Franco Milazzo

It’s difficult to say at which exact point during Susie Wang’s Burnt Toast I noticed that my jaw had dropped and stayed dropped. If Sarah Kane’s Blasted had been set in Fawlty Towers, it may have turned out something like this.

Walking into the dimly lit room in a black suit and glittery top, David Rhodes somewhat resembles a funereal mirrorball. 

“Fasten your seatbelts!” cries Salty Brine at the top of the show, “it’s going to be a bumpy ride!” He’s not wrong: watching him at work is like standing in the middle of a four-way road junction and being smashed over and over by cars from every direction. In a good way.

Would you spend over seven hours with a hundred other people in the same room playing and watching a video game where donkeys attempt to overthrow their employers? Presented as part of London Games Festival‘s side events programme, asses.masses is an unusual experience that could well hold the key to theatre’s future.

And so another stage-to-screen musical rolls into town. Based on the only adult-rated film to win an Oscar for Best Picture, Midnight Cowboy is about the friendship between male prostitute Joe Buck and con man Rico “Ratso” Rizzo in 1960s New York.

Looking at the rise and fall of two powerful Chinese women through the vague lens of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House probably sounded good on paper. It’s a shame then that Shanghai Dolls fails to deliver on almost every front.

The magician formerly known as Dynamo and now more formally as Steven Frayne steps away from his ex-persona to embrace a new start.

Unlike the object it is named after, Container studiously avoids fripperies like classical forms and categorisation. With nods to immigration, social media, California fires and the ongoing deluge of news from every angle, this is a work that merrily crosses thematic boundaries like a jaywalker after a fun night out.

Nostalgia might not be what it used to be but it hasn’t stopped the Faulty Towers Dining Experience rolling on and on for over 13 years in the UK and even longer in its native Australia. 

For fans of cabaret spectaculars Limbo and Cantina, Sabrage from Scott Maidment's Strut and Fret company is a welcome return to UK shores. Many who missed those shows are now discovering his fiery adult flavour of big top action that immerses the audience in sexy circus antics and jaw-dropping variety acts.

Australian masters of variety extravaganzas Strut & Fret return to the UK with their unashamedly adult and savagely sexy new show Sabrage. Just don’t forget the first rule of cabaret.

Jonathan Maitland’s portrayal starts when Wilko Johnson at the height of his fame has the bad luck to be marked for death both on screen and off. As Game of Thrones’ mute executioner who lops off Eddard Stark's head, he ends up on Arya Stark's infamous list; months later, he’s given the worst possible news: a tumour in his pancreas meant that Johnson had less than a year left to live.

With fifteen years experience as a Michael Jackson impersonator and spending two hours in the make-up chair every night getting ready, you can’t fault CJ (Craig Harrison) for commitment.

Nick Hyde’s tragicomic Double Act uses clowning and comedy to tell the story of a young man (played by Hyde and Oliver Maynard in white face paint) who wakes up and sets off to kill himself somewhere on the South Coast. He has a few things, though, to tick off his list before he throws himself off a cliff.

One thought rattled around my head all night while watching this radical take on Paradise Lost: how would God react to all of this? Would Jehovah, The Almighty, Him Up There be more or less angry than he was at the original text? Would He raise a solitary finger and cast lightning down on the venue? Or are we so close to the end times that He would just blow out his cheeks and twiddle His thumbs?

Quite where The Tindersticks fit into the modern era is a bit of a mystery. The latest tour brings this band to the Royal Albert Hall for a show that celebrates their recent successes and their mellifluous back catalogue.

Turning one of the world’s most famous children’s works into a lively stage adventure populated with quirky characters and illustrated by marvellous sights sounds like a money-making machine. So how does this production get it so wrong?

It may have lacked the star power seen in previous shows but the Royal Albert Hall’s latest entry in their Films In Concert events was a night punctuated by laughter, tears and raw emotion. 

We speak to Eddy Hackett of immersive theatre specialists The Lost Estate about the jazz-infused 58th Street and its inspiration Belle Livingstone.