Stiletto. Review by Barbara Lewis. On average 5,000 boys were castrated every year in 18th-century Italy in a desperate attempt by poor families to change their fortunes. They nearly always managed only to add tragedy to their misery.
musicals
Cry-Baby, The Musical. Review by Barbara Lewis. “Cry-Baby” may be set in 1950s Baltimore, but lyrics that at once celebrate and satirise the democratic checks and balances of the “nifty country” that is the United States of America make it tailor-made as a tonic for our times.
Pirates of Penzance. Review by Barbara Lewis. Sasha Regan’s all male operetta productions faithfully capture the febrile atmosphere of student interpretations in which adolescent boys, with raging hormones, play all the parts male and female, compounding the absurdity of Gilbert and Sullivan’s plots.
Why Am I So Single?! Review by Barbara Lewis. From Jane Austen to “Friends,” the pursuit of heterosexual love has been the goal of romantic comedy. Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, the makers of the international musical hit “SIX,” have turned that on its head with a musical comedy that celebrates “love friendship” between a non-binary man and a woman.
Stephen Sondheim Society. Review by Barbara Lewis. The SSSSPOTY, as it is known in Sondheim circles, technically is a competition, but, like Bonnie Langford, compere of this year’s 16th edition, you may prefer to see it as a celebration.
Your Lie in April. Review by Barbara Lewis. In the fantasy world of “Your Lie in April”, based on a Japanese manga, adapted into a television series, a film, and now brought to London’s West End, even football is relegated to a poor second to musical prowess when it comes to winning teenage hearts.
Death Note, The Musical in Concert. Review by Barbara Lewis. The Japanese manga Death Note has sold more than 30 million copies, making it one of the best-selling mangas yet. Whether the musical version can be as successful in our straitened times remains to be seen. Judging by the London run, it’s conceivable.
Annie Get Your Gun. Review by Barbara Lewis. Irving Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business” is the perfect opening for a show and especially for the inaugural show at the Lavender Theatre on Epsom Downs.
The Mikado, Wilton’s Music Hall. Review by Barbara Lewis. In 1885, when the Mikado began delighting audiences, it was expedient to set the splendidly silly light opera in Japan to give it maximum freedom to satirise British institutions. Director Sasha Regan travels in time not space to send up a 1950s public school camping trip, in its way as exotic as imperial Japan.
Gypsy, The Mill at Sonning. Review by Barbara Lewis. “Mothers out!” roars the vaudeville maestro Uncle Jocky at the start of what has been fondly dubbed “the mother of all musicals”. But Gypsy Rose Lee is one mother who is staying right beside the daughters she is determined to thrust on the stage for the career she might have had had she not been born too soon or started too late.
Love Goddess. Review by Barbara Lewis. Rita Hayworth was considered one of the most beautiful women of her day, was Fred Astaire’s favourite dance partner, and was married five times, including to Orson Welles, the man she is believed to have truly loved. She also suffered from Alzheimer’s for two decades before being diagnosed.
Chicago. Review by Barbara Lewis. Born of a rift between French and Dutch speakers in the Belgian city of Leuven, Louvain-la-Neuve, one of Europe’s youngest cities, dates back to 1971 and has a history of creating new traditions.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, musicals, theatre • Tags: Barbara Lewis, musicals, theatre