ajhlovestheatre

PRIDE

Book and lyrics by Stephen Beresford

Music by Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde

developed and directed by Matthew Warchus 

National Theatre/Dorfman Theatre, London – until 12 September 2026

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/pride/

It’s a heck of an achievement to carve a feel-good musical out of one of the grimmest periods of modern history, but that’s what the team behind this gritty yet transporting new tuner, adapted by Stephen Beresford from his own acclaimed screenplay for the 2014 movie, achieves. To be entirely fair, Pride, a joint venture between the National, Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre and P&P Productions, is more of a feel-everything musical. Like the soon-returning Billy Elliot, with which it shares DNA as well as the backdrop of the mid-1980s British Miners strikes, this ambitious, soul-stirring show dramatises real life stories and examines personal despair through the prism of public outrage and triumph. 

Also like Billy Elliot, it has the word ‘hit’ written all over it, repeatedly finding the sweet spot between tearjerking emotion and showbiz exhilaration that all but yanks the paying public out of their seats. You’ll have a wonderful time at Pride, but you’ll also bear witness to something important: a true story where people showed up for each other despite their differences, in this case radical gays and lesbians raising money for the beleaguered striking miners just as the AIDS crisis is biting into their own community. Here’s where humanity and kindness stick two fingers up to division and cruelty, and it speaks to our troubled times with a rare urgency. The tone also recalls Come From Away, the 9/11 tuner which similarly sends audiences out into the night wrung out yet feeling that people are fundamentally good and that life is worth living.

Matthew Warchus’ fast-moving staging, choreographed with attack by Lizzie Gee, is deceptively clever. It succeeds in seeming rough-around-the-edges enough to appear spontaneous and accessible, while also splicing or bleeding scenes together with a cinematic ingenuity, and when it seeks to show off, it’s pretty fabulous. There’s seldom a moment across two and a half engaging hours where it’s unclear where the focus is. These creatives really know what they’re doing.

So does the multi-roling ensemble cast. It’s a treat to hear so many authentic Welsh accents on a London stage, and there’s not a weak link in the company. Chris Jenkins delivers beautiful, sensitive work as the bookshop owner who takes everything on the chin, from bigots attacking his place of work to rejection by his mother due to his sexuality, while nursing a deep well of hurt. Kirsty Malpass is another stand-out as practical but fiery Hefina (the Imelda Staunton role in the film), whose stern exterior masks authentic kindness and acceptance. Caroline Sheen, cast against type as a mean-spirited widow suspicious of a perceived gay agenda, nails the woman’s bitterness but also her loneliness. Gillian Elisa is outrageous good fun as older, indomitable Gwen (“now where are my lesbians?”), although the writing for her character tends to always go for the easy laugh, something which is a bit of an issue for much of the rest of the show too, to be honest.

Lewis Cornay draws a tender, accurate portrait of closeted Bromley (so named because that’s the London borough he hails from), drawn inexorably to the gang of gay activists as he comes to terms with his sexuality. Jhon Lumsden brings steely charm and sex appeal but also winning vulnerability to left wing activist Mark whose political convictions kick-start the whole story, and Courtney Stapleton invests Steph, the sole woman in the central group, with just the right mixture of warmth and attitude. 

Matthew Woodyatt is wonderful as community leader Dai whose world view is genuinely expanded beyond the Welsh Valleys by the well meaning gay interlopers from London, and Sarah Pugh is heartwarming perfection as the young wife who will go on to achieve great things. Samuel Barnett, in a career-redefining performance, brilliantly marries flamboyance with underlying dread as larger-than-life Jonathan, living with, and triumphing over, an apparently fatal health condition (it’s easy to forget these days that an HIV diagnosis in the ‘80s was frequently a death sentence) and determined to wring every last drop of life out of whatever time he has left.

Beresford’s script and Warchus’ staging switches back and forth between time periods (the story is told in flashback) and locations (mainly gay bars and clubs in London as well as the legendary Gay’s The Word bookshop, versus the rural Welsh mining village) with propulsive theatricality and admirable clarity. Bunny Christie’s economical but accurate costuming (also Campbell Young’s wig creations) and malleable steel deck set and Hugh Vanstone’s lighting play invaluable roles in establishing time, place and character. Collectively, this is theatre-making of the highest order.

The weakest aspect of Pride is the eclectic score by Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde, which is good but not great, proving more stirring than memorable. It’s an accomplished, well-crafted collection of pastiches, everything from disco to Welsh hymnal, Broadway show tune to Jonathan Larson-esque theatrical rock, which works well enough in context, but lacks a strong identity of its own. There’s a recurring anthem, rather like a Welsh answer to Les Mis, that thrills the blood, and is thrillingly sung, but oft-repeated lyrics like “I was a fool to ever doubt you, I’ll think again next time you’ll see” sound awkward and don’t trip off the tongue in the same way as, say, “Do you hear the people sing”.

The best lyrics here are the funny ones: Bromley’s poppy coming-out song, despite its unfortunate resemblance to the ‘Gay: The Musical’ send-up in the TV sitcom The IT Crowd, includes the gem “Spare the sermon / I like cock and Ethel Merman”. The gallows humour of the showboating Kander and Ebb-style second act opener, where Barnett’s Jonathan rips with dark, glittering wit into his longevity prospects in the face of his HIV diagnosis, feels like something genuinely dangerous and daring. One suspects Sondheim would have approved. 

Several numbers (Jonathan’s bouncy disco reverie, and a moving choral eulogy to souls lost to AIDS) stop the show cold but you’d be hard pushed to hear any of these songs, attractive as they are, out of context and identify them as being from Pride. Few will care: taken as a whole, the musical is a huge success.

This is one of the most eagerly anticipated new British musicals in many years, and it turns out it is also one of the best. It may be about specific groups of people at a specific time in the last century but it has a life-enhancing universality and well-earned emotional punch that appeals to many. This is a limited initial run on the South Bank, and it’s already sold out, but I would wager that Pride will be around for a very long time.

CYRANO DE BERGERAC

by Edmond Rostand 

in a new version by Simon Evans and Debris Stevenson 

directed by Simon Evans for the Royal Shakespeare Company

Noël Coward Theatre, London – until 5 September 2026

running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval 

https://www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk/whats-on/cyrano-de-bergerac

Tear-soaked yet full of roaring life, this is the sort of golden, glorious production that reminds you of why you fell in love with theatre.  After playing to packed houses and critical acclaim in Stratford-Upon-Avon last year, this Royal Shakespeare Company version of the 1897 Edmond Rostand swashbuckler about the large nosed poet/warrior/lover arrives in the West End for the summer, and it’s possibly the most beautiful, rambunctiously entertaining show in town. It’s certainly one of the most moving.

This adaptation by Simon Evans (who also directs) and Debris Stevenson uses muscular modern language, equal parts poetry and profanity, but remains faithful to the sweeping romanticism and wit of Rostand’s classic. Grace Smart’s costumes suggest early twentieth century rather than the more formal extravagance of the period Rostand was writing for, and her charming balustraded set exists as an extension of the Coward’s auditorium (particularly appropriate as the first scene is set in a ramshackle Parisian theatre), but the whole production has a timelessness that honours this beloved story’s origins while simultaneously allowing it to feel fresh and relevant. This Cyrano de Bergerac probably has more in common with a traditional version than the stunning Jamie Lloyd rap-battling take with James McAvoy a few years ago but it still has a spontaneous, edge-of-your-seat quality that feels like seeing the play for the first time.

One of the major reasons for this is an intelligent repointing of the three central characters, beginning with Cyrano himself, who is shadowed, in Evans’ singular vision, at key moments by a version of himself as a child, judging him, comforting him, calling him to account, to devastating emotional effect. Is it sentimental? Probably…. Does it make interesting, satisfying theatre though? Absolutely.

Adrian Lester is on thrilling, masterly form as the swaggering wordsmith but makes more explicit than usual the contrast between his heroism and bravado, and the deep insecurities borne of his unconventional physical appearance. He’s magnetic and deliciously funny, a wickedly accurate mimic, with a sly hint of high camp, but his humour and bluster are those of the outsider, somebody who feels he’s tolerated by his peers rather than fully accepted. His aggression, physical and verbal, feel like elaborate acts of self-sabotage, but when he talks about his beloved Roxane his tenderness and erudition take the breath away. He also projects an intriguing self-disgust tempered with a sense of profound intoxication as he makes the irresistible words with which young soldier Christian woos an increasingly besotted Roxane. It’s a stupendously fine, satisfying performance.

Susannah Fielding is a revelatory Roxane. In lesser interpretations, she can come across as a sappy, malleable heroine, but here she is feisty, lusty, smart….a wholly entrancing force to be reckoned with. She plays elegantly at being the demure society princess but gets scrappy and fierce at the drop of a hat, and is very much still the child bride plucked from working in the fields by her wealthy first husband. You fall in love with her but you wouldn’t mess with her. Her multiple conflicted feelings at the play’s conclusion when she realises to what extent she has been deceived are conveyed with startling psychological truth.

Levi Brown is an unusually heartbreaking Christian. He’s less the clueless romantic male beauty of convention but an uncynical, impulsive good guy, stronger in spirit and instinct than in intellect, with a strong Black Country accent. He is tied more to the land than to learning (his repeated verbal motif about hands in the soil is turned tragically back on to him at his demise), and is an unwitting pawn in a game played by smarter humans. His death has never moved me as much as it does in this version.

Every supporting performance, from Christian Patterson as jolly but sensitive baker Ragueneau through Scott Handy as the uptight army captain whose unsuccessful suitoring of Roxanne moves from spite to steadfast friendship as the years roll by, to the sextet of musicians who follow Cyrano everywhere -each one a distinct character- is rich in detail and humanity. Greer Dale-Foulkes is a quirky delight as Roxane’s funny, flirty confidante with the serious hots for Philip Cumbus’ gruff, kind military comrade to Cyrano.

The autumnal ending sears the soul, as Cyrano, the man who commands language like his own personal battalion, is deserted by them and begins spouting unintelligible verbiage as his younger self leads him to oblivion. Good luck with getting out of your head the look in Fielding’s Roxane’s eyes as the true extent of what she’s losing becomes clear to her. A particularly striking touch is that the steadily falling leaves from above become fragments of the letters Cyrano has been showering Roxane with under Christian’s alias. It’s just one gorgeous detail in a production overflowing with them. 

Other things to rave about include Joshie Harriette’s evocative lighting which takes in the whole house, not just the stage, Bethan Clark’s fight direction and composer Alex Baranowski’s outstanding musical contributions. I’m aware that this review is beginning to sound like a ham-fisted equivalent to the love letters showered upon Roxane, so I’m just going to wind it up by saying, please go and see Cyrano de Bergerac. It’ll fill your heart before breaking it. I ugly-cried, you might too. Unforgettable and unmissable.

RON

by Ted Walliker

directed by Lev Govorovski and Ted Walliker

Riverside Studios, London – until 3 July 2026

running time: 1 hour no interval 

https://riversidestudios.co.uk/whats-on/Jf-ron/

Unrequited love can do funny things to a person. If this slippery, unhinged, grimly delightful solo show is to be believed, it can drive one to jealousy, murder, cannibalism, elaborate interior design delusions while under the influence of class A drugs, McDonalds….and stand-up comedy. Although reminiscent of Jack Holden’s Cruise and Kenrex, both of which expanded the monologue form to dazzling technical and storytelling heights, and also Marcelo dos Santos’ Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen which married gay erotic disappointment to edgy stand-up, Ted Walliker’s Ted has a macabre comic sensibility that is entirely its own.

On paper, Walliker’s ubiquitous participation in the show, as writer, performer, co-director and co-designer (with Lev Govorovski), and lighting and sound creator, might seem a tad over-ambitious. In practice though, Ted turns out to be one of the most inspirational, off-the-wall displays of prodigious, singular sheer talent that I can remember in quite some time.

In the promotional materials, the show is subtitled “this is not standup”. Upon entering the theatre and seeing the single spotlit microphone, a comedy set appears to be exactly what we’re in for, an impression reinforced by Walliker’s first appearance as hapless Tony, nervily commenting on the conventions of performance and failing to land his gags. All is not entirely as it seems however, and this deliberately uncertain start belies the wild wild ride in store.

Part of Ron’s considerable power derives from how unexpected it all is, which of course makes it almost impossible to review without spoilers. Suffice to say that Walliker is a remarkable performer, turning on a dime from charming and goofy to borderline terrifying, with the comic instincts of a true clown, and an unsettling ability to present the outrageous and occasionally downright disgusting with a throwaway matter-of-factness that draws you in before leaving you reeling with shock. 

On the surface, Tony is one of life’s followers, socially awkward, perpetually aggrieved and tragically in romantic thrall to loutish Mike, his friend since the age of seven. There’s a lot more to him than that though, a lot of it deeply worrying, some of it hilarious and most of it psychopathic. 

Walliker weaves deftly between the two contrasting men as they embark on a road trip fuelled by booze, spite and misguided indignation at being served with the wrong meal at McDonalds (the eponymous Ron is the unfortunate fast food employee who bungles their order). If you can imagine Tarantino transplanted to the Home Counties you’ll have some idea of what’s going on here, but that description doesn’t convey the quirky lunacy of the humour or the unexpected, but entirely earned, moments of real poignancy. 

Nor does it do justice to the breathless brilliance of the writing. Walliker employs a selection of styles that initially seem to be working against each other – there’s comedy surreal and potty-mouthed, soap operatic angst, overblown poeticism, forensically accurate anatomical descriptions – but make total sense once you have the full picture. 

Technically, the production has a similarly scattershot feel, with complex lighting, sound and music cues, plus an elaborate visual transformation, that fully coalesce by the conclusion of sixty playful, alarming, revelatory minutes. Walliker emerges as a bright new star, his performance as appealing as it is frequently repellent, and his script as gripping as it’s strange and funny. 

Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer and Liz Kingsman’s One Woman Show both started out in modest formats not dissimilar to this one, before moving on to lucrative and much acclaimed further lives. Ron, though not for the squeamish, is a hell of a debut for Riverside Studios as a producing house, and fully deserves a similar level of success as those esteemed titles. It’s that good. 

WE HAD A WORLD 

by Joshua Harmon

directed by Josh Seymour 

Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, London – until 4 July 2026

running time: 100 minutes no interval

https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2026/we-had-a-world/

Joshua Harmon’s beautifully wrought three hander exploring the turbulent relationship between his mother and her mother, and the far-reaching effects his grandmother has had on his own life, was a critical and commercial success in New York last year. Seeing this note-perfect London premiere directed by Josh Seymour, on Hampstead’s smaller Downstairs stage, though if there’s any justice it’ll have a longer ongoing life, it’s very easy to see why. 

We Had A World is that rare and marvellous thing, a play that is at once intensely personal and specific (these garrulous, angry, loving women could only be Jewish New Yorkers) but also bracingly universal. Who hasn’t felt resentment when their emotional needs aren’t met by those who should love and understand them the most? Who hasn’t sometimes felt like a pawn in an incomprehensible game being played by individuals who should know and behave better? Who hasn’t experienced deep remorse and regret when a tricky, exasperating loved one is no longer around to spar with or check in on? The sensibility, and the tone, which tends to the sentimental but shot through with flashes of gorgeous humour and moments of cold, hard truth, is quintessentially Jewish, but this play is for all of us.

Opening with majestically fierce grandmother Renee (Suzanne Bertish, soaring and searing in a role created last year by Tony winner Joanna Gleason) instructing Joshua to write about their family (“make it as bitter and vitriolic as possible”), Harmon then plays fast and loose with structure as the play zips back and forth through thirty years of rows, upsets, confidences and life-changing moments. Such is the subtle virtuosity of the direction and acting (Ryan Kopel is Joshua, Anna Francolini is his mother Ellen, both are flawless), and the clarity of the writing, that we are never in doubt as to which point we’re at in these people’s lives, despite the unconventional approach to chronology.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Francolini better than she is here as tetchy, tough-talking but seldom unkind career woman Ellen (“I’m a bitch…it’s one of my best qualities”), perpetually feuding with her (unseen) sister and uneasily aware that wayward Renee is a more glamorous and irresistible figure to young Joshua than she herself is. She’s  not really a bitch of course, as Joshua is quick to point out, but she’s spiky and resentful after a lifetime of hurt and disappointment, and it’s abundantly clear how much she loves her son. Francolini’s multi-layered portrayal shines a light into every crevice of this flawed but essentially good woman; she’s bitterly funny and tremendously affecting in the brief moments when Ellen lets her laconic mask slip. 

Kopel is every bit as impressive as Joshua, traversing the years from impressionable teenager entranced by his free-thinking grandmother but loyal to his embattled mom, through coming out as gay, to successful writer, and back again, with a winning combination of grit and charm. He never overplays the youth of Joshua as a kid, suggesting his essential greenness with a slight shift in stance and the tiniest change in vocal tone. It’s beautiful, unshowy work, ceding the spotlight to the women, but pivotal to the overall success of this intimate, sometimes painfully honest piece. 

Bertish makes a triumphant stage return as incorrigible, free-wheeling Renee. As difficult and unpredictable as she’s loving and hilarious, she’s a clear-eyed survivor with a passion for the arts, her grandson, booze and for riling up her daughter, in roughly that order. It’s a fabulous role, hilarious but too richly textured to subside into mere comic schtick and cliché. It’s impossible to take your eyes off Bertish as she cajoles, manipulates, infuriates everyone around her….and she finds an authentic, tragic nobility in Renee’s final demise (“when you have an especially good time, say, my grandmother is thinking of me….Joshua I’m gonna be watching. From above or below, but I’ll be watching”), even as she rails against Trump from her deathbed (“the great United States is at the mercy of this idiot”). The writing and the performance are both unforgettable.

Within a giant fluorescent-lined box, some sticks of furniture and a small, glacier-shaped object that diminishes as the play progresses, serving perhaps as a metaphor for Renee and Ellen’s relationship as well as an emblem of the environmental concerns that trouble Joshua and a nod to the art that this grandmother introduced her beloved grandson to, are all the visual stimuli we get, and all that we need. Still, Seymour and his designers Sarah Beaton (set and costumes) and Joshua Gadsby (lighting) evoke a New York of museums and theatres and oppressive, lived-in homes. It’s all abstract yet it feels vivid and real.

We Had A World is a total pleasure. A complex but deeply felt and entirely accessible family drama that wears its heart upon its sleeve, and is unafraid to put its audience through the wringer when required. It’s generous, compulsive, and healing with its deep understanding and wry observances of how close family relationships work. A must-see.

HIGH SOCIETY

Music and lyrics by Cole Porter

Book by Arthur Kopit

Additional lyrics by Susan Birkenhead

based on the play The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry

directed by Rachel Kavanaugh

Barbican Theatre, London – until 11 July 2026 then touring 

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval

https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2026/event/cole-porter-high-society

It’s tempting to contrast this summer’s Barbican musical High Society with the stunning Broadway revival of Anything Goes in 2022, or 2024’s sumptuous, starry Kiss Me, Kate, since they’re all stuffed with beloved Cole Porter numbers and played the same venue….but the comparison isn’t entirely fair. Kiss Me, Kate is a prime example of Golden Age perfection while, even in its rewritten form (the book was heavily revised for the 1980s Lincoln Center production), Anything Goes is a frothily well-crafted theatrical property. Meanwhile High Society was conceived as a film and this stage version, first seen as a Broadway flop in 1998, is a mish-mash of the cherished ‘50s movie and the Philip Barry play The Philadelphia Story upon which it’s based. It’s really a jukebox musical: the soundtrack had nine songs while playwright Arthur Kopit’s adaptation shoehorns in an additional ten Porter favourites, a couple of which, when you listen to the lyrics, don’t feel fully integrated. 

Rachel Kavanaugh’s staging, heading off around the country and to Ireland after this two month run in town, is certainly very attractive to look at. Tom Rogers’ sumptuous scenic design of an ocean-side mansion -a single unit suggesting interiors and exteriors- appears ready to tour, but it’s very much the set for a No.1 tour, augmented by some gorgeous extra pieces, such as magically lit, statuary-filled garden or lavish conservatory. The pastel elegance of Jon Morrell’s costumes and colourful washes of lighting by Howard Hudson are perfect complements; the whole thing is a visual feast, and an aural one too, a seventeen piece band making Porter’s classic tunes snap and sparkle in Larry Blank and Mark Cumberland’s orchestrations. 

Director Kavanaugh doesn’t do much with the material beyond place it prettily onstage, so this precious tale of ultra-rich folk dealing with romantic entanglements, betrayals and misunderstandings in the rarified surroundings of pre-WW2 Long Island plays out with panache, some wit….and almost zero edge. For a night of bland escapism, it works well enough but the emotional temperature never rises above the tepid, the absence of chemistry between Helen George’s spoilt but spirited heiress and Julian Ovenden as Dexter, her torch-carrying ex-husband being a major factor in this. There’s little urgency or sense of real feelings beneath the barbs and quips.

Ovenden is the quintessential old school leading man though, with insouciant charm and humour, good looks, magnetic warmth and a singing voice like melted butter. If he’s pretty much perfect, top-billed George is more serviceable than exciting. She hints at her character’s inability to cope with human frailty and how that repeatedly scuppers her relationships, but doesn’t register much in the way of longing or the fire that makes Tracy Samantha Lord so fascinating to those around her. Her singing and dancing are adequate, and she looks fabulous in the period frocks, but she’s an insipid figure to build a musical around.

Freddie Fox makes a rather wonderful musical theatre debut as Mike Connor, the cynical Left-leaning journalist arrived in Oyster Bay to lampoon the Lords but unexpectedly seduced by the lifestyle. Fox’s singing voice is decent enough but he has a playfulness and lightness of touch that’s just sublime, whether staggering about drunkenly having consumed his body weight in champagne or bug-eyed at the opulence of his surroundings, and he’s a lovely mover. He also achieves that unique combination of camp flamboyance and heterosexual swagger that makes this sort of material fly.

An oddly muted Carly Mercedes Dyer is likeable as his wise-cracking photographer sidekick but doesn’t have as much impact as one might have hoped, and her big second act solo ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ doesn’t sit comfortably in her (usually tremendous) voice. Nigel Lindsay is great fun as boozy, priapic Uncle Willie and David Seadon-Young excels, making comedy and a fully rounded character out of Tracy’s stuffed-shirt, fish-out-of-water new husband-to-be.

There’s fresh, funny work from Naomi Pacquette as the mischievous but whip-smart younger sibling, and from Malcolm Sinclair as the philandering patriarch looking to inveigle his way back into the family fold, though I could have lived without his attempts at singing. Felicity Kendal is an eccentric delight as Margaret ‘Mother’ Lord, gurgingly at odds with the well-drilled shenanigans elsewhere, but with a sense of fun and sly wit that proves irresistible nonetheless.

Anthony Van Laast’s dances are decorative and enjoyable, if seldom particularly exhilarating. Kavanaugh’s staging has a tight pace, though not without its ponderous moments, such as having Tracy twirling briefly and ineffectually behind an upper level French door while Dexter wistfully sings about her from below. Some of the clowning is pretty leaden, notably in a misconceived ‘I Love Paris’ sequence (the song borrowed from Can Can) and in the actual ‘Be A Clown’ number itself. Then there’s a bizarre moment where drunk Tracy and Mike, aiming to go skinny dipping, charge off upstage, completely ignoring the fact that the swimming pool is downstage front (it’s literally right there) ….or are we supposed to surmise that the Lords are so wealthy that they have multiple pools?!

The songs, the frequently ravishing spectacle and the leading men are the main reasons to see this High Society. It’s pleasant and amusing but anybody after a bit of drama and excitement will need to look elsewhere. It’s not vintage musical theatre but it does exactly what it says on the tin.

REDCLIFFE

Book, music and lyrics by Jordan Luke Gage

directed by Paul Foster

Southwark Playhouse – Borough, London – until 4 July 2026

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/redcliffe/

A solo creative doing the book,  music and lyrics for a musical can result in clarity and cohesion of vision (look at Willy Russell and Blood Brothers or Rupert Holmes with The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Richard O’Brien’s inspirational weirdness for The Rocky Horror Show) or, conversely, a right old mess that suffers because nobody puts the brakes on when necessary (anybody remember Mike Batt’s The Hunting of the Snark or an off-West End abomination by Daniel Abineri entitled Money To Burn which closed between matinee and evening performance during the week of its press night in 2003? No? Good for you….) It’s wonderful to report then that Redcliffe, the new tuner by West End leading man Jordan Luke Gage (& Juliet, Heathers, Bonnie and Clyde, Titanique), belongs most definitely in the former category. This is the most enjoyable, and most emotionally resonant, new British musical since The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and deserves to achieve a similar sort of extended life after this initial Southwark Playhouse season.

What matters about Redcliffe is not that it’s perfect (it isn’t: some of the storytelling needs clarifying, it could lose a song or two and the dialogues between its 18th century setting and the present day would benefit from some finessing) but rather that it has ambition, massive heart, characters we genuinely care about, and some really terrific tunes. It’s also about something real and urgent, being inspired by the true story of Bristolian William Critchard and Londoner Richard Arnold, lovers executed in 1753 for “the detestable crime of buggery”.

It explores, with authentic feeling and some wit, the historical attitudes to homosexuality and the gulf between the cruelty and suspicion gay people were treated with back in the day and the progressive attitudes of the present, while also noting that in some quarters of the world not much has changed. If it’s more of a lament than a celebration, it impressively mixes together a human interest story, pockets of joy, some romance, and a whole lot of heartbreak.

Director Paul Foster has fashioned the material into an entrancing theatrical experience, combining intimacy and epic sweep, the gear changes between raucous pub numbers (de rigeur apparently for any musical with a period working class setting, from The Beggars Opera through Oliver! to Les Mis), church chorales, family recriminations, erotically charged sequences between the two men, and scenes of heartbreaking suffering, are brilliantly managed. The action swirls rhapsodically over Andrew Exeter’s timbered apron stage, an atmospheric space of benches, boxes and endless possibilities, stunningly lit by Matt Hockley, before coming to rest in individual scenes ranging from the euphoric to the harrowing. It’s not always easy to see where Foster’s work ends and Emma Woods’ musical staging begins, and I mean that as the highest compliment. It’s a collaborative process and a whole late-1700s West Country maritime world is created with elegance and economy.

It looks absolutely beautiful, with a timelessness that matches Gage’s frequently gorgeous music which marries together Spring Awakening-style theatrical rock, folk and classical strings (Katy Richardson’s band and the orchestrations of Ben Tomalin and Ben Ferguson are just wonderful). Martin Hanly’s costumes display a similar historical duality, classically cut and contemporary clothing side-by-side, partially faded and with the imprint of other styles, patterns and ages simultaneously visible. It’s a sartorial equivalent of time seeping through and leaving its indelible imprint on individuals across the years; it’s tremendously effective, and another example of the detail which makes this such a staging to savour. 

Perhaps surprisingly, it’s the upbeat and comic numbers that work best, although the choral sections have a surging, haunting quality that thrills the blood. The ballads are memorable and well-crafted but some have a slightly tendency toward the generic. That said, there’s nothing generic about ‘Hurricane’, the epic solo -an aria really- Gage has created for William’s mother. It’s an absolute journey, as Ma Critchard goes from denial to acceptance then defiant allyship, and it requires full throttle vocals and textured, vivid acting; it gets all that and more in a stupendous, white-hot performance by Rebecca Lock that is incontrovertibly the stuff  of which theatregoers indellible memories are made. Even if the rest of the show wasn’t as good as it is, this number would be worth the ticket price alone. Absolutely remarkable. 

Gage plays William with a deeply touching sweetness and sincerity, his performance only becoming showy when he gets to unleash the higher levels of his stratospheric tenor. He’s superb. Opposite him Daniel Krikler makes something truly haunting out of Richard, in a tender, nuanced portrayal that combines gravitas, kindness and sheer unmistakable sex appeal. 

If the male leads impress with their restraint and subtlety, the principal women are more obviously sensational. It takes a special generosity of spirit to write a show which you’re starring in and then give the greatest role to somebody else, but that’s what Gage does here. The Critchley matriarch is a glorious creation, a funny, smart, determined woman with credible quirks, innate intelligence and a complex trajectory in terms of her understanding and personal growth that will likely resonate with any parent with a child outside what is considered the norm. It’s the most demanding and interesting Mother role in a musical since Ragtime and Lock inhabits every note, breath, shade and beat of her: astonishing. Jess Douglas Welsh, in a sympathetic, vivid, altogether wonderful London stage debut, is deeply moving as William’s younger sister Abigail, who also goes on a hell of a journey. Good luck with trying to hold back the tears in the second act when Abigail is trying to sell her hand-stitched kerchiefs for pennies so that she can make up the visiting fee to see her brother in prison; Douglas Welsh will break your heart.

The luxury casting includes golden-voiced Adrian Hansel, superb as the drunken publican who precipitates William and Richard’s tragedy, Melissa Jacques doubling up as a disapproving neighbour and authoritative judge, Steven Serlin’s snarlingly nasty prison guard and Joseph Peacock as the potential suitor Abigail understandably outgrows. The singing throughout is magnificent.

William and Richard’s journey from wariness to declarations of undying love is done a little too swiftly perhaps, but Gage displays an unexpected gift for pithy, humorous dialogue. The shadow of executions of local men accused of homosexuality falling over the initial scenes of cosy domesticity at Christmas is well done though, as is the suggestion from the outset of William’s slight ‘otherness’ even in the context of a family who adores him. There’s a heartstopping moment at the very end when the company drop their Bristolian accents (Redcliffe is an area of that Avon city) and address us with their own voices, to drop some interesting, and shameful, statistics about persecution of gay people in the world we live in right now. It’s an ingenious way of turning a richly enjoyable, rattling good yarn with a strong score into something much more timely and important. Alistair Penman’s refreshingly clear sound design ensures we catch every word.

This is a triumph for Jordan Luke Gage but it’s not a solo achievement; everyone here is working at the top of their game. When Redcliffe soars, it really soars.

DARK OF THE MOON 

Book by Jonathan Prince

Music and lyrics by Lindy Robbins, Dave Bassett and Steve Robson

based on a play by Howard D Richardson and William Berney 

directed by Georgie Rankcom

Charing Cross Theatre, London – until 8 August 2026

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval

https://www.charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/

It would be nice while watching Dark Of The Moon, jaw dropped in disbelief, to reflect that it’s been a while since we’ve seen an objectively terrible musical on the London stage. But of course we’ve only just had the UK premiere of Korean zombie apocalypse farrago The Last Man over in Southwark. Now, as if to prove that lightning can in fact strike twice, there’s this overwrought yet undernourished effort, blending folklore, portentousness and high camp to frequently hysterical effect. In fairness, this is rather more fun, largely due to the talent involved but also because, like numerous other so-bad-they’re-nearly-good musicals (the original Carrie, Out Of The Blue, Which Witch), quasi-operatic ambition is tethered to a misconceived idea that apparently nobody on the creative team thought to halt, or at least question.

Inspired by a 1940s play and with a score written by a trio of Grammy nominated songwriters (Lindy Robbins, Dave Bassett and Steve Robson), it’s a fanciful tale of rustic Appalachian mountain folk and a coven of witches, aka Conjur people, who exist all around them but are mostly invisible to mortals. In a Little Mermaid-esque twist, one of the Conjur people, John the Witch Boy (yes really, played by Bat Out Of Hell’s Glenn Adamson, all goof, curls and soaring rock tenor) falls for human Barbara Allen (Lauren Jones, a genuine talent who, after starring in Rebecca, Scissorhandz and now this, really deserves a break) and opts to lose his supernatural powers to spend his life with her. 

It’s a supremely silly concept, but in all fairness no more so than the plot of Golden Age musicals such as Brigadoon or Finian’s Rainbow which were more or less contemporary to the original play this is based on. Where Dark Of The Moon really snaps the tether is in its execution. Rather like the Back To The Future musical which was effectively two scores for the price of one (the 1950s versus the 1980s) so this has the Appalachian villagers singing Blue Grass-inspired numbers (all the voices are superb) juxtaposed with a driving rock sound for the witches, heavy on drums and wailing guitars. Sometimes the two discrete styles fuse together, with cacophonous results. Generally though, this sets up the duality of the two worlds quite successfully even if Georgie Rankcom’s unfocused production – prone to aimlessly shuffling characters on and off to deliver the brief scenes in Jonathan Prince’s tortuous book, rather than maintaining any unity of style – seems unsure of how seriously any of this is supposed to be taken. 

Considering religious fervour, miscarriage and a potential lynching are involved, one would assume it’s not intended to be a barrel of laughs but the tone is all over the place. Josie Benson, whose skyscraping, power-packed vocals are authentically thrilling, looks to be having a huge amount of campy fun as the vengeful witchy queen, or Conjur Woman as she’s titled here, while Gary Turner as her more muted cohort plays it relatively straight. 

Then there’s the trio of witches -Al Knott, Jordan Broatch, Apolilly Szwarc, all done up like sexy vampires and gyrating their socks off- who form a sort-of malevolent Greek chorus. Rankcom and choreographer Jane McMurtrie has them jerking, writhing, slithering and hissing (yes, actually hissing) at each other as though in perpetual audition for some demonic reinterpretation of Cats. Lighting designer Jonathan Chan has had the decent idea of illuminating them in a pallid ghost light, in contrast to the more robust, naturalistic colours washing over the humans, but unfortunately the stage at Charing Cross is so small, especially when crowded with Libby Todd’s obtrusively busy wooded set, that the different light states bleed all over each other, sometimes making it a challenge to work out who’s undead and who’s alive. 

Adamson is no actor, with an emotional range that barely extends beyond overjoyed, bewildered or mildly inconvenienced but does well by the considerable demands of the score, while Jones works hard to bring a bit of depth and fire to the underwritten Barbara (who Witch Boy repeatedly and irritatingly calls by her full name of Barbara Allen, presumably lest he thinks he’s addressing Babs Windsor…or Streisand). She’s very appealing, with a cracking voice, and one longs to see her getting to grips with stronger material.

The lyrics throughout are at best undistinguished but musically the show is pretty interesting. There are far too many songs (a dozen in each act!) but they are strong on melody and the exhilaration factor, and it would be remiss of me not to tell you that the audience went wild at the end of some of the real bangers. Realistically, I could see several of these songs ending up on my ‘guilty pleasures’ Spotify playlist. Dillon Kondor’s orchestrations, a hybrid of ultra-loud rock’n’roll band and fiddle-led folksiness, are a real treat, bridging the gap between enchanting and face-melting.

It’s just a shame that most of the book scenes are flat as a pancake and, for all the drama inherent with the story (including a subplot similar to that of Oklahoma! whereby a slightly sinister local – in this case Samuel Murray’s overly youthful Marvin – is obsessed with our heroine), little ever seems at stake. By the time the townspeople go full pitchfork wielding mob on the gormless Wolf Boy we are deep into Disneys Beauty And The Beast territory but without the budget, and I was longing to get out of the theatre.

Maybe this will appeal to musical goers who miss the uncomplicated rock bombast of shows like We Will Rock You and Bat Out Of Hell, or fans of line-dancing (these Appalachians are all over that), but honestly it is hard to see this finding an audience, beyond collectors of you-had-to-be-there-to-believe-it theatrical eccentricity. It’s ultimately more exhausting than exhilarating.

BANK OF DAVE 

Book and lyrics by Rob Madge

Music and lyrics by Pippa Cleary

directed by Nikolai Foster 

Curve, Leicester – until 30 March 2026

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval

https://www.curveonline.co.uk/whats-on/shows/bank-of-dave/

Some stories are so strange they could only be true, and this tale of a Lancashire minibus salesman who opened an independent loans and savings company because major banks weren’t lending to many working class people in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, is one such. Bank Of Dave (his slogan was “Bank On Dave”) has already been the basis for an award-winning TV documentary and a movie, and now it’s a jolly, raucous, big-hearted musical.

Surprisingly though, Dave Fishwick himself (played with a winning combination of brashness and warmth by Sam Lupton) isn’t really the starring role in Pippa Cleary and Rob Madge’s tuner. That honour goes to Hugh, the London lawyer who foregoes the delights of Primrose Hill and the City for the earthier charms of rundown Northern mill town Burnley. Lucca Chadwick-Patel, all ringing tenor, floppy hair and likeable swagger, proves himself an ideal leading man and makes convincing Hugh’s journey from snobbish Southerner to champion of the people.

Madge’s on-the-nose book has a tendency to go for the most obvious humour, and gets a tedious amount of mileage out of the tropes of people from up North being kindly salt-of-the-earth types while Southerners, but especially the bankers naturally, are icy, duplicitous and venal. It’s a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, and the writing, stronger on (literal) knob jokes than finesse, is more efficient than surprising. The script takes liberties with the true story that inspires it, as is pointed out in the shows final moments, one of several where characters refer to the fact that they’re actually in a musical. 

There’s a sense, both in the writing and in Nikolai Foster’s staging, of everything being hurled at the wall to see what sticks, so we get a chorus of bankers dressed as pigs, a SatNav played as a sassy woman, a visual joke involving Coronation Street’s Gail Platt, dancing pensioners, a drag queen modelled on Cher…. It’s kind of messy but it has real charm.

Cleary’s score, pastiching umpteen genres of popular music and reminiscent of her work on the Great British Bake-Off musical a few years back, is similarly scattershot but likeable. Chadwick-Patel gets a roof-raising 11 o’clock power ballad, there’s gospel, a bit of rock, a smidge of Music Hall, some full-throated anthems, and a satirical hip-hop infused number for the blingy London bankers that could have been cut from Operation Mincemeat. If the score doesn’t have a clear identity of its own, it’s at least stirring and moderately tuneful.

Hayley Tamaddon is lovely as Dave’s endlessly supportive and upbeat wife but the show literally doesn’t require her to do anything other than, well, just be supportive and upbeat. Lauryn Redding has more to sink her teeth into as an opinionated local doctor, and brings a cracking voice and formidable comic timing to her role. Claire Moore delivers fine, funny and ultimately very moving work as pub landlady Maureen, as big of heart as she is of mouth, and nails, exquisitely, ‘Nowt To Lose’, a rather wonderful ballad of lost love and grief, one of the few moments where the score doesn’t feel like it’s pushing hard. Joni Ayton-Kent is great fun as Holly’s laconic sidekick, and Samuel Holmes an absolute knockout as a nasty banker pitched half way between panto and Bond villain.

Visually, Foster’s colourful, frequently inventive production strikes a nice balance between working class naturalism and showbiz pizazz. Amy Jane Cook’s set suggests local pub and community centre, but transforms pleasingly into exteriors and more upmarket locations with the help of Ben Cracknell’s malleable lighting and the use of, but not over-reliance on, overhead projections (superb work by Duncan McLean). If Ebony Molina’s choreography is a little over-used, it has some moments of genuine flair.

Bank Of Dave isn’t a great musical but it’s fun; it’s too potty-mouthed to be wholesome exactly, it’s about as subtle as a brick, and some of the singing is more enthusiastic than accurate, but the audience roars its approval. In an increasingly difficult world, there’s a lot to be said for stories about underdogs triumphing, and of good people trying to do the right thing (all profits from Fishwick’s company are ploughed into charity). Like the man himself, its heart is definitely in the right place. 

THE NAME

by Jon Fosse

translated by Gregory Motton

directed by Simon Usher

White Bear Theatre, London – until 6 June 2026

running time: 80 minutes no interval

https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/the-name

If you like your stage drama strongly driven by propulsive narrative or vividly drawn characterisation enriched with erudite, elegant language, then you may struggle with The Name. Nobel Prize winning Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse’s 1995 drama, only now receiving its UK premiere in a terse, unvarnished translation from the original Nynorsk by Gregory Motton, exerts a certain intriguing spell, but you have to work with it. 

Centred on the unwilling homecoming of a pregnant young woman to her parents’ rural home, her somewhat ineffectual partner in tow, it’s a muted, elliptical study in miscommunication and the resentment that arises when one’s needs aren’t met. The characters -named just Girl, Boy, Mother, Father, Sister- talk in spiky, self-interested half sentences that don’t always seem to logically follow on from each other, as if to underline that these malcontents are barely listening to anybody else.  

It’s a script that steadfastly refuses to ingratiate. These self-absorbed figures and their non sequitur conversations suggest a Scandinavian Pinter, an impression reinforced by the brief flashes of quirky, brittle humour, and overall sense of domestic nihilism that permeates Simon Usher’s stripped back production. The silences, the spaces between the words, are as important as the words themselves.

Refreshingly neither Usher nor his cast seem interested in endearing the characters to us. Jasmin Dúfa Pitt is shrill, unsympathetic and extremely effective as the pregnant Girl. Marie Thorseth Molnes walks an interesting line between jollity and passive aggression as her strange but hearty sister. Daf Thomas is almost completely unreadable as the unhappy father-to-be. Valerie Gogan and Tony Bell provide probably the most engaging performances as the bewildered parents, finding as much humanity as the writing allows. Jan Martin injects some welcome comedy as the freewheeling, eccentric local man with whom Girl seems to have a romantic, or at least sexual, past and some unfinished business.

Fosse won the Norwegian Ibsen award for this strange but engaging play, and it has been produced fairly regularly throughout Europe. The Name’s impenetrability and deliberately low key tone mean that it will likely mystify and frustrate as many people as it pleases, but it’s fascinating to see a piece that refuses to play by the rules. It’s cool, clever and casts a shadow that persists long after its fleet eighty minute run time.