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Franco Milazzo - Page 10

Franco Milazzo

The Daily Beast were kind enough to call me "a man with an encyclopedic knowledge of the city’s underground culture" and I have been editing/reviewing stage productions since 2010 for some of London's biggest websites covering theatre, opera, dance, cabaret, immersive and everything in between.






Review: MONARCH THEATRE, Park Row
Review: MONARCH THEATRE, Park Row
July 20, 2023

Almost 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 Wells
Review: BALLET FLAMENCO SARA BARAS: ALMA, Sadler's Wells
July 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 Theatre
Review: CRAZY FOR YOU, Gillian Lynne Theatre
July 3, 2023

With 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 Park
Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Opera Holland Park
July 3, 2023

With 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 Theatre
Review: A STRANGE LOOP, Barbican Theatre
June 30, 2023

Hot 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: TARANTINO LIVE: FORCE FOX FIVE AND THE TYRANNY OF EVIL MEN, Riverside Studios
Review: TARANTINO LIVE: FORCE FOX FIVE AND THE TYRANNY OF EVIL MEN, Riverside Studios
June 28, 2023

Before DC, Marvel and Spider-Man cottoned onto the potential of cinematic crossovers, Off The Record created arguably the most intriguing of them of all: a staged multiverse drawn from Quentin Tarantino films which is as sweary, gory and fun as one would expect.

Review: WE WILL ROCK YOU, London Coliseum
Review: WE WILL ROCK YOU, London Coliseum
June 7, 2023

Whether We Will Rock You will attract the attention of Trading Standards is unknown but rarely has a show been so poorly named.

Review: THE TIGER LILLIES: FROM THE CIRCUS TO THE CEMETERY, Cadogan Hall
Review: THE TIGER LILLIES: FROM THE CIRCUS TO THE CEMETERY, Cadogan Hall
June 6, 2023

Going by this latest show, the Tiger Lillies are still very much kicking against the pricks, still ploughing their own particular furrow, and still staying artistically relevant.

Review: GIFFORDS CIRCUS: LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS, Chiswick House and Gardens
Review: GIFFORDS CIRCUS: LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS, Chiswick House and Gardens
June 3, 2023

National treasures Giffords Circus return for their annual tour of village greens and stately homes with another show, another theme and, it appears to be, another hit.

Review: RE-MEMBER ME, Hampstead Theatre
Review: RE-MEMBER ME, Hampstead Theatre
June 1, 2023

Athletes 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: HEAD FIRST ACROBATS: GODZ AND ARRR WE THERE YET?!, Brighton Fringe Spiegeltent
Review: HEAD FIRST ACROBATS: GODZ AND ARRR WE THERE YET?!, Brighton Fringe Spiegeltent
May 30, 2023

Nudity, profanity and hilarity: Head First Acrobats present a new holy trinity in Godz as well as an exciting children's show in Arrr We There Yet?!

Review: SMITE: AN IMMERSIVE MURDER MYSTERY, CRYPT
Review: SMITE: AN IMMERSIVE MURDER MYSTERY, CRYPT
May 27, 2023

Few 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: CHAILLOT – THEÂTRE NATIONAL DE LA DANSE/RACHID OURAMDANE'S CORPS EXTRÊMES, Sadler's Wells
Review: CHAILLOT – THEÂTRE NATIONAL DE LA DANSE/RACHID OURAMDANE'S CORPS EXTRÊMES, Sadler's Wells
May 24, 2023

Most people going to the theatre will take public transport or their own car. In September 2021, Nathan Paulin took a 600-metre walk to Chaillot - Paris’ Théâtre National De La Danse on a slackline 70 metres above the Seine.

Review: DEAD ON TIME - A MOVING MURDER MYSTERY, Belmond Trains
Review: DEAD ON TIME - A MOVING MURDER MYSTERY, Belmond Trains
May 23, 2023

It’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 Theatre
Review: ONCE ON THIS ISLAND, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre
May 17, 2023

A 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 Theatre
Review: PORCA MISERIA, Barbican Theatre
May 15, 2023

Sometimes 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.

Review: JEFF WAYNE'S MUSICAL VERSION OF THE WAR OF THE WORLDS: THE IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE, Old Metal Exchange
Review: JEFF WAYNE'S MUSICAL VERSION OF THE WAR OF THE WORLDS: THE IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE, Old Metal Exchange
May 3, 2023

Ulla! Martians, music and mayhem: who could ask for more from an immersive show? Layered Reality has taken HG Wells classic story, scored It with Jeff Wayne’s much-loved album, added some very effective VR and placed it inside a dedicated space in the City of London.

Review: SYMPHONY OF SORROWFUL SONGS (SYMPHONY NO. 3 OP. 36), London Coliseum
Review: SYMPHONY OF SORROWFUL SONGS (SYMPHONY NO. 3 OP. 36), London Coliseum
April 29, 2023

Featuring a work which doesn’t even last an hour, this was never going to be an ordinary evening for the English National Opera but, even from the off, history was being written.

Review: NEDERLAND DANS THEATER-NDT1: GABRIELA CARRIZO/JIŘÍ KYLIÁN/CRYSTAL PITE AND SIMON MCBURNEY, Sadler's Wells
Review: NEDERLAND DANS THEATER-NDT1: GABRIELA CARRIZO/JIŘÍ KYLIÁN/CRYSTAL PITE AND SIMON MCBURNEY, Sadler's Wells
April 20, 2023

Nederland Dans Theater, one of the premiere dance venues in Europe, makes its first return to Sadler's Wells since 2018 bringing together three very different pieces which go from the dream-like to the very real and heart-rending.

Review: IMMERSIVE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, CRYPT
Review: IMMERSIVE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, CRYPT
April 19, 2023

Midnight Circle Theatre finally gets an opening night.



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