Franco Milazzo - Page 2

Eighty dates into Bianca Del Rio’s Dead Inside tour, the sweary New Orleans-born comedian is still very much alive and kicking. The artist formally known as Roy R. Haylock is an insult comic whose outsized personality and foghorn voice easily fills the capacious Eventim – but does her latest show work on this side of the pond?

Asi Wind brings his latest show Incredibly Human to Underbelly Soho this week and raises eyebrows, though not always in appreciation.

You wait all your life for someone to come up with an immersive show which blends magical and cocktails and suddenly London has two. What to do?

Whatever you do, don’t ignore the signs. The posters outside the auditorium alerting audiences to the “very loud music” are not being overly cautious. Quite the opposite. With its ear-splitting drums and a rumbling bass that rolls across the room juddering through our bodies, this Giselle’s effect relies as much on sound as the dancing.

With a Jazz Age theme and plenty of cabaret, cocktails and close-up magic, London’s latest slab of immersive fun Rhythm & Ruse opens at The Vaults.

Have you ever invited a guest to your own party and then seen them totally upstage you? If so, spare some sympathy for Kirill Richter who presented his new work The Sands Of Time alongside the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan for one night only at the London Coliseum.

Featuring a press night appearance from creator Richard O’Brien and Jason Donovan as the suspender-donning scientist Frank N. Furter, The Rocky Horror Show returns to the West End. The raucous homage to the films and music of the 1950s as seen through a pansexual lens lays a claim to being the UK’s most popular musical.

Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of American metal band Goatwhore, Stephin Merritt and his Magnetic Fields bandmates arrived in London last weekend to celebrate the 25th anniversary of genre-blending 69 Love Songs.

Presented as a side-by-side narrative by the Shenzen Opera and Dance company, Wing Chun tells the story of kung fu grandmaster and Bruce Lee mentor Yip Man as well as that of a film crew making a movie about his life.

Who wouldn’t want to spend a night with Janis Joplin? Despite barely hitting the charts on this side of the pond, the American singer still symbolises the best (and worst) of the Sixties over fifty years before she joined the 27 Club. Not that you would know from this show.

As shown in Amber Jarman-Crainey’s Bound (stylised as B O U N D), talking to the dead is not solely the preserve of spiritualists and mediums. Her immersive meditation on grief manifests in the form of nine storylines where the living pour their hearts to those who have passed.

It’s not every show that hands out party poppers as you go in. Aimed at young audiences, Mr Punch At The Opera whips together the iconic hand-puppets with a musical amuse-bouche.

Patrick Barlow’s parody The 39 Steps creaks and groans in places but still has plenty of laughs. Wrapped around the central character of Richard Hannay, the story unfurls as we see him accused of murder, run from the police and then defeat a foreign cabal of spies. 

Opera Holland Park close out another acclaimed season with a rollicking Yeomen Of The Guard.

There’s a singular simplicity in Madama Butterfly that draws in audiences year after year, decade by decade like moths to a flame: a man loves and leaves a woman; she gives up everything for him. With a staging that mirrors that bare but powerful concept, Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s 2002 production returns again to Covent Garden with more than a patina of authenticity.

Feeling like the wildest circus party in town, Fuerza Bruta (Spanish for “brute force”) return to the Roundhouse with their new show Aven.

It would be difficult to describe Adam Perchard as some shy, self-effacing wallflower. They follow up Bunburying (The Importance of Being Dr Adam Perchard) with another autobiographical show, this time with composer Richard Thomas, co-creator of Jerry Springer: The Opera.

And here we go again: the London Clown Festival returns for another run of bizarre, brilliant and occasionally bonkers shows until 26 July.

Has opera found its own Ivo van Hove? Jan Philipp Gloger’s radical production of Così fan tutte continues until 10 July.

Fronted by some fresh faces, Jonathan Kent’s cinematic take on the Puccini masterwork Tosca returns for its seventeenth run at Covent Garden.