Rona Kelly - Page 8

It's an odd thing to say that one of my favourite musical songs is one which makes me cry. Even odder, in fact, that it's one which I couldn't bear to listen to for almost a year...

Literally translated, La Cage aux Folles means 'the cage of mad women'. This seems an apt description for the characters and audience alike in Martin Connor's latest production. Funny and flirty, hysteria sweeps through the women and men in attendance and no doubt will the country, as the musical tours the UK for the first time.

Billed as the 'little theatre with big ideas', The Hope Theatre is a transformative space. This year alone, it's been everything from a hospital waiting room to a post-apocalyptic bunker. Audiences at The Wild Party will leave amazed not just at how the space transforms, but the actors. Taking on sixteen parts between them, Joey Akubeze and Anna Clarke are perfect partners in rhyme in this sexy and stylized production from Mingled Yarn.

Jukebox musicals seem to be as popular as ever in the West End, using familiar songs to tell stories on stage. Mamma Mia! is coming close to two decades in London, and newcomers like Motown the Musical are extending their runs. With audiences returning year after year, there is unquestionably an audience for ABBA. Licensed to Ill raises a question which a different band faced: is there an audience for the Beastie Boys? When I first heard there was a musical about this hip-hop group, I'll admit I questioned whether there was an audience for the show itself. Well, 'Ch-Check It Out': there is. This evolution of the Beastie Boys is a revolution for the London stage and storytelling.

Over the next six years, the RSC aims to produce every single Shakespeare play. Its 2016 season features Cymbeline, one of the lesser known but not lesser performed plays; this production is a transfer from Stratford-Upon-Avon, and there have been two productions at Shakespeare's Globe this year alone. Why the sudden revival? A fool boasts 'Britain is a world by itself' (and no, I don't mean Nigel Farage). In a post-Brexit Britain, these words ring truer than ever before in this bold production, which ironically seems to be lacking a sense of unity and cohesion too.