) freezes when he initiates comforting contact with her. 

Foster finds other fascinating perspectives on a show that has been done to death but can have real bite when looked at as smartly as it is here. Minal Patel’s superb Pickering is played as actually Indian rather than an old colonialist returned to London, and he is explicitly portrayed as being in love with Higgins. Housekeeper Mrs Pearce is a member of the suffrage movement, which makes sense given the man-child she is dealing with on a daily basis, and Eliza has a forthright sensuality which I’ve never seen before and lends an intriguing ambiguity to her dealings with Djavan Van de Filert’s fresh-faced, gorgeously sung Freddie.

Steve Furst’s magnetic, amoral rough diamond Alfred P Doolittle is a terrific creation and authentically stops the show with the second act crowd pleaser ‘Get Me To The Church On Time’, staged with barnstorming panache by choreographer Jo Goodwin, whose work throughout is glorious but verges on the rapturous in this number. Foster spreads the action generously throughout the auditorium, and he and Goodwin make delightful use of Curve’s youth theatre members (having them as galloping jockeys in the Ascot scene is particularly inspired).

Michael Taylor’s handsome set, imposing for Covent Garden and mind-bogglingly cluttered for Higgins’s study, is generally effective (the mood-shifting lighting is by Mark Henderson) and his costumes are lovely. The sound design by Adam Fisher is more boisterous than one would normally expect on a Golden Age musical like this one, bringing to the fore the percussion in George Dyer’s adapted orchestrations. This is far and away the loudest Fair Lady I’ve encountered, and while it sounds punchy and vital there are moments when the relentless volume has a slightly flattening effect. The ensemble singing is wonderful though. 

That sound quibble aside, this is a superlative production that will delight traditionalists but provides sufficient innovation and excitement for anybody who might have thought of My Fair Lady as a bit staid. The two leads are worth the ticket price by themselves, and a festive trip to Leicester is essential for musical theatre fans. 

SUNSET BLVD

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Book and Lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton 

Based upon the film by Billy Wilder

Directed by Jamie Lloyd for the Jamie Lloyd Company

St James Theatre, New York City – open ended run

https://sunsetblvdbroadway.com

The transformation of Sunset Boulevard, the overblown, scenery-heavy Andrew Lloyd Webber extravaganza that burned through money and leading ladies on both sides of the Atlantic in the 90s, into Jamie Lloyd’s Sunset Blvd (nowhere in any of the promotional or advertising material is the full word ‘boulevard’ ever used now), a sleek, edgy tranche of Regietheater, completes with this Broadway transfer. When this sensorily overloaded onslaught of monochrome multimedia, bravura staging, lush musicianship and thrillingly unhinged performances premiered at the Savoy last year it was an experiment and a risk, eschewing the lavish spectacle that made the original so compelling and presenting in Nicole Scherzinger a Norma Desmond so different from the screen incarnation of Gloria Swanson and the bejewelled divas who succeeded her on stage as to be unrecognisable. Although fundamentally the same show, it now swaggers into New York on a cloud of awards and critical hosannas and American audiences are going expecting An Event, whereas initial London audiences went in wondering what the hell was going to happen.

Does it deliver? Well of course it does, especially in Scherzinger’s feral yet captivating star turn, which has become even more wildly eccentric in its fusion of camp, panicky hysteria and silky, feline sensuality. Vocally, she remains truly extraordinary, finding a guttural growl in the lower notes then a roof-raising high belt that seems exhilaratingly as though it might go on forever. Dramatically, she’s a broken goddess, equal parts imperious, impetuous and pathetically needy. This is the very definition of “leaving it all on stage” and unquestionably one of the defining musical theatre performances of our age, one that ought to presage a golden new chapter in Scherzinger’s career (provided she can refrain in future from apparently supporting MAGA lunatics on social media). When she gasps “I. Am. The. Greatest. Star. Of. Them. All”, like something demonically possessed, each word spat out in isolation from all the others, it’s impossible to disagree…or look away.

Broadway’s St James Theatre is considerably larger than the Savoy and the drastic alteration in scale has its pros and cons. Scherzinger, whose enthralling grandstanding could probably fill Madison Square Garden if required, is unaffected but the only other one of the four imported London principals whose work seems undiminished by the cavernous new space is David Thaxton’s glowering, compellingly grim Max (“I was the first husband”), his near operatic voice soaring spectacularly and his saturnine presence retaining its original impact. Tom Francis’s opportunistic writer Joe Gillis, in thrall to this Norma’s sexuality as well as her money, is still a fine performance but is so laid back that it’s only when his face is beamed up huge on the pivoting screens of Soutra Gilmour’s austere set that it registers how nuanced he is, and that he’s actually working really hard. He has a haunted quality that’s very effective, and the role has never been sung as well as this. Grace Hodgett-Young’s smitten but gritty Betty suffers similarly in terms of projecting much personality in a house this big, apart from on screen, but she’s likeable and vocally pleasing.

The chief beneficiary of the bigger stage appears to be Fabian Aloise’s brilliant choreography, owing more to contemporary dance than traditional musical theatre, which has the youthful, leisure wear-clad ensemble hurtling, tumbling and gyrating through the space to genuinely exciting effect. He also gives the young Norma (Hannah Yun Chamberlain recreating her outstanding London work) a unique physical language that expresses a child-like wonder and beauty while hinting at darker distress. The idea that Hollywood is a machine that chews up then spits out the young and vulnerable is a constant in Lloyd’s overall vision. The moments in Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom’s game-changing video design where young Norma’s flawless features morph into older Norma’s still gorgeous but more mature visage remain heartstoppingly affecting and effective.

The much ballyhoo-ed act two opening which sees Francis’s Joe backstage then out on the street before marching down the length of the auditorium to finish the title song on stage, all relayed in real time on the gigantic screen, is still a thrill but isn’t quite as effective as it was in London, the geography of West 44th Street and nearby Shubert Alley meaning that he has to double back on himself, and now accompanied by most of the company. In all honesty it was only ever about the sensationalism anyway, but the underground layout of the Savoy worked better. Jack Knowles’s moody, sculptural lighting design retains its power, but Adam Fisher’s booming sound design now has a tendency to sometimes favour Alan Williams’s (undeniably magnificent) orchestra over the singers voices, although Scherzinger’s instrument can cut through anything. 

Lloyd Webber’s seductive, memorable Puccini-meets-Hollywood with pop and jazz overtones has never sounded so persuasive, but it’s a shame Don Black and Christopher Hampton’s deft, sometimes acidic lyrics are no longer fully intelligible. Ultimately though, Lloyd’s deconstruction both of the story and of the musical itself is astonishingly effective, if inevitably divisive. Sunset Blvd remains a night of dark, unsettling magic and a production that will be talked about for decades. The word stunning gets bandied around a lot when discussing theatre, but here is a show that truly lives up to the description. 

[TITLE OF SHOW]

Music and Lyrics by Jeff Bowen

Book by Hunter Bell

Directed by Christopher D Clegg

Southwark Playhouse, Borough – London, until 30 November 2024

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/title-of-show/

With its self-prescribed requirements of just four chairs, a quartet of performers and one keyboard, this show must feel like catnip for economically minded producers, but in practise [title of show] still feels like an odd choice for a revival. For starters, it really is for the musical theatre obsessives: a knowledge encompassing the smallest minutiae of the Broadway scene and an unslakable interest in the process of making a show are definite advantages when approaching this material. 

Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell’s 2006 Off-Broadway hit about a pair of creatives (named Jeff and Hunter, with Bowen and Bell themselves assuming these roles in the original production) devising a new musical from the ground up, was received less enthusiastically on the Great White Way a year later, but it’s stuffed with Easter Eggs to delight the most ardent and knowledgeable of MT fanatics. If you don’t know your Stephen Schwartz from your Stephen Sondheim, you’ll have to work harder to have a good time. Actually, this ninety minute meta-musical is even more niche than that, name-checking names of jobbing Broadway actors (“did you hear that Mary Stout got hit by a hot dog cart?”) and constructing a whole number out of the titles of obscure Broadway flops. 

It’s relentlessly self-referential but if you can get past that, it’s quite a lot of fun. Bell’s book and Bowen’s lyrics are mostly very witty. The tunes are easy on the ear but undistinguished, reminiscent of a host of middling small scale American tuners from the last couple of decades, although maybe that is kind of the point. 

The original production had a certain lightning-in-a-bottle USP in that the four-strong company was completed by Broadway actress Heidi Blickenstaff and gifted singing comedienne Susan Blackwell playing versions of themselves. Every subsequent iteration is inevitably at one further remove from the material in that you get a cast performing characters called Heidi, Susan, Jeff and Hunter rather than replaying actual lived experiences of the insecurities, disappointments and exhilarations of getting this project off the ground, and the frustrations and joys of being jobbing creatives.

Christopher D Clegg’s new production, first seen in a simpler two nights only version at the Phoenix Arts Club in the summer, has a lot going for it. Principally, there’s Jacob Fowler and Thomas Oxley as Hunter and Jeff, bringing charm, superb comedy timing and a pair of fine, rangy voices to the neurotic twosome at the centre of the piece. Fowler is more driven and bitchy, Oxley goofier and more affable: they’re a terrific team. The female roles aren’t as well written but TikTok star Abbie Budden proves again, after an excellent debut earlier this year in the Cruel Intentions musical, that she is bona fide leading lady material as a likeable, occasionally spiky Heidi. Mary Moore brings stirring vocals to wise-cracking, eternally self-deprecating Susan but reads as way too young and fresh. All the American accents are spot on.

Clegg’s well-judged staging is frenetic but still when it needs to be, and plays out on an attractive set by Hazel McIntosh that, with its multiple raised platforms, Stage Door sign and assorted showbiz bric-à-brac (check out the vintage vinyl cast albums on the shelves), is probably more elaborate than Bowen and Bell originally envisioned. Alistair Lindsay’s lighting design is colourful, malleable and highly effective. Keyboard player and MD Tom Chippendale even gets a few lines of script and is a total delight.

If ultimately [title of show] sometimes threatens to outstay its welcome, it still feels less self-indulgent than the Marlow and Moss’s infinitely more bloated Why Am I So Single? which is covering some of the same thematic ground, only much more loudly, across the river at the Garrick. Clegg’s production of this esoteric, cheeky, intermittently adorable mini-musical is probably as good as it gets, and MT completists should hasten along. 

WOLVES ON ROAD 

by Beru Tessema 

directed by Daniel Bailey

Bush Theatre, London – until 21 December 2024

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/wolves-on-road/

The shady world of cryptocurrency goes under the microscope in Beru Tessema’s stimulating new play. It may be the principal subject but it’s far from the sole preoccupation of an ambitious, slightly unwieldy work that frequently engrosses, and just occasionally bewilders. Wolves On Road defies genre categorisation as it moves between sparky urban comedy, heartfelt family drama, gripping thriller…and back again. Ultimately, it’s a cautionary tale for wealth- and surface-obsessed times.

It has some of the hallmarks of Tessema’s earlier, more satisfying, play for the Bush, 2022’s House Of Ife. This new one has a similar earthy sense of humour, sometimes abrupt segues into the deadly serious, and a clear-eyed, unsentimental but heartfelt appreciation of the human and spiritual cost to Africans forced to migrate for reasons of safety and finance. It centres on best friends Manny and Abdul (Kieran Taylor-Ford and Hassan Najib), young East Londoners who get into cryptocurrency trading as a means to escape prospect-less, rudderless lives. Merry comedy gives way to something more alarming as the young men draw their nearest and dearest, as well as sizeable swathes of their community, into the unpredictable swamp of apparently unregulated wealth amassment.

Director Daniel Bailey proved with the universally acclaimed Red Pitch that his approach to staging is refreshingly unencumbered by traditional spaces and he goes one better here, utilising the entire Bush auditorium to galvanising effect. Actors enter through the house and mingle with the audience, a Ted Talk about the heady benefits of non-conventional financial practices (delivered by Hamilton’s Jamael Westman in full cockney rock star mode) has a festive, rally-like atmosphere, facts and figures in eye-catching multicoloured graphics are beamed onto the walls of Amelia Jane Hankin’s set, along with live-filmed close-ups of the actors faces. It’s flashy and high tech, which feels appropriate for the subject matter, but never at the expense of the human beings at the story’s heart.

There are a few sight line issues if you’re seated at the side, but the pace and focus of Bailey’s staging are irresistible, as is the sensory elan of Ali Hunter’s transformative, colourful lighting. The writing and production sensitively make clear the disparity between generations: while Manny and Abdul are all about getting filthy rich as quickly as possible, Manny’s mum Fevan (Alma Eno) is working slowly but steadily towards her dream of having her own restaurant, abetted by her gentle boyfriend Markos (Ery Nzaramba). 

It’s not that the elders and youngsters necessarily have such different dreams in the long term, but they have very different methods of achieving them. Markos meanwhile is also saving money to get his son, a similar age to Manny, to the UK from Ethiopia, possibly with the aid of unscrupulous people traffickers, which adds another layer of contrast and dramatic interest.

Tessema and Taylor-Ford chart convincingly the way sudden newfound wealth swiftly alters Manny from cocksure but likeable to something rather more cynical and sinister, but the gear changes in a confrontation scene with Markos, which sees the older man reveal some surprising and distressing personal details, are too abruptly done, as is its denouement which sees Fevan getting involved. It’s undeniably griping though, but not as much as a second act sequence where a family birthday party is decimated by sudden changes in bitcoin fortunes (the characters spend large swathes of the play with their mobile phones jammed in their faces….art mirroring life). 

The overlong script has a tendency to repetition that sometimes gets wearisome, and the storytelling could be clearer. It has an episodic structure -a parade of brief scenes- that might have worked better on screen were it not for the bold theatricality of Bailey’s staging. Nor did I fully buy the relationship between getting Fevan and anxious Markos. There’s still a lot here to like however, especially the sharp, timely humour, and these characters that feel authentically like people walking the streets right outside this theatre.

As Manny, charismatic Taylor-Ford looks like a real star-in-the-making, and the hugely likeable Najib impressively straddles Abdul’s opposing twin attitudes of masculine bravado and winded child. Physically and vocally, Eno reads as way too young to be mother to a twenty one year old and has a tendency to throw away her lines, which might work brilliantly on screen but becomes distractingly indistinct on stage. Nzaramba invests eager-to-please Markos with a touching sincerity and humour, but also finds a genuine gravitas when he is forced to fight his corner.

This is a viscerally exciting production of an uneven but entertaining and thought provoking script, and it’s refreshing to see a new play that feels so current and tackles a subject seldom, if ever, seen onstage. I wish its multiple thematic strands were manipulated with a little more finesse but it’s undoubtedly an ebullient evening loaded with talent. The quizzical ending feels exactly right, suggesting each of the young men has learnt quite different takeaway lessons from their tumultuous shared history, and has a pleasing ambiguity that seems apiece with Wolves On Road’s unconventional subject matter. 

BURNT-UP LOVE

written and directed by Ché Walker

Finborough Theatre, London – until 23 November 2024

https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/burnt-up-love/

Normally the information that the author, director and leading actor of a new play are all one and the same person, is enough to set alarm bells ringing. But Ché Walker is no ordinary multidisciplinary artist, and Burnt-Up Love, his latest tranche of urban grit suffused with poetry, is no ordinary play.

Walker plays Mac, newly released from a twenty year prison stretch and on a mission to find his daughter, whose image as a laughing toddler on a photo pinned to his cell wall, was a rare source of light in an otherwise grim existence. Both as actor and writer, Walker invests Mac with a certain stoic dignity and nihilistic wit. There’s power in his stillness and a sense of a warning in the matter-of-fact delivery. It’s an impressive performance, so centred and focused it barely feels like acting.

Joanne Marie Mason plays daughter Scratch, all grown up now and with a roster of wrongdoings to her name that rivals those of her dear old dad. There’s a poignant contrast between the imaginary highfalutin careers her father mentally maps out for her, and the rather more pragmatic, predominantly illegal lifestyle she’s actually leading. Mason is astonishing, energised and unpredictable as she pivots between snarling aggression and the fight-or-flight fear of a cornered animal, and suggesting an inner life full of unanswered questions and infinite hurt. 

Neither Walker as playwright nor Mason attempt to sentimentalise or soften Scratch’s cruelty or frequently alarming behaviour, but it’s not hard to imagine the cues that set her on this hard-scrabble life trajectory. Her on-off lover, petty criminal Jayjayjay (excellent Alice Walker, persuasively multi-layered and sympathetic) describes her as having a glow, in common with other people not long for this world, which Mason fully embodies.

Ché Walker’s writing is extraordinary: foul-mouthed and brutal yet with a poetic lyricism that takes the breath away. His people speak in an expletive strewn stream-of-consciousness elevated by a unique command of language, they could have come off any urban street where there’s a pervasive sense of threat, but are simultaneously vivid theatrical creations.

His own production helps considerably with that. If the themes of nature vs nurture, and the immense difficulties of ex-convicts, rudderless and stigmatised, to keep from re-offending, aren’t particularly original, the staging truly is. Straightforward delivery of the words suddenly, seamlessly segues into expressive choreography (striking work by Billy Merlin). Uchenna Ngwe and Sheila Atim have provided a rapturous soundtrack with overtones of classical and urban dance, and Juliette Demoulin’s plain black box set is lit exclusively with candles and hand held torches. At one point sparklers whoosh and slice through the jet black air. As shows at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse repeatedly demonstrate, candlelight is astonishingly effective at providing not just atmosphere but also focus and emphasis, and so it proves again here were faces are suddenly thrown into dramatic shadow, an entire human body can disappear for the duration of a scene or the blowing out of a flame makes a potent statement. Fire and darkness run through the text, so this method of lighting is a perfect metaphor.

The visual murk and aural assaults, verbal and musical, lend a ritualistic tone to this seventy minute drama that lingers in the memory long after the brief playing time. Realistically, I’m not sure I could have coped with this trawl through a dangerous, grimy underbelly of city life being any longer than it is. Some of the descriptive passages are wince-makingly graphic, and Walker doesn’t give us anyone to truly root for, but Burnt-Up Love remains a memorable, powerful piece of work.