Review: MONARCH THEATRE, Park RowJuly 20, 2023Almost as secretive and hidden away as the Batcave, Soho’s Park Row is a restaurant dedicated to the Caped Crusader. At its heart lies Monarch Theatre, an immersive dining experience which combines projections, magic and a sumptuous tasting menu.
Review: BALLET FLAMENCO SARA BARAS: ALMA, Sadler's WellsJuly 6, 2023“I am the soul that dances chainless. I am the moon’s insatiable dream. I am a witness in life’s shadow…there is no need to tell you that this is my flamenco heart which has a bolero soul.” And with this, Alma's opening speech lays bare the poetic nature of this legendary flamenco dancer’s highly dynamic and deeply hypnotic shows.
Review: CRAZY FOR YOU, Gillian Lynne TheatreJuly 3, 2023With a plot packed with clichés that are older than the hills and gags of pure corn which may be even older, it’s just as well that Crazy For You is an utterly spectacular feast for the eyes and ears.
Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Opera Holland ParkJuly 3, 2023With June being a prime time to get hitched, now should be as good as any time to dig up and put on stage Felix Mendelssohn’s 1842 incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a score which features the famous Wedding March. Despite the play’s themes, this melding of classical sound and drama from historical performance ensemble Figure is from magical.
Review: A STRANGE LOOP, Barbican TheatreJune 30, 2023Hot off Broadway with a Best Musical Tony and a Pulitzer Prize for its script, Michael R Jackson’s A Strange Loop comes to London for a summer run at The Barbican.
Review: RE-MEMBER ME, Hampstead TheatreJune 1, 2023Athletes have the Olympics. Chefs have Michelin stars. Actors have Hamlet. Citius, altius, fortius, Danish. In his one-man show Re-member Me (co-devised and directed by Jan Willem Van Den Bosch), Dickie Beau ponders death, mortality and legacy but not in a morbid way; it’s less a shoegazing mope and mumble about whether “to be or not to be”, more a defiant exploration of what it is “to be and not to be”.
Review: SMITE: AN IMMERSIVE MURDER MYSTERY, CRYPTMay 27, 2023Few words grab the attention like murder. And few genres outside immersive theatre can pull you physically into a specific time and place. So why aren’t there more immersive murder productions like this one?
Review: DEAD ON TIME - A MOVING MURDER MYSTERY, Belmond TrainsMay 23, 2023It’s 1951 and, as the nation prepares itself for the Festival of Britain, a heinous crime has been committed. After a murder most foul, ten suspects, a killer hiding in plain sight and around two hundred passengers-cum-amateur detectives find themselves all aboard the same train. It’s fair to say that Dead On Time knows how to set a scene even before we step aboard.
Review: ONCE ON THIS ISLAND, Regent's Park Open Air TheatreMay 17, 2023A modern musical fairytale, Once On This Island is Romeo and Juliet set in the French Antilles with the two lovers on opposite sides of a race and class divide. Regent’s Park Theatre opens its 2023 season with a humdinger of a revival, a real foot-stomper that rings in the ears long after the last song finishes.
Review: PORCA MISERIA, Barbican TheatreMay 15, 2023Sometimes show titles are spot-on perfect, albeit unintentionally. Porca Miseria is, in the Italian vernacular, an expression of frustration, something I would use when losing a cufflink or after sitting through a three hour-plus triptych of dance works that is, in the English vernacular, patently bobbins.