ajhlovestheatre

SCHMIGADOON!

Book, music and lyrics by Cinco Paul

based on the Apple TV+ series created by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio

directed by Christopher Gattelli

Nederlander Theatre, New York City – until 3 January 2027

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://schmigadoonbroadway.com

Schmigadoon!, Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio’s affectionate TV spoof of the Golden Age of musicals finds its rightful home on the Broadway stage. Awards aren’t the be-all and end-all of theatre-making but the number of Tony nominations just lavished on this adaptation (twelve, the highest of any show this season apart from The Lost Boys, which got the same) gives an indication of how much love there is for a beautifully produced and performed tuner that celebrates the art form of the American musical while also skilfully sending it up. Frankly, it’s not hard to understand the enthusiasm. 

Schmigadoon! is the kind of show you watch with a great big goofy grin plastered across your face, and then realise you have a tear or two trickling down your cheek at its feel-good conclusion. Its basic plot (a modern city dwelling couple whose relationship has started to sour go on a rural camping holiday only to happen upon a timeless mythical village where every gingham and brocade cladded inhabitant is living their best high-kicking, thigh-slapping, high note-trilling lives in a classic musical comedy) is utterly preposterous, but no more so than that of Lerner and Loewe’s Brigdaoon from which it so clearly borrows. 

Musical lovers will get a massive kick out of spotting the references to beloved shows and films that Cinco Paul, seamlessly working as composer, lyricist and book writer, has strewn so generously throughout this gorgeous evening. There’s a fairground barker à la Carousel, a town flirt who’s a dead ringer for Oklahoma!’s Ado Annie, a set of stuck-up local dignitaries that could have wandered in from The Music Man, an all-knowing Finian’s Rainbow-style leprechaun….the list goes on and on. Wait til you see the Sound Of Music parody which effectively subverts a ‘Do-Re-Mi’ type song into a hysterical paean to the female anatomy, and the arrival of the Baroness, here Countess von Blerkom, played with elegant aplomb by Afra Hines (“of COURSE I’m a Nazi!”) ….but the ingenious thing ultimately is that even if you’re not musicals-mad, you’re still likely to get swept along by the breezy wit of the script and the sheer exhilaration of the numbers. 

Director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli marshals a glorious cast made up of Broadway stalwarts (Alex Brightman, Brad Oscar, Ann Harada. Max Clayton), stage and screen crossover names (Sara Chase, Ana Gasteyer, Maulik Pancholy, Ivan Hernandez) and rising stars (McKenzie Kurtz, Isabelle McCalla), plus a tightly drilled ensemble full of vim and sunshine. The contrast between the performance styles of Brightman and Chase as Melissa and Josh, the smart, cynical urbanites, and the heightened, energised work, exquisitely redolent of ‘old school’ musicals, of everyone else is superbly managed. It’s high camp of course but played with such a persuasive combination of knowingness and heart that it’s hard not to become invested in this merry band of lovable naifs and sincere lunatics. The high-precision execution of the Agnes de Mille-inspired dances, by turns graceful then rabble-rousing, is Broadway at its most exhilarating, and a big tap number in the second half rightly brings the house down.

Between his work on the Lincoln Center classic revivals, the diva-fuelled romp that is Death Becomes Her and now this delightful confection, Gattelli is increasingly seeming like the principal flame-keeper for traditional showbiz know-how on the Great White Way. Paul’s pastiche score is buoyant and manages to feel simultaneously fresh and familiar. His zinger-filled script is (mostly) family-friendly but never bland, and gets a lot of comic mileage out of looking at the wholesome but dated tropes of yesteryear entertainment through a distinctly 21st century lens. For instance, when Chase’s winsome but independent-minded Melissa asks Oscar, playing the repressed, clearly closeted Schmigadoon town Mayor, if he’s gay, his response is “well, I try to be” before reeling off his reponsibilities to the local residents. If occasionally there is a feeling of everything being hurled at the wall to see what sticks, perhaps that is inevitable when a whole TV series is being squeezed down into a two and a half hour stage musical.

The casting top-to-bottom is an absolute treat, a group of people with authentic funny bones, fabulous voices and a collective deranged joie de vivre energy that’s infectious. There’s no cuter curmudgeon than Alex Brightman, his droll detachment in amusing contrast with the all-in attitude of the insanely enthusiastic Schmigadooners, and when he finally sings his heart out at the end, it’s actually pretty moving. Opposite him, Sara Chase is a tremendously likeable modern leading lady, full of warmth but certainly no pushover. Isabelle McCalla is piquant perfection as the sensible schoolma’am with fire burning under her icy exterior while McKenzie Kurtz is adorably unhinged as a coquette who’s more innocent than she looks.

Ann Harada is kookie and hilarious as the mayor’s wide-eyed, perpetually frustrated wife, and Ana Gasteyer raises passive-aggressive sanctimoniousness to an art form in a rip-snortingly funny turn as the town’s self-appointed moral guardian. I’m not usually the biggest fan of kids on stage but, oh my goodness, Ayaan Diop is a tiny gem as lisping Carson. Brad Oscar’s Mayor, Maulik Pancholy’s hen-pecked clergyman and Ivan Hernandez as a doctor in urgent need of social reconstruction all make invaluable contributions. Max Clayton, rugged, entrancing athletic…and clueless, stops the show as the strapping Danny Bailey, like Billy Bigelow on MDMA, and proves once and for all that he is bona fide leading man material.

This is possibly the prettiest show currently on Broadway: Scott Pask’s hand-painted backdrops and set pieces exude old fashioned magic and are partnered by Linda Cho’s elegant, detailed costumes. It’s as though a technicolor movie has burst into real life then dialled everything up to ten. If the tunes are more generic than memorable, Doug Besterman and Mike Morris’ orchestrations wrap them in the glint and sparkle of a mountain stream, and the orchestra sounds generously full.

I had a lovely time at Schmigadoon! It knows exactly how much tongue to leave in cheek and is studded with enough pockets of real feeling to make for an entirely satisfying couple hours on Broadway. It’s the theatrical equivalent of receiving a warm hug from somebody special who then whispers something naughty into your ear. Irresistible.

THE LOST BOYS

Book by David Hornsby and Chris Hoch

Music and lyrics by The Rescues

based on the Warner Brothers film, story by James Jeremias and Janice Roberta Fischer

directed by Michael Arden

Palace Theatre, New York City – open-ended run

running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval 

https://www.lostboysmusical.com

In a Broadway season where the more prominent musical openings included the import from London of modest two-hander Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York), a wan stage adaptation of Beaches, and the mighty, if historically troubled, Chess reduced to an over-choreographed concert on a unit set, there’s something satisfying about new tuner The Lost Boys swaggering in confidently at the eleventh hour to blast the Great White Way with bombast, staggering visuals and a pleasing conflation of budget and artistry. Its scale and ambition has just been rewarded with twelve Tony award nominations, the highest of any show this year, except Schmigadoon! which also managed a dozen nods.  

It’s not that The Lost Boys, directed by the award-winning Michael Arden (Once On This Island and Parade revivals, Maybe Happy Ending) and based on Joel Schumacher’s 1987 film blockbuster about teenage vampires terrorising a Californian coastal town, is a great musical – far from it.  However, it does represent a return to lavish production values that authentically go some way to justifying the eye-wateringly high Broadway seat prices, and there’s a palpable excitement around it borne of fans of the beloved original property thrilled to see their celluloid memories brought to thunderous theatrical life.

In a commendable case of giving the people what they want, Arden’s staging is chock-full of shuddering suspense, jump scares and eye-popping spectacle. Figures float and soar the full height of the Palace’s vast stage, which designer Dane Laffrey, probably the production’s single biggest star, fills with a multi-level set evoking a night time boardwalk garishly lit with multi-coloured bulbs and neon, abandoned warehouses and fairgrounds, a suspension bridge, a whole house…. Giant scenic pieces descend from the flies or burst through the floor, a working lift travels up and down, characters appear from apparently nowhere in the shadowy twilight, dry ice billows, and the titular boys slumber upside down like bats suspended high above the stage or engage in a balletic, enthralling motorbike race through the murky night (the aerial choreography, exceptional, is by Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant, while Arden and Jen Schriever are responsible for the stunning, shape-shifting lighting). 

Costume designer Ryan Park and hair/wigs creator David Brian Brown have wisely kept Tony nominee Ali Louis Bourzgui, inheriting Kiefer Sutherland’s macabre mantle as the Lost Boys’ leader David, in the peroxided mullet and black leather, and elsewhere produces 1980s styles that are vivid but a lot less parodic than they might  have been. Adam Fisher’s ear-splitting but generally effective sound design seems to owe more to stadium rock than musical theatre, but in a house and show this large, that doesn’t feel inappropriate.

So, technically then, this new musical is breathtaking, and if the score, which is surprisingly ballad heavy despite several numbers that really do rock, by LA-based band The Rescues, and David Hornsby and Chris Hoch’s book, were a bit stronger, and the second half didn’t have such a bewildering change in tone from the first (more on that shortly), The Lost Boys would be an absolute triumph. As it stands, it feels like a show that would have benefitted from an out-of-town tryout (although the complex production elements might have precluded this) or maybe another developmental workshop. The plot strands that should tug at the heartstrings (the mother and teenage boys escaping from an abusive patriarch, Maria Wirries’ semi-vampiric Star re-discovering her soul and conscience when she falls for Michael, the older of the sons, played by a suitably tortured L J Benet) plod along adequately but without ever becoming truly engaging, despite the efforts of the talented cast. 

Between the melancholic musings and endless belting, a degree of ennui sets in and you may find yourself waiting for the next piece of inventive visual extravagance or Bourzgui’s weird, malevolent charisma to reignite the night. The production certainly delivers on that front but the second act misguidedly attempts to have it both ways by suddenly becoming a big ole campfest, with results more irritating than delightful. Michael’s younger sibling Sam (a spirited Benjamin Pajak) falls in with the tiresome would-be vampire hunters the Frog brothers (Miguel Gil and Jennifer Dudak) and they perform a bizarre comedy number with multiple ensemble members done up as Mel Brooks-esque Draculas that seem to have slinked in from another show entirely. Young gay Sam also gets a lame coming-out number ‘Superpower’ with a selection of caped and masked superheroes in all the colours of the LGBTQ+ rainbow and that too feels like something that should have been cut in previews. 

It’s a shame because when the show works, it works extremely well. The always reliable, and golden-voiced, Shoshana Bean is hugely likeable as Lucy, the boys’ embattled mother. She makes something fine and touching out of ‘Wild’, the musical’s finest ballad, a soaring lament for lost youthful vitality, which Bean belts to the Palace’s rafters. Arguably the book’s most inspired deviation from the original screenplay is turning David and his gang into a locally revered rock band, and their anthemic opening banger ‘Have To Have You’, performed in front of a raucous mosh pit that rises out of the orchestra pit, is genuinely spine-tingling, especially as put over by the dynamic Bourzgui.

Benet and Wirries both field terrific voices and have just about enough presence and edge for their characters to cut through all the sound, sights and fury that constantly threatens to swallow individual figures whole. Paul Alexander Nolan initially seems wasted in the role of Lucy’s geeky new employer and potential suitor, but delivers an intense surprise that also, albeit too briefly, showcases his astonishing voice (his Jesus in the 2012 Broadway Superstar revival remains one of the most fearless and impressive I’ve ever seen). 

In all honesty, some of the effects are more likely to blow your mind if you haven’t seen Stranger Things: The First Shadow, currently playing right across Times Square from the Palace, but this is still a great-looking production. Individual elements (the souls of victims dropping silently into oblivion through the stage floor, the blind panic of a cop distracted from his investigative work by a mysterious force, the persistent defying of gravity by the undead gang members) linger longer in the mind than the overblown whole perhaps, but this is an undoubted crowdpleaser. Real musical theatre fans may be dismayed there aren’t more than half a dozen memorable tunes, but the sweep of the visual storytelling and sheer theatrical bravura go quite some way towards compensating, as does the star quality of Bourzgui.

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN

Book by Terrence McNally

Music by John Kander

Lyrics by Fred Ebb

based on the novel by Manuel Puig

directed by Paul Foster

Studio Theatre at Curve, Leicester – until 25 April 2026

https://www.curveonline.co.uk/whats-on/shows/kiss-of-the-spider-woman/

Bristol Old Vic – 29 April to 16 May 2026

https://bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/kiss-of-the-spider-woman

Mayflower Studios, Southampton – 2 to 6 June 2026

https://www.mayflower.org.uk/whats-on/kiss-of-the-spider-woman-2026/

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

Barely seen since the original London and New York productions in the early 1990s, Kiss Of The Spider Woman was beginning to feel like Kander and Ebb’s great ‘lost’ musical. Whether it was the shadow of an icon like Chita Rivera (the original Aurora/Spider Woman on both sides of the Atlantic) or Vanessa Williams (her Broadway successor) hanging over it, or the gleaming cruelty of Harold Prince’s initial staging and concept being deemed too intimidating to aspire to, or the harrowing subject matter, it was beginning to look like this web was never going to be spun again. 

Rejoice then, musical theatre aficionados and anybody looking for a thrilling, edgy evening in the theatre, because this viciously brilliant show is back. In Paul Foster’s pulsating, searing production, as scintillating as it’s dark, a persuasive case is made for this being acknowledged as a true classic, totally worthy of consideration alongside Cabaret and Chicago, the same writers’ better known hits. Based on the 1976 Manuel Puig novel which later became a movie with William Hurt and Raul Julia, it’s set in a prison cell in a fascistic South American state where the inmates are tortured, beaten and generally treated worse than lower life forms. 

Sharing a cell are macho political prisoner Valentin (George Blagden) and flamboyant gay window dresser Molina (Fabian Soto Pacheco) incarcerated for allegedly attempting to corrupt a minor. Molina is an avid cinema fan, using his celluloid-inspired fantasies to escape from his grim reality and the titular Spider Woman is a signature character of his favourite movie star Aurora, but she’s also a terrifying spectre of death who may actually be stalking the corridors of the prison. 

Terrence McNally’s book is a compulsive, occasionally distressing, mixture of harsh realities, jet-black humour and flights of fancy. Under Foster’s assured direction and in the note-perfect performances here, it plays out with the urgency of a thriller and the tenderness of a great romance, which, in a way, is what it turns out to be. McNally keeps deliberately murky what Molina’s true motivations are until fairly late in the play, and, in this production more than in Hal Prince’s fabled original, the nature of the affection that grows out of conflict between the two men is also more ambiguous.

The lightning fast changes in tone throughout Foster’s staging take the breath away. One moment, the stage is a furious pit of roiling despair, the horrific sounds of prisoners being tortured rending the air, the next we are in an exotic fantasia presided over by Molina’s beloved Aurora and her dancing boys, with Joanna Goodwin’s glorious choreography transporting us to the golden age of movie musicals. This juxtaposition of dark and light is tremendously powerful, the one constantly throwing the other into stark, theatrically electrifying relief. 

It takes a star to credibly portray a star and Anna-Jane Casey, with her megawatt smile, wide-ranging Merman-esque belt, boundless charisma and vertiginous high kicks, fits the bill. Her Aurora floods the stage with joie de vivre, while her sinuous, venomous Spider Woman moves seamlessly from soothing enchantment to snarling malevolence with barely perceptible gear changes. This is career highlight work, even by Casey’s standards, and costume designer Gabriella Slade gives her some opulently outlandish creations.

Pacheco is a wonderful find: his Molina is wounded, desperate, emotionally supple yet with a queenly dignity and sly humour. His renditions of the longing, lyrical ballads ‘She’s A Woman’ and ‘Mama It’s Me’ are as intensely moving as they are musically entrancing. He maybe reads as a little young, but that’s a tiny cavil against this star-making performance. 

Blagden, intense and magnetic, is every bit as impressive, the heat of political fervour mingled with rich, rare humanity. When he lets his ringing tenor loose on the defiant anthem ‘The Day After That’, you can feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Tori Scott is delicate and very touching as Molina’s beloved mother, and Davide Fienauri sensitively sketches in a bewildered waiter Molina was smitten with in the outside world, only to break his (and our) heart later when it’s revealed that his affection was possibly only in the prisoner’s head. Damian Buhagiar is dynamic and deeply horrible as a sadistic guard.

For my money, the score for Kiss Of The Spider Woman is Kander and Ebb’s greatest, most diverse score. From the shimmering foreboding of the title song (delivered here by Casey as an aria equal parts enthralling and downright frightening) through the Latin-inflected production numbers, brassy and fiendishly catchy, to the lyrical ballads, tangos, a wickedly funny Imperial Russian pastiche, and the poisoned whimsy of a morphine-induced hallucination with dreamily dancing medics, it’s a masterful collection of songs. Wildly theatrical and consistently exciting, it’s orchestrated by Sarah Travis to make the excellent six piece band sound appropriately epic.

David Woodhead’s chilly metallic set is constantly transformed by a lighting design by Howard Hudson that brilliantly expands and contracts the space according to whether we are in the prisoners heads or in their horrifying daily existences. Andrzej Goulding’s video design is another vital component in the production’s irresistible impact, linking the hellish prison setting with the Technicolor escapism and sepia-toned nostalgia of the silver screen. Matt Peploe’s sound is fabulous too, rousingly loud but not overwhelmingly so, and fully honouring Fred Ebb’s smart, emotionally resonant lyrics. The creative craft on display, both in the material and its execution here, is formidable.

The resilience of the human spirit over unimaginable adversity has long provided fertile ground for musical theatre (hello Les Mis and Miss Saigon) and Kiss Of The Spider Woman is one of the very best examples. But I wonder if the way it steadfastly refuses to sugarcoat the diabolical horrors of injustice and political martyrdom, even amongst and against all the showbiz dazzle, is why it has never achieved the widespread success it deserves. In as audacious example of a show having it both ways as I can recall, the final sequence is simultaneously exhilarating and unremittingly bleak.

Either way, here it finally is in all its uncompromising, glittering, bloody glory, an example of how devastatingly potent musical theatre can be, but seldom is. Foster’s production gives us a rollicking great time but never lets us off the hook. Drop dead gorgeous. 

 

INVISIBLE ME

by Bren Gosling

directed by Scott Le Crass

Southwark Playhouse Borough, London – until 2 May 2026

running time: 80 minutes no interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Getting older is a privilege denied to many but it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of that fact when you’re staring down the barrel of loneliness, physical aches and pains, ongoing grief and the feeling of invisibility in an ever-more frenetic modern world. Playwright Bren Gosling addresses this in his punchy but charming three hander, given a beautifully modulated production here by Scott Le Crass. Often laugh-out-loud funny, Invisible Me then suddenly floors you with an injection of real, earned emotion that palpably has audience members fighting back the tears. At times, it’s as though a trio of the Alan Bennett Talking Heads have been spliced together. 

Gosling creates a trio of singletons all turning sixty around the same time, and all living within a few Walthamstow streets of each other: timid Lynn (Tessa Peake-Jones) works part time as a chambermaid at the local Travelodge, priapic Alec (Kevin N Golding) is a London cabbie and reserved Jack (James Holmes) is a gay, HIV+ widower whose friends are trying to get him to socialise again. All three share a degree of crippling loneliness, which they each deal with in wildly differing ways, along with valid reasons not to fully trust their fellow humans. Mawkishness is kept at bay for the most part by a sense of humour that occasionally suggests a London-centric Victoria Wood at her most cosily trenchant.

Le Crass directs with sensitivity and attention to detail, but also a sense of real fun and a theatricality that isn’t always apparent in the writing, which is never less than engaging but, taken by itself, is so conversational and intimate that it sometimes feels as though it would work equally well on the telly or the radio. It takes maybe a little too long for these mismatched characters to actually talk TO each other rather than ABOUT each other to us, and, given how well so many people age these days, there were moments where these three felt more like they were turning seventy rather than sixty. If I hadn’t spent more nights than I care to remember watching dodgy late night documentaries on Channel 4, I might’ve found the plot strand about Lynn’s foray into sex work a tad far-fetched, but actually it rings true (especially as played so terrifically by Peake-Jones), even if it’s a bit of a thematic non sequitur.

Peake-Jones and Holmes wring every drop of pathos and humour out of their roles, and when their characters finally connect, you feel the audience collectively exhale. Golding brings a fizzy, contrasting energy to the laddish Alec, and makes endearing a character that in less likeable hands could be really obnoxious.

Invisible Me gives theatrical voice to a tranche of the populace that we don’t often get to see on stage. It has a warts-and-all authenticity and core of genuine kindness, the message that we can all be looking for connection at any stage of life comes through loud and clear. There’s a wonky joy to the dancing finale that stays with you long after the final bows. Lovely stuff.

HEART WALL

by Kit Withington

directed by Katie Greenall

Bush Theatre, London – until 16 May 2026

running time: 100 minutes no interval

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/heart-wall/

Audience participation karaoke on the immersive pub set (designer: Hazel Low) that has taken over the Bush’s main house makes for a disarming start to Kit Withington’s new comedy-drama. It sets a misleadingly playful tone for Katie Greenall’s production which curdles quite drastically as this Mancunian-accented slice of social realism progresses. Heart Wall is richly enjoyable for sure, but it’s equal parts elliptical and accessible, examining the harrowing subjects of grief and fractured families through a booze and pop music-fuelled lens that sometimes blurs focus but is seldom less than engrossing.

Twenty-something Franky (Rowan Robinson) has returned home to the North West for a visit from London, prompted by friends expressing concern that her Dad, proudly working class Dez (Deka Walmsley), is behaving strangely; meanwhile Mum Linda (Sophie Stanton) is spending an inordinate amount of time at her own mother’s, the family pet rabbit has gone missing….and over at the local pub where the landlady hasn’t been seen in months, every night is karaoke night. Withington constructs short, staccato scenes with plenty of humour and heart, that collectively build up a convincing picture of community and people with shared history whose lives are tetchily intertwined.

At times it resembles soap opera, and I mean that as a compliment: the characters have a relatable, ripped-from-life vitality, complete with quirks and flaws, and they express themselves in language that sounds like real people talking, bubbling over with pop culture references and verbal idiosyncrasies. Withington’s dialogue is salty, funny (“have you ever seen your nana’s toenails? Have you ever just caught sight of them, Frank? They’re like little shovels on the end of each foot…She always has her shoes off. She won’t mither with slippers”)…and sometimes gains an expected poetic edge. Amongst all the naturalism, a pervasive strangeness intrigues and troubles. Withington keeps her cards close to her chest until fairly late on as to where all this is heading, resulting in the same must-watch compulsiveness of the finest soaps. If the final revelations are a tad anti-climactic, the journey to get there is entirely worth the taking.

Perhaps surprisingly, the shifts in tone tend to keep the piece fresh and engaging rather than whiplash-inducing. The quality of the acting is undoubtedly an enormous contributing factor to this:  to see a whole company so thoroughly and convincingly inhabit their roles to this extent is a rare pleasure and, honestly, an encapsulation of the magic of theatre. Robinson makes Franky simultaneously needy and independent, a bright, complex young woman with a streak of self-obsession that becomes increasingly apparent and understandable as the story goes on. Walmsley is tremendous as struggling, self-flagellating Dez, his sudden outbursts of volcanic anger breaking through an otherwise stoic exterior. Stanton is so natural as Linda, finding the delicate balance between kindness and exasperated grit, that it barely looks like acting. Olivia Forrest is a knockout, but with unexpected depth, as Franky’s old school friend, and Aaron Anthony is heartwarming yet totally real as the pub barman who has the greatest handle on what’s going on with this disparate group of people. This is ensemble acting at it’s very best.

Greenall’s staging is exquisitely paced, snappy when it needs to be but slowing down to realise, quite beautifully, the play’s more sensitive and sinister moments. That said, the blocking throughout favours the central section of the Bush’s auditorium, giving the unfortunate impression that the show has been directed for a traditional proscenium stage rather than the open one with audience on three sides, where it is actually playing. The karaoke theme sometimes feels a little grafted-on, meaning that fragments of songs are performed throughout. This is mostly great fun, although a rendition of The Pretenders’ ‘Brass In Pockets’ as part of a mother-daughter rapprochement is more baffling and awkward than inspired.

Low’s design, Simisola Majekodunmi’s lighting and Mwen’s sound and compositions are vivid components in the production’s overall impact, turning downright lairy when required. Minor quibbles aside, Heart Wall is an excellent example of a piece that successfully straddles quality drama and popular entertainment. It’s laugh-out-loud funny and, ultimately, genuinely moving, never mawkish. Withington’s love for her mouthy, fallible characters is palpable, and this dream cast bring them to vibrant life. Recommended.

OLIVER!

book, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart

freely adapted from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

directed by Matthew Bourne; co-directed by Jean-Pierre Van Der Spuy 

Gielgud Theatre, London – open-ended run

running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval 

https://oliverthemusical.com

Bigger isn’t always better, and theatrically nowhere is that more persuasively demonstrated than by Cameron Mackintosh’s latest production of the Lionel Bart musical classic which has enjoyed a West End outing in almost every decade since it premiered in 1960. In this current iteration, Oliver! is looking more vital and thrilling than countless other tuners a fraction of its age and twice its size.

The last two West End versions, both produced by Mackintosh, played the Palladium and Drury Lane, 2000+ seat venues with vast stages, and were epic stagings. In Sam Mendes’ vision for those larger spaces, St Paul’s Cathedral soared up to the flies, a sailing junk passed along the Thames at the back of the Three Cripples Inn where Nancy performed and wassailed, Fagin’s den emerged from beneath stage level as his band of pickpockets scampered down ladders and ramshackle staircases to reach it…all absolutely gorgeous but slightly losing the heart and charm in this most British of musicals.

Not that there’s a shortage of spectacle in Matthew Bourne’s entrancing, Hogarthian version, first seen at Chichester, and now into its second year at the midsized Gielgud Theatre. Indeed, the multiple revolves, descending gantries and Victorian street lamps of Lez Brotherston’s ingenious scenic design sometimes look like an homage to Sean Kenny’s revolutionary unit set for the very first production, and also to John Napier’s barricades in the original RSC Les Misérables. Paule Constable’s gorgeous, malleable lighting is similarly reminiscent and effective.

But amongst the impressive visual and aural impact, there’s an attention to detail, a nuance to most of the characterisations, and a startling contrast between the joyful and horribly dark elements in Dickens’ original story, that render this Oliver! an entirely satisfying experience. Despite having worked on the earlier versions, Bourne treats this beloved staple of regional theatres and school stages as though it’s a completely new musical, and the result is fresh, dramatically alive and true, and, when it needs to be, genuinely dangerous.

Aaron Sidwell may be less physically imposing than most of his predecessors as the villainous Bill Sikes, but plays him convincingly as a vicious psychopath. His destructive love for Ava Brennan’s stunning Nancy is made explicit, and deeply alarming. Note the look of devastation that passes over the face of the Artful Dodger (brilliantly played by Aaron MacGregor not as the cheeky kid we’re used to, but rather as a frequently horny young chancer with a streak of ruthlessness) when Fagin suggests he’s a Sikes-in-the-making.

Brennan is fierce, sympathetic yet unsentimental and altogether wonderful, stopping the show cold (twice) with ‘As Long As He Needs Me’. At the performance I saw, Isaac Hackett (who alternates the title role with three other young actors) gives us a lovable yet spirited Oliver entirely capable of fighting the corner of his deceased mother, and of having the determination to get himself to London solo. 

The supporting characters come off particularly well in this more intimate production. Clarion-voiced Oscar Conlon-Morrey’s drunken Mr Bumble and Katy Secombe’s lachrymose Widow Corney, both smashing, lean hard into the Music Hall elements of Bart’s creation but never lose sight of the truth at the heart of their characters. On a side note, Secombe’s presence is a lovely connection to Carol Reed’s 1968 movie version, as her father, the much loved Harry Secombe, played Bumble on screen.

Jamie Birkett glitters and chills as the undertaker’s wife who clearly rules the feckless Soweberry (Stephen Matthews, excellent) with a rod of black iron, and is almost unrecognisable, but equally compelling, as the kind London house keeper who looks after Oliver later on. 

Simon Lipkin’s hilarious, heartfelt, dynamic Fagin is a masterclass of musical comedy performance, and one that would be worth the ticket price even if everything else wasn’t so good. More specifically Hebraic than his predecessors, he sidesteps the anti-semitism implicit in the Dickens by investing the character with a gratifying, magnetic authenticity that has the audience eating out of the palm of his be-ringed hands. His affectionate rapport with the team of well-drilled youngsters playing his gang of petty thieves is truly joyful, and his powerful delivery of the score and his maverick physicality are exhilarating. It’s a performance for the ages.

Bart’s score contains more gems than Fagin’s hidden box of treasures, a glorious swirling together of vaudeville, klezmer, hymnal, English Music Hall and sheer, marvellous tunefulness. Stephen Metcalfe’s adaption of William David Brohn’s earlier orchestrations ensures that each number hits home perfectly, and the ensemble singing is magnificent. Adam Fisher’s sound design, robust but not overwhelming, ensures every lyric and line is heard.

If you love Oliver!, seeing this is a no-brainer, but equally if you feel the show is over-familiar, then this production is likely to give you pause for thought. It explodes with a ripe theatricality and emotional punch that would be exciting in a superbly crafted new musical, but which, in a show dating back almost seventy years, feels almost miraculous. This is a great evening, and one that confirms Bart’s work as a genuine masterpiece. Consider yourself knocked out, in the very best way.

FLYBY

written and composed by Theo Jamieson

co-created and directed by Adam Lenson

Southwark Playhouse Borough, London – until 16 May 2026

running time: 1 hour 45 minutes no interval 

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

Nobody could accuse director and creative technician Adam Lenson of lack of ambition. He constantly pushes the boundaries of musical theatre, his output ranging from a reclamation of Kander and Ebb’s esteemed Broadway flop The Rink at Southwark Playhouse, and the Brontë sisters set to emo-rock (Wasted at the same address) to a deeply personal reflection on illness and life choices (Anything That We Wanted To Be at the Edinburgh Fringe). He also helmed the UK premieres of Adam Gwon’s Ordinary Days (Trafalgar Studios…remember them?!) and Michael John LaChiusa’s Little Fish at Finborough, a pair of quirky, artsy small scale American musicals whose shadows hang subtly over FlyBy.

That’s not to suggest that there’s anything unoriginal about this rogue collaboration between Lenson and writer-composer Theo Jamieson, it’s one of the most unconventional musicals I’ve seen in a lifetime of theatregoing. But it undoubtedly owes more in terms of style and content to the off-centre avant garde creations of NYC MT artists who march to the beat of their own drums, than it does to the work of West End and Broadway creatives aiming at the more mass-populist West End and Broadway markets. It has some wondrous things in it, but equally it has plenty to ponder over.

For starters, there’s the story. Put simply, young couple Daniel (Stuart Thompson) and Emily (Poppy Gilbert) split up pretty traumatically so he heads off into the further reaches of Outer Space (were there no air fares available to a distant corner of this planet?!) leaving her to record increasingly desperate messages of apology on his voicemail. It’s a bizarre premise, and Lenson’s production begins with a trio of scientific types (Rupert Young, Gina Beck, Simbi Akande) pontificating over Daniel’s motivations and looking back to the lead-up of events to his interplanetary breakdown. 

The chronological order of this tall tale is deliberately messed about with so you have to be pretty on-the-ball to work out where in the relationship any given scene is occurring. Few young actors are as fine as Thompson (the Almeida Spring Awakening, the Globe Ghosts and last year’s Radiant Boy here at Southwark) at creating fragile young men with rich but tormented inner lives and he is as good as possible here, but the writing doesn’t give him much to work with. Gilbert fares worse with the damaged but curiously unsympathetic Emily, coming across as mostly shouty and strident in the book scenes. You mainly find yourself hoping her voice will hold out for the run.

There’s a shimmering evanescence to Jamieson’s music, by turns delicate then bombastic, that sometimes recalls the current Broadway smash Maybe Happy Ending. It’s not exactly tuneful but, in Jamieson’s own orchestration, it is powerfully theatrical at times and occasionally it’s really gorgeous. His lyrics are terse and effective, but periodically nod at the anything-for-a-rhyme school of songwriting that does nobody any favours, not least Emily whose big solo sees her describing herself as “a killer, an Attila the Hun, an army of one” which is…unfortunate. Some sections even veer towards rap and work surprisingly well.

Lenson is responsible for the dazzling video design which sees Libby Todd’s simple but attractive set transformed into a hotel room, the sky at night, the interior of a space capsule, and endless banks of ever-increasing data. Visually and aurally, this production is mostly a real treat. Ben Kubiak’s accomplished six piece band are sometimes glimpsed behind the gauzy backdrop, and Ben Jacobs’ lighting is genuinely transformative.

As the trio of observers who form a kind of boffins Greek chorus sometimes breaking off to play subsidiary characters, Young, Beck and Akande all have potent presences with voices to match. Akande is the most underused but has a unique grace and authority; Young does grand work as Emily’s slippery, manipulative father, while Beck, who’s incapable of giving a bad performance, brings a touching brittleness to her betrayed mother. 

In its present form, FlyBy feels too esoteric and unfocused to fully satisfy. Giving Daniel the surname Defoe is a cute literary joke but such whimsy as this, and the frankly bizarre ending which features a life-size sea turtle for reasons too random to go into here, doesn’t coalesce with the examination of past trauma and a failing relationship. As written here, Emily and Daniel are (whisper it) just not that interesting, and that’s a problem in a show so centred on them. It’s just pretty hard to care.

For all its flaws though, FlyBy is legitimately trying to advance music theatre as a form and that needs to be acknowledged and applauded. It needs extensive work to give it more human interest and dramatic drive; not every show needs to be delightful or even comprehensible to all, but currently this musical/modern opera hybrid is more frustrating than engaging.

A DOLL’S HOUSE

by Henrik Ibsen

in a new version by Anya Reiss

directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins

Almeida Theatre, London – until 23 May 2026

running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval

https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/a-dolls-house-play/

Auteur Simon Stone turned Yerma and Phaedra into effectively new plays with, respectively, Billie Piper at the Young Vic and Janet McTeer at the National, or Duncan MacMillan and Thomas Ostermeier modernised Ibsen’s An Enemy Of The People with Matt Smith for the West End in 2024 and then for last year’s Barbican Seagull with Cate Blanchett. Similarly,  this new Almeida A Doll’s House is more a riff on a classic than a straightforward revival. Playwright Anya Reiss (and it’s really her Doll’s House as much as it’s Ibsen’s) and director Joe Hill-Gibbins have both got form in casting canonical texts in a refreshing contemporary light, and they’ve both really gone for it here, with largely pleasing results.

Not every aspect of Ibsen’s study of feminist worm-turning in a marriage compromised by chauvinism, deceit and financial controversies, lends itself to an update that sees controlling husband Torvald remade as a rambunctious City boy and flighty Nora as his spendthrift trophy wife. As embodied by an entrancing but raw and anguished Romola Garai, this Nora comes across as a particularly strung-out version of the kind of Islington ‘yummy mummy’ one might expect to see in the Almeida audience. But where Ibsen’s heroine forges her father’s signature to secure money for her spouse’s medical treatment, this one has somehow managed to embezzle over £800,000 from some of Torvald’s business clients to pay for his substance abuse rehab. 

The bang up-to-date treatment renders similarly implausible that a woman with as much personal gravitas as Thalissa Teixera’s superb Kristine, who in this version had been at University with Nora, Torvald and the blackmailing Nils Krogstad, would wind up as an impecunious, glorified babysitter dependent on Torvald for her next career progression. These are areas where Reiss seems constricted by the original Ibsen, but when she allows herself the space and freedom to move more into her own territory, the play becomes really engrossing. Everybody swears their heads off (the words “fuck” or “fucking” are used so often, even in the middle of sentences, that we quickly become inured to them), and nobody except Kristine is particularly likeable. 

I’m not sure that matters though: Reiss isnt trying to sell these people to us, and neither is Hill-Gibbins’ uniformly strong cast. Collectively, they’re painting here an accurate but unsympathetic picture of modern urban dwellers in love equally with the sounds of their own voices and the moneyed shallowness of their existence. In moments of high stress and tension, or uncertainty, Hill-Gibbins has them on the floor on all fours like caged zoo animals. Hyemi Shin’s set, while suggestive of the basement of an affluent home that’s still being worked in, also has the sense of an arena, or possibly a bear-baiting pit. 

The shorter second half is more satisfying, but also more distressing, than the first, as the situations Ibsen and Reiss have set up play out with horribly compulsive results. When Torvald’s mask of patronising, self-assured masculinity slips as he learns what Nora has done, the torrent of verbal abuse he unleashes upon her is deeply unpleasant but makes for riveting theatre. Mothersdale and Garai play it like the brilliant creatures of the theatre that they are, entirely without vanity, him a howling, threatening bully, as she physically reacts to his rage as though the blows were physical rather than verbal. 

Torvald’s transformation from truculent sexist git you wouldn’t want to sit next to at a dinner party to full blown monster, is completed by a deux ex machina plot invention by Reiss that could have been ripped out of present day newspaper headlines. In another departure from the original, Nora has the tables turned back on her in an act of cruel manipulation that alters the ending of the play. This will undoubtedly divide people but it entirely worked for me.

James Corrigan nails the sweaty desperation and sardonic misery of Nils, whose difficult circumstances are forcing him into using the information he has on Nora’s shady financial activities. Olivier Huband brings warmth and louche charisma to the doctor whose romantic/sexual connections to Nora are more explicit here than usual. Costume designer Alex Lowde dresses everybody in grungily expensive attire that feels perfectly appropriate for these people at this time, and gives Garai a spangled, titillating nurses outfit and lurid porno wig for the offstage party where things start to come to a head. Lee Curran’s lighting bathes everything in queasily expressive, unforgiving washes, relieved only by the twinkling lights of a Christmas tree, a sole source of comfort in amongst the moneyed starkness.

This is an ambitious reimagining. Ibsen lit the touch paper then Reiss and Hill-Gibbins poured the gasoline on this ultra-modern conflagration of sexual politics, cruelty, treachery and misplaced love. It’s very much a Doll’s House for now and it’s likely to provoke strong reactions. Ultimately, I was pinned to the back of my seat by the power of it.

CHOIR BOY

by Tarell Alvin McCraney

directed by Nancy Medina; co-directed by Tatenda Shamiso

Theatre Royal Stratford East, London – until 25 April 2026

running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval

https://www.stratfordeast.com/whats-on/all-shows/choir-boy

An American play that’s almost a musical and, at times, almost a concert, Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy premiered at London’s Royal Court in 2012 before a Tony nominated Broadway run and enjoying numerous productions across the US. Watching Nancy Medina’s sensitive production, originally seen at Bristol Old Vic in 2023 and now co-directed by Tatenda Shamiso, it’s not hard to fathom the appeal of this unruly but life-affirming, stirring dramedy.

The play follows a quintet of African American youngsters negotiating the passage from childhood to manhood at the strict but prestigious Charles R Drew prep school where their principal extracurricular outlet is as members of the choir. The choir leader, and the most fleshed-out character, is super-smart gay Pharus (Terique Jarrett, sublime) whose wise-cracking, opinionated exterior masks deep longings and uncertainties. His flamboyance is tolerated by an understanding but professionally restricted headmaster (beautifully played by Daon Broni) on the condition that his sexuality is never acted upon.

If the other young men -repressed, God-fearing David (Michael Ahomka-Lindsay), gawky, well-meaning JR (Khalid Daley), cocky, jock-y, homophobic Bobby (Rabi Kondé) wounded by the early loss of his Mum- sometimes feel like stock characters in terms of the writing, the performances are so detailed and quirky that it’s easy to overlook. There’s really lovely work from Freddie MacBruce as AJ, Pharus’ roommate and the other character who entirely breaks out of cliché: he’s witty, self-confident both in his personality and his (straight) sexuality) yet raw. He’s also a tremendous ally and friend to Pharus when he needs it most. In a second act scene where he looks after a broken Pharus after all hell has broken loose, initially tentatively but eventually with such kindness, the only sound in a wrapt audience is the sniffing of people overcome with emotion. Jarrett and MacBruce play it with astounding emotional delicacy.

McCraney’s text meanders a bit, to be honest, but it’s also incredibly rich. There’s a riveting dissection of Black history in the US, specifically as filtered through the spirituals which have handed been down through generations and are now performed by these boys; they stud the evening like jewels of feeling and the voices are magnificent (Ahomka-Lindsay and Daley have solos that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up); it’s impossible not to be moved. Martin Turner has an amusing, appropriately toe-curling cameo as a well meaning but out-of-touch white former teacher whose awkward determination to get down with the kids is met with understandable scepticism. 

For all the talking and indeed the singing (Femi Temowo is the excellent musical director and arranger), a pivotal scene is almost entirely wordless which seems a curious choice, as does a swift succession of plot points in the latter half of the play when the script felt more mood than action up until then. The dialogue is soaked in humour and truth though, and is never less than engaging. The staging could ideally do with a couple more actors to better give the sense of a school (though Max Johns’ set is nicely vivid) but it’s pacy and finds the middle ground between entertainment and polemic. 

Although the Black masculinity tropes and the American boarding school setting are pretty specific, there remains a universality to McCraney’s writing that moves and uplifts. If you’ve ever felt othered or misunderstood, if you’ve ever found kindness in a place where you didn’t expect it to be, Choir Boy will strike a chord deep within you. It ends on an uplifting note, with a hopeful suggestion that Jarrett’s exquisite Pharus will soar through life as he deserves, and that’s pretty much impossible to argue with. 

ROWLING IN IT

written and performed by Laura Kay Bailey 

directed by Dominic Shaw

Kings Head Theatre, London – until 18 April 2026

running time: 1 hour no interval

https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/rowling-in-it-zwy4

Anybody intrigued by the wittily punning title of Rowling In It who pitches up to the Kings Head expecting a coruscating comic takedown of the divisive J K whose views on transgender people has been the source of much consternation and impassioned discussion over much of the last decade, is in for a bit of a surprise. Laura Kay Bailey’s self-penned solo show, running at barely an hour, is a semi-fictionalised account of what happens when a jobbing actress accepts the challenge of playing J K Rowling in a potentially provocative Edinburgh Fringe play, but it’s more contemplative than savage. The script’s attempts at being even-handed in terms of considering different sides of an argument are commendable but make for rather unsatisfying theatre, at least as handled here.

Bailey plays the American actress (is this a version of herself?) embroiled in the self-flagellation and soul-searching, as well as the inevitable trial by social media, after being cast as the controversial writer. She also plays everyone else, and it’s here that Dominic Shaw’s tension-free production encounters one of its biggest problems. Bearing a passing physical resemblance to Broadway and US TV star Laura Benanti, Bailey is an engaging, elegant presence, but she doesn’t, at least as yet, have the chameleonic elan to convincingly transform herself into a myriad of characters, including a gross director, a monstrously self-indulgent writer or a sensitive fellow actor struggling with the show’s messy creative processes. 

Accordingly, the switches between characters sometimes feel fudged and confusing, not helped by Bailey’s grasp on different accents (Scottish, posh English, and so on) isn’t as secure as it might be. This lends Shaw’s staging an unhelpful underrehearsed quality, and the comedy frequently fails to land. Bailey tends to deliver bulky swathes of text towards the floor as though locking eyes with an audience member might put her off her stroke. 

It’s a fun touch naming the cast and creatives of the play being produced after Harry Potter characters. So, the clueless, drawling American writer is Snape, the enthusiastic young actress cast as Emma Watson is Hermione, a non-binary performer whose role is cut to ribbons during the rehearsal process is Minerva McGonagall, the ghastly producer is Hagrid…you get the idea. 

The lack of background information on the principal character is frustrating. We find out that she’s originally Texan, that she has a racist grandma who she adores while acknowledging she wishes she wasn’t so racist (like, duh!) and that she has two children. That last tranche of information feels barely relevant, except to justify the borrowing from Jonathan Spector’s masterly 2018 play Eureka Day of the device of having a school parents association’s increasingly tetchy online group chat beamed on to the back wall of the set. It’s quite funny but what has it got to do with being hauled over the coals for playing J K Rowling. This, and the reveal that she had a miscarriage prior to starting rehearsals, make Rowling In It feel like a fragment of a longer, more broadly focussed play.

Another symptom of this is the inclusion of an unseen character, one Mr V, who keeps phoning and with whom our heroine seems to be in a relationship but about who we find out almost nothing so these moments come across as so much dead air. There’s a lame running joke, mercifully abandoned quite quickly, about her not being able to remember where he’s working but only that it begins with the letter L (Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Libya…). 

Pondering that Rowling started attacking trans folks online while menopausal isn’t original or revelatory, and neither does the acknowledgement that such blinkered views can do considerable damage when expressed by somebody with a vast global platform, but that’s about as edgy as this show gets. Bailey seems so determined not to offend anybody at all that the piece has almost no bite or colour. It’s pretty funny though when it depicts a disastrous opening night where a leading performer can’t find their lift while trying to deliver a dynamic, pivotal speech. More of this kind of “when theatre goes wrong” humour wouldn’t go amiss.

A critic accuses Snape’s Edinburgh play of being flavourless but unfortunately that is a description that also applies to Rowling In It, despite Bailey’s hard work. The ultimate punchline, such as it is, involves Bailey telling her agent that she doesn’t think this should be a one woman show. Unfortunately I’m not sure I do either.