A Sunday of Sondheim. Review by Barbara Lewis. Max Eade, nominally the director, who tells us he is really just the organiser, says he wanted this small-scale performance in the intimate space of the Union Theatre to be imperfect; a matter of “scribbles on a page”.
music
Jo The Little Woman Musical. Review by Barbara Lewis. Jo The Little Women Musical is about pursuing your passion no matter what. It’s a mantra the show’s three writers have lived by. They met as theatre school students in California three decades ago when they first began work on turning Louise May Alcott’s classic into a musical.
Prom 55. Review by Julia Pascal. Nelsons led his orchestra in such a way as to suggest that this was also the premiere for Stravinsky, Gershwin and Ravel.
Poetry review – LET HIM BRING A SHRUBBE: Edmund Prestwich takes a close and appreciative look at Katharine Towers’ collection which draws on the life & music of composer Gerald Finzi
Trouble in Tahiti. Review by Barbara Lewis. Opera typically is the medium for extraordinary emotion on a grand scale. The great straddler of genres Bernstein makes it the vehicle to explore the depressing ordinariness of the countless millions who can’t find their way back to the extraordinary emotion they once felt.
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.
Candide, WNO. Review by Barbara Lewis. Too messy, too long, too anti-Semitic, too misogynistic: there are many reasons to avoid Bernstein’s Candide. And yet, director James Bonas and the Welsh National Opera bravely make a powerful case for staging this attack on the depravity of those in power and the futility of war.
Poetry review – HAIL SISTERS OF THE REVOLUTION: Kelly Davis admires Caroline Gilfillan’s tribute to a 1970s band of freedom fighters
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.
Poetry review – END OF SEASON: Alwyn Marriage is charmed by both content and substance of Clare Best’s beautifully produced chapbook
Shantify. Review by Barbara Lewis. For anyone who thought the modern wave of enthusiasm for fishing songs had crested with the lockdown singing postman, “Shantify”, uttered in an awed stage whisper, is here to prove them wrong.
By Barbara Lewis • dance, music, musicals, performance, theatre, year 2026 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, musicals, performance, theatre