ajhlovestheatre

HERE WE ARE

Book by David Ives

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

inspired by the films of Luis Buñuel

directed by Joe Mantello

National Theatre/Lyttelton, London – until 28 June 2025

running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval 

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/here-we-are/

When God’s gift to musical theatre (oh come on, yes he was) died in 2021, he’d been working with playwright David Ives on this distillation of a couple of Luis Buñuel mid-twentieth century art house movies for a decade. In truth, the opportunity to hear the final score by Stephen Sondheim is the main reason why people are flocking to the National this summer and, if you’re a fan of his work, Here We Are is unlikely to disappoint. His detractors probably won’t go anyway, but a lot of the stuff that grinds their gears (dense, challenging lyrics, staccato rhythms, shards of melody, unexpected chord structures) is all present and correct. So too is one of  the strongest ensemble casts on any current London stage and a dazzling Joe Mantello staging based on his earlier version seen at NYC’s The Shed in 2023.

Here We Are is a heck of a lot of fun, and it’s also by turns frustrating, alarming and downright baffling. Despite ten years of work, it feels unfinished, specifically Sondheim’s contribution which is a full, and sparkling, musical score during the first act which sees a bunch of rich, successful, self-obsessed Manhattanites heading out in search of a restaurant brunch that’ll never happen, but is reduced to underscoring and short sequences – non sequiturs in song really – in the elliptical, apocalyptic second half. Sondheim uses music and lyrics conversationally here, and fans will derive much fun from trying to work out if this or that bit sounds more like Sunday….or Company…..or Passion, then suddenly hits us with something thrilling and unexpected, or shimmering and lovely. 

The music never really blooms into the sweet release of something conventionally melodic though, as it does in, say, Sunday In The Park With George or Passion, which may prove unsatisfying to some. Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations are as fine as anything else he ever created from the maestro’s work. Here We Are may be unsatisfactory if viewed as a conventional musical but when you can consider it as its own, bizarre beast, a witty, unsettling hybrid of script and music, then it’s zanily rewarding. 

If any creative team is going to work on a show that casts an absurdist eye on the concept of civilisation totally breaking down, then it’s this one. Sondheim has already dealt with the potential destruction of all that gives us comfort and hope in Sweeney Todd and Into The Woods, and David Ives explored shifts in power with a macabre wit in his hit 2010 play Venus In Fur. While Here We Are isn’t as complete a piece as any of those, it shares a beady-eyed appraisal of the faults and foibles of humans, overlaid with an off-the-wall surrealism that that has audiences rocking with laughter in one moment then reeling in shock the next. 

The characters aren’t sympathetic but they are grimly enjoyable company, especially with a cast that for the most part owe their primary allegiance to the stage rather than the orchestra pit underneath it. That’s especially important in a second act which barely feels like musical theatre at all, and requires the characters to unravel quite extremely (and entertainingly), which this superb team manage in spectacular fashion. The acting really is sensational throughout.

Rory Kinnear’s crazily wealthy vulgarian, living in a permanent state of low level aggression, is a familiar but horribly compelling creation while a bewitching yet hard-edged Jane Krakowski invests trophy wife Marianne with the constant sense of self-absorbed delight and childlike wonder that typifies a certain brand of super-rich. Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Martha Plimpton are gleefully hard nosed and hilarious as the plastic surgeon and publicist that turn up unexpectedly in their apartment. Chumisa Dornford-May continues to deliver on her earlier promise as Marianne’s rebellious younger sister, and Paulo Szot is an absolute riot as a womanising South American ambassador with criminal activity on his mind. 

If Harry Hadden-Paton can’t quite eclipse memories of David Hyde Pearce as shoe-obsessed Bishop having an existential crisis (“God knows / I’m a terrible priest”), he’s funny, endearing and truthful. Cameron Johnson and Richard Fleeshman make bold, essential contributions as a pair of military men with unexpected connections to the central figures. 

Returning from the original New York company are Tracie Bennett and Denis O’Hare playing multiple variations of serving and hospitality staff, bearing witness to the entitled and/or deranged behaviour of their financial, if not moral, betters. O’Hare was indisposed the night I saw Here We Are but Edward Baker-Duly delivered sparky, detailed, impressive work across a selection of roles. 

An astonishing Tracie Bennett proves once again why she’s been a Sondheim specialist for decades, prising a diamond-hard showstopper out of the extravagantly dour ‘It Is What It Is’ as a lachrymose, preposterously accented French maîtresse d’, but also finding irresistible comedy with an undertow of sadness and mania in a variety of other women, each exquisitely delineated. She has one line in the entire second act, playing an embassy maid whose look and physicality are not a million miles from Julie Walters’s ancient waitress in the inspired Victoria Wood “Two Soups” sketch, but is utterly magnetic whether passing silent judgement on the appalling guests or furtively slurping from a cognac bottle. Bennett was Olivier nominated for her stunning Carlotta (“I’m Still Here”) in the 2017 National revival of Sondheim’s Follies, and I strongly suspect she’ll be up for that same award again for this.

David Zinn’s clinical, chic set which makes the onstage figures look like exhibits in an art installation undergoes a luscious transformation in the second half, and Sam Pinkleton (director of current New York sensation Oh, Mary!) brilliantly makes his choreography feel character driven , like it springs organically from the scripted scenes. Natasha Katz’s lighting has a sculptural, transformative quality that further enhances a production where every creative feels at the top of their game.

In the UK, it’s probably only the National that would have the resources to present this strange yet insistent show with such style. Sometimes bewildering, more often ravishing, frequently delightful, and clearly unfinished, Here We Are is a curio for sure, but a life enhancing, challenging one. I mostly loved it but fully respect the opinions of those who totally won’t. You really have to experience this one for yourself.

HAMLET HAIL TO THE THIEF

Hamlet by William Shakespeare, adapted by Christine Jones with Steven Hoggett

Music by Radiohead 

directed by Christine Jones and Steven Hoggett

Aviva Studios, Manchester to 18 May 2025, then Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon 4 to 28 June 2025

running time: 1 hour 50 minutes no interval

https://factoryinternational.org/whats-on/hamlet-hail-to-the-thief/

https://www.rsc.org.uk/Hamlet-Hail-to-the-Thief

A mash-up of Shakespeare’s (arguably) most loved tragedy with one of Radiohead’s least celebrated albums sounds like a bonkers idea, and so it proves in performance. Hamlet Hail To The Thief is however a striking, unusual piece of music theatre that divides its weight equally between the original text, Jess Williams’s angsty choreography, and the haunting, sometimes thunderous, music, played ‘live’ and re-orchestrated for the stage by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. If ultimately this Factory International and Royal Shakespeare Company co-production, created by Yorke, Christine Jones and Steven Hoggett, feels like a fascinating experiment rather than a fully fledged piece, there’s much to admire.

Jones and Hoggett previously collaborated on the stage incarnation of Green Day’s American Idiot for Broadway and a world tour, and at its best Hamlet Hail To The Thief has a similar sense of iconoclastic wildness. Rock music in tandem with expressionistic choreography lends itself extremely well to conveying the inner workings of people at the end of their tethers, which is something the creatives here completely understand. 

Where American Idiot gave the songs full rein though, this show uses the Radiohead contributions to set mood and establish background, and to accompany the movement, which is highly reminiscent of the work of Frantic Assembly, the groundbreaking physical theatre company Hoggett co-founded. There are no ‘numbers’ as such – this very much isn’t Hamlet: The Musical – but the music is an ongoing presence, by turns ominous then rousing, and Tom Brady’s band is cracking, as are the ethereal vocals of Ed Begley and Megan Hill, even if the booming acoustics in Aviva Studio’s specially constructed auditorium render the lyrics incomprehensible.

Jones has trimmed the Shakespeare to a lean running time -well under two hours- that hits all the main beats of the Hamlet story but, perhaps inevitably, doesn’t allow for much in the way of psychological insight beyond what the individual performers are able to provide. Some fare better than others. Paul Hilton’s oleaginous, chain-smoking Claudius is a masterclass in imperious paranoia and duplicity; dangerous as a cobra about to strike, he’s magnetic and utterly repellent. He’s also the ghost of Hamlet’s father/his own brother, rendered with massive distortions and effects by video on the back wall of the set, and bizarrely conceived like the villain from a none-too-subtle episode of Dr Who. 

Opposite Hilton, Claudia Harrison is an impassioned, superb Gertrude, in another performance that would work equally well in a more conventional version of the whole play. That’s equally true of Tom Peters’s Polonius and Brandon Grace’s Laertes, both of whom make strong impressions and manage to break through all the bombast and gloom.

Delivering the famous “to be or not to be” not as a soliloquy but as an aggressive verbal attack on Ophelia, Samuel Blenkin only gives us some aspects of Hamlet as a character: he brilliantly suggests the protagonist’s fury and disaffection, yet gives little sense of a rich inner life, but that’s not surprising given how much text has been cut. He also has an idiosyncratic way of pronouncing sibilants that recalls Sigourney Weaver’s much maligned turn in the recent Drury Lane Tempest, and proves equally distracting. The role of Ophelia has been punched up considerably, and Ami Tredrea lends her a distracted but tough quality that works well for this version, but she isn’t especially sympathetic, even when reprising the aforementioned “to be or not to be” utterance at the height of her trauma. 

Her death is ingeniously staged as a grave surrounded by blinding light opens up like a chasm in the black stage floor for her to tumble into. The look of the show is relentlessly dark: AMP featuring Sadra Tehrani’s set is a blank square populated by amps, speakers and a metallic staircase, Lisa Duncan has costumed everyone in deep black, and Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting runs the colour spectrum from white to yellow. It looks impressive but it’s not always clear what’s going on or who’s speaking, an issue exacerbated by the impersonally large space. I suspect the stakes and intensity may be upped when it transfers to the more intimate Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Will Duke’s ingenious, monochrome video design, sparingly used, adds to the overall nightmarish quality. The confrontation scene where Hamlet’s recriminations to his mother are interrupted by the discovery of the hapless Polonius is accompanied by a queasily undulating trompe l’œil effect whereby every object on the back wall seems to pulse and vibrate…the sense of foreboding is palpable and unsettling. This level of theatrical bravura is welcome in a production that, for all its spiky edges and originality of thinking, is not without its longueurs as Hamlet-lite struggles to emerge from the literal and metaphorical murk.

It’s interesting that the RSC is involved with this project in the same season as they’ve had an acclaimed, mould-breaking Hamlet (which just completed a national tour) and are giving us the upcoming UK premiere of Fat Ham, James Ijames’s fabulous Black queer American riff on the fabled text which arrives in Stratford this summer. Hamlet Hail To The Thief isn’t entirely satisfying – Radiohead fans may be frustrated that there are no complete songs, and there are whole swathes and colours of Hamlet that go unexplored – but the marrying together of a play and an album that, despite being created centuries apart, share a similar sense of paranoia and existential ennui, is pretty inspired. You could probably get away with not being familiar with Radiohead’s Hail To The Thief album and still enjoy this, but I suspect that without at least a rudimentary knowledge of Hamlet, you’d be pretty lost.

FAYGELE

by Shimmy Braun

directed by Hannah Chissick

Marylebone Theatre, London – until 31 May 2025

running time: 90 minutes no interval 

https://www.marylebonetheatre.com/productions/faygele

There’s nothing remotely enjoyable about writing a negative review of a play that the author has clearly poured their heart and soul into, but here we are. In a touching programme note for Faygele, the gay Jewish drama at Marylebone directed by Hannah Chissick, playwright Shimmy Braun describes the text as “my baby…deeply personal” before briefly describing his own journey from married Orthodox Jew with four children to out gay man, So, there’s clearly a lot here at stake. 

Thankfully Braun’s life path has turned out differently from that of poor Ari Freed, his eighteen year old protagonist, rejected for his sexuality in his early teens by his father, and whose post-suicide funeral is returned to at intervals throughout the ninety minute duration. We also see his Bar Mitzvah and various scenes in the family home,  with Ari himself (Ilan Galkoff) commenting directly to us from a dimension somewhere between life and death, which has the unfortunate effect of making Faygele feel more like a radio play than a stage property, an impression reinforced somewhat by Chissick’s stilted, static production.

Galkoff, a tremendously likeable and talented young actor, gives a creditable account of a role that requires him to go from sullen to shouty with little in between, apart from one clumsily written sequence where the bewildered youth attempts to seduce Sammy, an older man who’s trying his best to guide him (Yiftak Mizrahi, delivering beautiful work). A consistent feature of the play is that conflicts are set up -between Ari and his parents, between the parents themselves, between the Rabbi (a warm and charismatic Andrew Paul) trying to help the family despite the constraints his faith puts upon him around the subject of homosexuality and the parents, between Sammy and almost everybody- that should be emotionally and theatrically potent but are scuppered by undistinguished, obvious writing and a lack of psychological depth.

The result is that everybody sounds like a bunch of viewpoints strung together rather than real people, which inevitably robs the play of much of its feeling, despite the raw emotionalism of the subject matter. This is especially true of Ari’s parents (Ben Caplan and Clara Francis, fine actors both) whose relationship is depicted as a series of subterfuges and screaming rows, but they are too sketchily drawn for their arguments to feel especially urgent. Caplan starkly depicts Freed’s inability to comprehend his son’s otherness while Francis, a lovely, instinctive actress, finds the pain in the conflict between love for her child and obeisance to her husband. These are very good performances, but with stronger writing and direction they could be great.

On press night, Chissick’s production didn’t seem quite ready, with some fudged lighting and sound cues, and a couple of instances of actors stumbling over their lines. That should all improve with a few more shows under everyone’s belt, but there’s not a lot that can be done about a script that, while it undoubtedly has its heart in the right place, feels unfocused and dramatically inert. I would rather have had part of the comparatively brief running time used to give us more information about the characters than the interminable and pointless enactment of a Jewish fable about a turkey that is staged with little flair or enthusiasm. 

Any head of steam that Braun does manage to build up is dissipated by unnecessarily lengthy scene changes as the cast shift the furniture about on David Shields’s dark, woody, non-specific set. One area where the show is successful in conveying the sense of an entire community of people living in a modern American city yet being quite separate from it. It is almost a shock when talk of cellphones and the internet is first introduced. The recurring motif in the direction seems to be placing the actors in isolation, hands clasped in anguish, and staring at the floor: it must doesn’t make for very interesting theatre.

The fault is in the writing. During the funeral, the Rabbi talks about Ari being too good for this world, and that the people left behind him didn’t deserve him, but there’s very little in the script to support that, beyond the fact that his dad was a massive bully and a hypocrite. It’s a desperately sad story but it isn’t fleshed out enough to make us really feel that sadness. It should break your heart and, despite the efforts of an excellent cast, it just doesn’t.

There is a play stirring, tragic and thought-provoking to be written about the antiquated attitude to sexuality within Orthodox Judaism, and the human fallout from archaic traditions, but Faygele (the title is a Yiddish word meaning “little bird”, also employed as derogatory slang for gay or effeminate men) isn’t it. Maybe Braun is too close to his subject matter, but right now Faygele needs a dramaturg, more complexity, and a snappier production.

BLOOD WEDDING 

by Barney Norris, after Lorca

directed by Tricia Thorns 

Omnibus Theatre, London – until 24 May 2025

running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes including interval 

https://www.omnibus-clapham.org/blood-wedding-2/

Barney Norris’s modern take on Blood Wedding is to the original text as the recent Cate Blanchett Barbican Seagull was to Chekhov, or as the Billie Piper Young Vic Yerma a couple of years ago related to another classic Lorca tragedy. In other words, it’s a completely new play (new-ish actually, having premiered at Salisbury Playhouse just before the pandemic), and a very engaging one at that, hanging on the framework of the great Spanish tragedy. Tricia Thorns’s impeccably acted production for Two’s Company is less poetic than a faithful version of Blood Wedding but it’s also considerably more accessible and a lot more fun. 

Norris transplants this tale of forbidden love and sinister foreboding to the Wiltshire countryside where he grew up, which gives a charming authenticity to the inclusion of place names and local points of interest, and makes it feel bracingly contemporary. The combination of rural British setting, working class grit and the (admittedly watered-down) otherworldliness are as reminiscent of Jez Butterworth in his Jerusalem era as it is of the second Golden Age of Spanish theatre. 

Lorca’s doomed bridegroom is now cocky school leaver Rob (Christopher Neenan), arranging his wedding to feisty, troubled, slightly older Georgie (Nell Williams) while his mum Helen (Alix Dunmore, exquisite) looks on with massive reservations. Where Lorca gave us death in human form as an old beggar woman, Norris has created loquacious Brian, the caretaker of the rickety village hall the aforementioned trio is considering for the post-wedding party, mainly because it’s so cheap. David Fielder, in a masterclass performance of utter brilliance, turns this shambling old widower into a sympathetic, slightly unnerving outsider, all-seeing and a bit needy, frequently hilarious but able to turn on the pathos at a moment’s notice. 

Observing how the figures in this Blood Wedding (lurking on the sidelines there’s also Lee, Georgie’s ex, an Irish Traveller played with a perfect combination of menace and lost-boy charm by Kiefer Moriarty, who has started a family with her estranged school friend Danni, a searing Esme Lonsdale) dovetail with the Lorca adds to the fun if you’re familiar with the original but it’s not essential. Norris’s potty-mouthed tragicomedy hums along compulsively on its own terms.

There’s punchy, relatable dialogue, much of it laugh-out-loud funny, such as the way Helen’s speeches are peppered with half-baked motivational quotes as though she’s gorged on self-help manuals, and some of Brian’s lines are priceless. When Norris gets serious, he never overdoes the foreshadowing: “love doesn’t always behave well, does it?” says Danni to Georgie at one point, and it feels like a warning. It’s telling also how, every time she discusses her upcoming wedding to Rob, Georgie talks about how she ‘needs’ the stability and continuity marriage offers, but never refers to love. 

The only section that doesn’t fully work, although played with spellbinding conviction by Fielder, is where Norris and Lorca most closely connect, in an extended monologue full of purple prose and poetic imagery, fusing the natural world, the mystical and the little lives of the individuals involved here. It’s not bad writing, but it feels like a clumsy gear change, present only to remind us that this enjoyable modern text has its roots elsewhere, and Alex Marker’s amateurish set has a mini transformation that verges on the laughable.

Thorns’s staging could afford to up the pace a bit and sometimes has the actors milling about aimlessly, although she makes interesting use of the auditorium as well as the stage. The performances are wonderful though. Watching Fielder feels akin to seeing one of the all-time greats but in a studio space. Williams charts Georgie’s internal conflicts with real sensitivity and passion, while Moriarty makes it entirely credible that she feels he’s bad news while also being unable to leave him fully behind. Lonsdale is vivid and moving as a young woman who on some innate level realises she’s a pawn in a game much bigger than she is. Dunmore reads as a little too young and glamorous to fully convince as a downtrodden single mum with a young adult as her son, but turns in a beautifully realised, fully rounded portrayal nonetheless, never finer than when managing a potent combination of grief and fury in the final scene.

If the first act is a comedy, act two is a tragedy, but both acts are superbly entertaining. Norris manages to honour Lorca but create something fresh, and as with the better soap operas, you can’t wait to see what happens next. 

TAMBO & BONES 

by Dave Harris

directed by Matthew Xia

Theatre Royal Stratford East, London – until 10 May 2025

Leeds Playhouse, Leeds – 14 to 24 May 2025

running time: 2 hours including interval

https://www.atctheatre.com/production/tambo-bones-2025/

Plays that genuinely think outside the box and set your mind and pulse racing, leaving you questioning and exhilarated in a way that few mediums other than live theatre can manage, are comparatively rare…but here’s one. First seen in 2022 at NYC’s Playwrights Horizons and now enjoying (due to public demand) a second UK outing, Tambo & Bones is an astonishing, provocative piece of theatrical bravura that rips up the rule book on playmaking. 

Philadelphia born Dave Harris was a slam poet before turning his hand to writing plays and I suspect that’s what accounts for Tambo & Bones’s breathtaking, free-form structure and way with language. It’s genuinely not like anything else I’ve ever seen: a challenging, exciting, racially charged almost-duet that examines Black masculinity in the US (although American culture is so all-encompassing that this play is likely to resonate wherever it’s performed in the western world) and comes to some pretty bleak conclusions about the pathways of humanity. 

Matthew Xia’s pacy, shape-shifting production for Actors Touring Company, in conjunction with Stratford East and a quartet of the UK’s most prestigious regional houses, is alive to the nuances and ambiguities in the text. It’s bracing, confrontational, and oh so ambitious….for starters, the satirical piece covers five hundred years in less than two hours playing time. At its best it’s unforgettable, and at times it’s almost impenetrable, but certainly never boring.

It’s divided, not neatly, into three sections. The title characters (Clifford Samuel and Daniel Ward, both extraordinary) initially appear as figures in a minstrel show, complete with artificially bucolic setting and banjo soundtrack, and the unwelcome stereotypes inherent in that mercifully lost form of entertainment whereby Black people are portrayed as lazy, dishonest and sunny-natured to the point of idiocy. There’s a Beckettian pathos and absurdity to this shabbily attired, endearing but vaguely disquieting pair. Tambo just wants to nap in the sun, while Bones is scrounging for dimes to go visit his sick son, or at least that’s what he tells us at first. It’s very funny, and the physical discipline, comic skills and sheer energy of both actors is spellbinding. It’s also disturbing: what is the modern relevancy of these questionable tropes being resurrected, what’s with the confrontational racially insensitive language, and where is this worrying undertow of threat leading? This is electrifying stuff.

Harris proceeds in the next section to draw an uncomfortable but credible line from Black minstrels demeaning themselves for the entertainment of white people, to the rap artists that become wealthy global superstars on the back of their African American heritage. It’s still Tambo and Bones but now it’s a hundred years on and they are winning awards and playing massive stadiums. Samuel and Ward transform with breathtaking conviction from gifted comic players to legitimate hip-hop stars, complete with insouciant swagger and elaborate, intricate word runs. As with a lot of rap performed live and heavily amplified, it’s not possible to catch every word but Bones is still preoccupied with money though the dimes are now dollars (lots of dollars) while Bones is now fully awake and all about social injustice. 

For the final part, Tambo & Bones moves into a more challenging, surreal zone that also carries a feeling of alarming inevitability. Set four hundred years in the future, it’s more open to interpretation perhaps than the earlier sections but it’s hugely powerful. Tambo and Bones have now become activists in an apparently lawless America torn apart by racially motivated strife. It veers nearer to performance art as a pair of white robots are wheeled on in a giant neon-edged box (Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and ULTZ’s design and the lighting by Ciarán Cunningham are striking) and all hell breaks loose. It ends with an act of extreme violence and the lines “I know what I’ve done”….but what are the implications for humanity as a whole? Harris doesn’t give us any easy answers but if you don’t leave the theatre unsettled and full of questions, then you probably haven’t been paying attention.

Samuel and Ward are chameleonic and brilliant, switching from lovable to menacing, vulnerable to empowered, sympathisers to aggressors as required by the text. Their ability to go from charming to unnerving is quite something to experience, and collectively and individually they deliver acting (and rapping!) of the highest order. Terrific performances. Xia’s staging is slightly hampered by an unnecessary interval that interrupts the flow and tension but other than that, this is fierce, technically accomplished  theatre (Gino Ricardo Green’s video design is another triumph, as is the musical contribution of Excalibah*) that refuses to spoon feed its audience. It doesn’t provide easy answers, but then isn’t that life? Exhilarating and troubling. 

BOOP! The Musical

Book by Bob Martin

Music by David Foster 

Lyrics by Susan Birkenhead

based on characters created by Max Fleischer

directed by Jerry Mitchell 

Broadhurst Theatre, New York City – open-ended run

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://boopthemusical.com

There’s so much to like about Boop! that it’s unfortunate that the overall takeaway impression is of being dazzled by a vibrant new Broadway star (Jasmine Amy Rogers as the eponymous Betty) while hoping that she will, in due course, be performing stronger material. It’s not that anything else in this amiable, sleek-then-clunky musical is actively bad – the production values and onstage talent are tip-top – but it lacks a purpose and sense of originality. Whenever Rogers is onstage (which, to be fair, is for the majority of the show) the cracks are barely noticeable, but when she isn’t present, they threaten to turn into chasms.

Actually, much of the comedy writing in Bob Martin’s book is probably superior to, or at least funnier than, his work (with Rick Elice) on the new Smash musical two streets away. But the framework here is flawed, trying way too hard to make Betty Boop relevant to our current troubled times, when it probably would have been better to just let her…be. But no, Martin has her as a feminist and cultural icon (there’s a major, and unlikely, plot strand, involving an endearing, mighty-voiced Angelica Hale as a 21st century teenage misfit who idolises Boop), and gives her an existential crisis to boot, then there’s stuff about politics and climate change. These are important subjects for sure but, without the craft and intelligence of somebody like Stephen Sondheim, they feel oddly out of place in a frothy, romantic musical comedy. There’s also a decision, revealed so last minute that it seems like an afterthought, to turn a pair of characters in Betty’s monochrome world into a gay couple, and it smacks desperately of box-ticking.

All these disparate elements are tossed together in a story which sees a discontented Betty leaving, by way of an ingenious stage illusion (courtesy of Skylar Fox), a life of black and white celluloid stardom and arriving slap bang in the middle of a technicolour, frenetic New York City. The contrast between the two worlds is impressively done (David Rockwell- sets, Gregg Barnes – costume and Philip S Rosenberg – lighting, all near the top of their game here) and climaxes in a delightfully clever act two opener which sees the two worlds co-exist onstage. 

Director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell is a master at ‘old school’ Broadway and he delivers some gorgeous work here, starting with a mass tap dance number for Betty and the ensemble that actually looks like an old black and white movie come to life, and which gets the show off to a hell of a start. The whole production moves fluidly and with pace, and gear changes between comedy and romance are seamlessly done. 

Pretty much every number involving Rogers lands marvellously, even the ballad ‘Something To Shout About’ which, while attractive in itself, is a classic ‘I want’ song but here plonked down as the 11 o’clock number. Best of all is the act one finale ‘Where I Wanna Be’ which sees a squiffy Betty taking over a Manhattan jazz club, to the delight of its patrons and the trumpeter smitten with her (Ainsley Melham). It’s an absolute masterclass in building and delivering a classic musical number, Rogers and the ensemble are on fire, and if the interval wasn’t immediately following, the show would be stopped cold.

David Foster’s music is brassily, jazzily reminiscent of Golden Age Broadway scores with forays into the mid-twentieth century sweet-pop of Burt Bacharach (Melham’s ‘She Knocks Me Out’, delivered with force and charm, really works). Weirdly, the attempts to sound current, such as when the action shifts to a present day comic con or Times Square complete with costumed characters) feel more toe-curlingly dated. Susan Birkenhead’s lyrics are sprightly and appropriate.

It’s great to see Faith Prince back on Broadway even if she doesn’t have much of a role here as astrophysicist Valentina, long lost romantic interest of Betty’s beloved, eccentric Grampy (Stephen DeRosa, sweetly bonkers) but she gets decent comic mileage out of it and is generally a lovely presence. Melham is an authentically likeable leading man and a suave but underused Erich Bergen gets to finally cut loose, which he does magnificently, as the villain of the piece.

Rogers is the main attraction here though and, goodness me, she’s fabulous. She nails the squeaky Boo voice we’re expecting but makes it her own, and does the same with the character’s angular yet voluptuous body language. Her singing voice is full of colours, with a luscious belt topped off with exhilarating soprano notes, she’s a glorious dancer and has a true star’s warmth and magnetism that connects directly to the audience. She also captures Betty’s kookie glamour and is vulnerable enough to make you genuinely care, but robust enough that the more problematic aspects of the original cartoon’s treatment of the character (constantly being pursued and objectified by wildly inappropriate men) don’t become sinister when alluded to here. She’s also a gifted comedienne (her tipsy “have you tried this?!” to other night club guests when Betty first discovers beer, is a line reading to savour), and generally delivers an utterly glorious Broadway debut. Unsurprisingly, Ms Rogers has bagged herself a Best Actress Tony nomination alongside the iconic Audra, the divine Nicole and the magnificent duelling divas over at Death Becomes Her. I just hope theatre doesn’t lose her to TV and movies.

Almost as adorable as this Betty is her super-licky dog Pudgy, a scene-stealing puppet created and manipulated by Phillip Huber (note the way his tongue changes colour depending on which world he’s frolicking in). Other pleasures include Finn Ross’s inventive projections, Sabana Majeed’s vivid wigs, and the wondrously full, satisfying combination of Doug Besterman’s orchestrations and Gareth Owen’s sound design. Barnes also gives Rogers a couple of eye-popping costume reveals. 

Like I said, there are many good things in Boop! and it’s just unfortunate that they fail to coalesce into a fully satisfying whole. It’s a bit long for its lack of substance and whenever the leading lady is offstage, she’s sorely missed. Is it worth seeing? Absolutely. Whether you’ll remember much about it afterwards, apart from the sensational Ms Rogers, well, that’s a tricky question. 

REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES

Music and lyrics by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez

Book by Lisa Loomer with Nell Benjamin 

based on the play by Josefina López and the HBO screenplay by López and George LaVoo

directed by Sergio Trujillo 

James Earl Jones Theatre, New York City – until 29 June 2025

running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes including interval

https://www.realwomenhavecurvesbroadway.com

This season of Broadway tuners has already produced one sleeper hit with the transcendant, highly original Maybe Happy Ending, but here’s hoping that this will be a second one. Real Women Have Curves ticks so many boxes as to what makes a great contemporary popular musical that it’s no surprise that audiences are responding to it from beginning to end with a warm roar of approval, generous but genuine laughter, and more than a few tears. 

Like the play and film of the same name that precede it, the show puts plus-sized Latina women front and centre, and although set in 1980s Los Angeles, the prominent plot strand concerning mass deportation of undocumented immigrants (the principal characters are dress makers in a garment factory) has acquired a horrible relevance under the present US administration that the creatives couldn’t have predicted when they began working on the musical. So, Real Women Have Curves is tremendously uplifting, full of hope, heart, humour and poppy, heart-meltingly insistent Latin-tinged music, but an all-too-real threat runs through it like a chilly wind. 

That pure exhilaration and a strong sense of disquiet can co-exist so seamlessly is much to do with Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin’s well-considered book which seldom becomes mawkish and features a gallery of really gorgeous characters, and Sergio Trujillo’s direction which is as sensitive, when required, as it is bold. Trujillo is also responsible for the sassy, crowd-pleasing choreography which reaches its apotheosis in the title number, an upbeat but lump-in-the-throat moment which brings the audience ecstatically to its feet acknowledging these glorious women (who by now have stripped to their underwear…you kinda have to experience this for yourself) acknowledging themselves, while a glitterball shaped like a plus-sized dressmaker’s mannequin twirls overhead: it’s life-enhancing theatrical magic.

That title song is just one gem in a score that doesn’t contain a dud. Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez have crafted a series of lilting, poppy numbers infused with Latin musical forms but also, crucially, a potent theatricality. The lyrics are witty and heartfelt and if, in the second half, the songs come a little too thick and fast as a couple of plot developments get hastily resolved, it is a small misstep in a show that in general is a total pleasure.

The story turns on two major plot points: LA-dweller and budding journalist Ana García (Tatianna Córdoba in a wonderful Broadway debut, and looking like a star already) has accepted a place to study writing at Columbia University but is apprehensive about telling her loving but stifling mama (Tony nominee and TV star Justina Machado, glorious) about her move to New York. Meanwhile Ana’s sister, factory leader Estela (Florencia Cuenca, in another fabulous Main Stem bow) has accepted an unrealistic contract to provide a huge number of dresses within a short space of time. In the factory, a team of women pull together to make the order happen, with the shadow of raids and deportation by the government authorities hanging over them. 

These women are beautifully delineated: mature but spicy Pancha (Carla Jimenez), feisty, warm lesbian Prima Fulvia (Sandra Valls), glamorous Rosalí (Jennifer Sanchez) constantly fretting about fitting into the dress for her upcoming wedding, wise-cracking Prima Flaca (Shelby Acosta) and newcomer Itzel (Aline Mayagoitia), worried about her immigrant status. They are a hugely likeable bunch, and book writers Loomer and Benjamin furnish them with a rich mixture of zingers, spikes and genuine feeling. Mayagoitia’s Itzel tears at the heart, even though her plot strand gets slightly abandoned for much of the second half, and Sanchez’s ditzy/neurotic cutie-pie is a gorgeous comic creation, but really you’ll fall in love with every single one of them.

The men are equally wonderful. Mauricio Mendoza is a warm presence as Ana and Estela’s father, navigating his way through living in an all female household, and Mason Reeves is utterly winning as gawky, funny Henry, the young writer whose burgeoning relationship with Ana forms the obligatory love interest. It’s impossible not to care about these people but the script seldom descends to the saccharine. In fact, it has real edge, such as in the way Machado’s engaging but forceful Carmen pokes little jibes about the weight of her daughters, or the points made about the way assimilating into American life can involve painful compromises over one’s cultural identity.

It’s a very pretty show to look at: Arnulfo Maldonado’s sets are vibrantly colourful and prone to sudden, fantastical transformations, such as when a parade of elegant frocks are floated in from above, or massive murals, floral and primal, fly in to dominate the stage. Wilbert Gonzalez and Paloma Young’s costumes marry the humdrum with the exotic and it’s all beautifully lit by Natasha Katz. It all sometimes looks like an explosion in a Desigual warehouse, and frankly I am here for that. John Shivers’s sound design is satisfyingly loud but never overwhelms the humanity, and the brass and rhythm-heavy arrangements (Nadia DiGiallonardo, Huerta, Velez and Rich Mercurio) explode with joyous vitality.

In a crowded season for new musicals, this one bursts through with a rare combination of political relevance, female empowerment, and sheer exhilaration. It’s a terrific couple of hours of theatre in the company of a bunch of women (and their men) that you’ll never forget. Broadway has another must-see.

SMASH

Music by Marc Shaiman 

Lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman

Book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice 

Based on the series created by Theresa Rebeck, produced by Universal Television 

directed by Susan Stroman

Imperial Theatre, New York City – until 22 June 2025

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://smashbroadway.com

“They Just Keep Moving The Line” isn’t only the title of one of Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman’s popular numbers from Smash, the 2012 TV show about mounting a production on the Great White Way, it could equally be the modus operandi of the glossy new musical culled from it and now on Broadway. It’s a highly watchable show, attractively produced and superbly performed, but it can’t seem to decide if it’s sending up, celebrating or castigating Broadway. 

THIS Smash is actually billed as ‘a comedy about a musical’ which actually turns out to be more accurate than you might assume. Until the unexpected finale, the songs are used diegetically, which effect means that as in, say, shows like Cabaret or They’re Playing Our Song, the numbers pop up in the script because the characters are show people who would be singing at this point because they’re onstage or in rehearsal. The music and lyrics aren’t integrated, they’re part of these people’s creative lives. 

How much of a comedy it is depends on how funny you find Rick Elice and Bob Martin’s script, which is packed with Broadway in-jokes and references to very Manhattan-centric locations and traditions (the theatre district restaurant Orso and the Hells Kitchen bakery Schmackary’s are both name-checked, and a director goes to the opening night of a show he’s no longer working on because he’s a Tony voter).  Broadway obsessives will likely love the sensation akin to being beaten around the head with copies of Playbill for a couple of hours, but others may feel bewildered. 

Also, if you’re looking for real wit and credible character development you might be a little disappointed with a jaded director intoning at a moment of crisis “look on the bright side, one day we’ll all be dead” as though it were an inspired zinger. Or when a drink-loving creative proclaims he’s off to immerse himself in “two of the greatest words in the English language…alka…hol”.  At best, Martin and Elice’s book is amusing, seldom flat-out hilarious, although I did enjoy Jacqueline B Arnold’s ultra-glam wonderfully world weary embattled producer referring to theatre influencers as “entitled little shits”. 

Apart from a truly terrific cast of Broadway veterans, who sell the script for everything it’s worth (and then some), the principal joy of Smash on stage is the score. Almost all of these numbers were featured in the TV show (and one of them, the sassy ‘Let’s Be Bad’ even cropped up in the same songwriter’s 2022 tuner Some Like It Hot which, in all honesty, was a considerably better musical). Still, the fact that Wittman and Shaiman so shamelessly recycle their own work gives a certain piquancy to the comic scene in Smash where husband-and-wife creative team (Krysta Rodriguez and John Behlmann, both excellent) are slotting numbers from earlier shows into Bombshell, the Marilyn Monroe musical they’re working on here. The score for Smash, although ruled sadly ineligible for a Best Score nomination in this years Tonys, is a brassy, entrancing collection of songs that suggest the excitement of vintage Broadway with a tinge of pop. Paul Staroba’s large orchestra sounds glorious playing Doug Besterman’s rich orchestrations. 

The voices are all pretty magnificent too, and if some of the numbers, and indeed the performances, are robbed of their full impact by some head-scratching decisions by the book writers, this will be a glorious cast album. Joshua Bergasse’s choreography is stylish and worthy of the Main Stem, and Susan Stroman’s direction keeps everything moving at a decent pace although one wonders if the few laugh-out-loud moments (usually involving Brooks Ashmanksas as the increasingly desperate director or  Kristine Nielsen as a self-aggrandising, creepy acting coach costumed like Igor from Young Frankenstein) are because they’re coming from actors who are comic geniuses. Both Ashmanksas, although giving a performance similar to his joyous turn in The Prom, and Nielsen are on rampantly good form. 

Robyn Hurder is a proper Broadway triple threat, a beam of light on stage, and she is as fabulous as she possibly can be here with the material she’s been given. She plays Ivy Lynn, named the same as the character Megan Hilty famously portrayed on screen, but here used quite differently plot-wise. Hurder dances up a storm, has a world class belt and exudes star quality but feels hemmed-in by a weird plot strand where she goes all ‘Method’ while portraying Marilyn and becomes impossible to work with. The writing just isn’t sharp or clear enough to make this plausible. Sometimes, under Nielsen’s beady eye, she thinks she IS Marilyn, at other moments she has attacks of conscience. It gets confusing, and ultimately pointless, to try and work out which is which. 

Bella Coppola as the associate director who nearly ends up starring in the show suffers similarly from an unbelievable story arc and undistinguished writing, but nearly rips the roof off the theatre with her ‘Let Me Be Your Star’ act one finale. Caroline Bowman as Karen, here a benign understudy rather than an ambitious rival to Ivy, fares better, and delivers the aforementioned ‘They Just Keep Moving The Line’ stunningly. The split focus between three female leads makes it hard to truly empathise with any of them. Elsewhere, the book and direction can’t seem to decide if they’re going for zany or heartfelt (and you can have both, as Stroman’s own original staging of The Producers demonstrated). The show also attempts to make light of one of the characters drinking problem and of Marilyn’s suicide, which feels a little misguided. 

Beowulf Boritt’s scenic designs are colourful and efficient, occasionally ey-popping, and Alejo Vietti’s costumes are often gorgeous. Ken Billington bathes the whole thing in mood-changing, gleaming lights. If the ensemble looks like it could use a few more members, they work their socks off. 

Will Smash be a smash? I honestly have no idea. It may just be too self-referential to appeal to people who don’t live and breathe Broadway. But it’s big, bold and reasonably spectacular. Ashmanksas is probably worth the price of a ticket all by himself though. A decent night out, if not a truly memorable one.

JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN

by Kimberly Belflower

directed by Danya Taymor

Booth Theatre, New York City – until 7 September 2025

running time: 1 hour 40 minutes, no interval 

https://johnproctoristhevillain.com

Rising star director Danya Taymor seems to be cornering the Broadway market when it comes to staging teenage angst and trauma. Hot on the heels of, and just along the street from, her Tony award-winning work on the thrilling Outsiders musical, she’s now directing the New York premiere of Kimberly Belflower’s 2022  response to Arthur Miller’s seminal witch hunt drama The Crucible. At first look, there’s a world of difference between the sweaty, testosterone-fuelled Greasers of late 1960s Tulsa and these vulnerable, funny, sometimes hysterical young women in a 2018 rural Georgia high school, trying to make sense of their increasingly maturing bodies, their relationships with the often less than admirable men they’re in contact with, and ultimately with Miller’s thorny text. But both productions have a bold theatrical flair and demonstrate a deep affection for, and understanding of, the troubled youngsters at their core. 

Having a working knowledge of The Crucible isn’t essential to enjoy John Proctor Is The Villain – Belflower’s script is so punchy and funny, and the characters so vividly drawn and terrifically well acted that it’s impossible not to connect with it – though it would certainly enrich the experience. But it would also underline the differences between Miller’s aims versus those of Belflower: where the former created a thinly veiled allegory of the McCarthy witch hunt trials that scandalised and terrorised 1950s America, the latter’s young women are informed by the #MeToo movement and ignoring their voices is neither right nor fair. This play demands that we listen but is simultaneously a very good time in the theatre.

Bellflower, Taymor and a brilliant young cast led by screen star Sadie Sink (although really it’s a true ensemble piece) capture with almost alarming precision the intensity, idealism and the sense of shifting emotions constantly just under the surface of teenagers sometimes disaffected, sometimes belligerent, sometimes eager facades. The relationships between the characters are superbly fleshed out, you really believe that most of these youngsters have grown up together and, crucially, the gaucheness is never over-played. 

Neither, when it breaks through, is their rage. Interpretive dance is an understandable bête noir for a lot of people, but it’s employed here (powerful movement direction by Tilly Evans-Krueger) in service of a story of young women whose lives are shattering open, and who can no longer toe the line. Lorde’s cynical but rollicking dance banger ‘Green Light’ has never seemed so potent. 

There’s little doubt that Sink’s precocious, slightly unnerving Shelby and Amalia Yoo’s emotionally intense Raelynn whose youthful heart she’s helped to hurt, at least for now, are intended as historical first cousins to Miller’s Abigail,  Mary etc. The same goes for their female classmates (Fina Strazza as high achiever Beth, Maggie Kuntz’s delicate Ivy whose father is a long way from the man she needs him to be, and Morgan Scott’s delightfully open newcomer Nell…all played exquisitely) but Belflower’s text is its own vital beast. Molly Griggs delivers first class work as the slightly neurotic student adviser who, as the young women are quick to point out, is only a couple of years older than themselves.

The men are equally impressive. Nihar Duvvuri, endearingly gawky, and a darkly manipulative Hagan Oliveras, play the immature male classmates with edge and detail. Gabriel Ebert is such a fine actor that the rather obvious placing of his hale and hearty, but motivationally questionable, teacher as stand-in for Miller’s Proctor rankles less than it might. There are a couple of moments where Taymor’s production is a little too emphatically on-the-nose, such as when a split second recollection of past abuse for Shelby prompts an ominous sound effect and the hyper-naturalistic classroom set is plunged into momentary gloom (the scenery is by Amp featuring Teresa L Williams, with sound by Palmer Heffernan and lighting by Natasha Katz). 

Ultimately though, this is exactly the sort of play that every young man should see as an encouragement to do better, and young women will love as it explores what is and isn’t acceptable, and communicates the power of female unity: it infuses this Broadway season with fresh blood and a jolt of youthful energy. It demands that you listen. Plus, on top of all that, John Proctor Is The Villain is wildly entertaining. Sink’s return to Broadway (she was a replacement Annie in the musical’s last Main Stem run at the Palace) is a triumph, and I would especially love to bring my 15-year-old niece to see it.

PURPOSE

by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins 

directed by Phylicia Rashad

Hayes Theatre, New York City – until 31 August 2025

running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval 

https://purposeonbroadway.com

Is Branden Jacob-Jenkins the greatest living American playwright? This cracking family drama, full of bile, fire, and revelations both comic and outrageous, certainly helps stake that claim, especially considered in tandem with last Broadway season’s scorching Appropriate, and the thought-provoking, vaguely supernatural The Comeuppance, given a superb London premiere last year by the Almeida. 

Purpose, tearing up Broadway in a Phylicia Rashad staging that originated at Chicago’s acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre, is a firecracker, examining the toxicity and trauma lurking underneath the benign surface of the Jaspers, a Black family prominent in the Civil Rights movement and now widely respected and feted. It’s told from the point-of-view of younger son  Nazareth (Jon Michael Hill, sublime), whose Jesus-adjacent name carries its own special weight, bringing into the God-fearing family home Aziza, the free-thinking queer New Yorker (Tony winner Kara Young, who could well be in line to bag a second award on the basis of this performance) for whom he has agreed to be a sperm donor. 

That turns out to be almost the least of the Jasper’s family woes as disgraced politician and elder brother Junior (Glenn Davis) is straight out of a prison sentence for embezzling funds just as his jaw-droppingly bitter wife (Alana Arenas, in an incendiary Broadway debut) is about to go in for misfiled tax returns. Meanwhile, patriarch the Reverend Solomon Jasper (Henry Lennix) is possibly going to be slapped with a paternity suit…oh, and it’s his wife Claudine’s birthday. LaTanya Richardson Jackson plays Ma Jasper with just the right combination of grandeur and manipulation: you can’t help but love this woman but you sure wouldn’t want to cross her. 

She turns out to be even more formidable than she looks, but then the wonderful thing about Jacob-Jenkins’s creations is that all six characters have so many layers and colours, whether it’s Davis’s beautifully observed Junior whose pleas of mental health issues initially seems strangely at odds with his swagger, or Solomon taking up bee-keeping in his latter days as though to give some meaning to a life that is not as honourable as it may seem from the outside. 

The aforementioned Arenas can do as much with a withering stare as many actors achieve with ten pages of dialogue, but when she does start to speak, she -and Jacob-Jenkins- take your breath away. Young makes something wonderfully real and touching out of unwitting interloper Aziza’s journey from star-struck awe at being in the home of a Civil Rights hero to baffled disillusionment. Hill, Davis and Lennix suggest with real sensitivity, as well as marvellous comic timing, a certain aimlessness in the lives of those directly affected by great sociopolitical battles fought but now left with more insidious demons to conquer. 

Jacob-Jenkins’s dialogue just crackles: absolutely hilarious but shot through with truth and fury. Richardson Jackson’s Claudine gets a speech about motherhood near the play’s conclusion that forces one to reconsider some of one’s earlier opinions about her complex character, and she delivers it with extraordinary conviction. 

Rashad’s assured direction means that even an entirely static, but fabulously written, dinner party scene is totally riveting and clear: instead of being frustrated at not catching every nuance and facial expression, you find yourself leaning in. The second half is slightly too long, and I suspect that the direct address to the audience would become tiresome if performed by somebody less engaging than Hill. He’s the conduit between the audience and his crazier-than-they-look family, and he’s irresistible. 

If not quite perfect, this is still American drama at very near its absolute finest. It channels massive themes through the squabbles, foibles and misdemeanours of a family that, even if not immediately relatable, are consistently credible, much of the writing is sensational, and the examination of the binds of family is cast in a sizzling new light. 

This Steppenwolf production reeks of quality and detail, from the snow falling outside the windows of Todd Rosenthal’s deluxe but tellingly  antiseptic family home seating to Dede Ayite’s costumes and Amith Chandrashaker’s time-conveying lighting, to the perfectly judged pace. Given the London stage acclaim for the aforementioned Appropriate and The Comeuppance as well as the same writer’s bonkers-ly brilliant An Octoroon, it’s likely that Purpose will end up in British theatres at some point, but it may not have the same authenticity as it does here. 

If you thrilled to Tracy Letts’s August: Osage Country, another meaty tragicomedy that saw a family imploding around the dinner table, and which also originated at the same Chicago theatrical powerhouse, the chances are that you will love this. If you’re in NYC this summer, this is so worth catching if you’re after something provocative and intelligent but compulsively entertaining, plus the opportunity to see a sextet of fine African American actors at the very top of their game. As Nazareth rightly says to the audience in the slipstream of yet another fiery Jasper family revelation: “buckle up!”