Genre: Musical Theatre
Review: Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
A salutary reminder of how a great musical talent and collaboration started
Review: We Are In Time
A heart jumping exploration of transplants with a majesty of the music at its heart and a subtle theatricality expanding it all
Review: Blood Brothers
The blend of definitive and new cast members in a recent classic has overwhelming impact: as story, as lyric fable, as terrible moral for these distracted times.
Review: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
The three lead actors, divas and a superb cast give this production its beating pink heart.
Review: What Girls Are Made Of
Cora Bissett’s set the bar thrillingly high for a new genre. Who could follow her?
Review: Voldemort and the Teenage Hogwarts Musical Parody
Voldemort the Musical Parody is back, funnier and slicker with all our favourite characters and songs.
Review: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
It couldn’t be done any better and puts several touring shows to shame.
Review: Unfortunate: The Untold Story of Ursula the Sea Witch
a stunning 70 minutes of a romp through a traditional fairy tale, but with very edgy presentation.
Review: Weegie Hink Ae That? Presents Nae Bother
Hilarious night with 4 guys, 2 guitars and a Casio.
Review: Frisky and Mannish: Poplab
An hour inside Frisky & Mannish’’s ‘Poplab’ is a complete crowd-pleasing riot. Feel-good vibes only!
Review: Baby Wants Candy: The Completely Improvised Full Band Musical
A fully improvised live musical in an hour
Review: Gilbert and Sullivan’s Improbable New Musical : Less Miserables
Dazzling ditties in a tale with a twist
Review: Fiver
An enchanting speed-read of our connectedness, a reminder that a fiver can change your life. Irresistible.
Review: Little Miss Sunshine
It’s a quiet heartbreaker, with stoicism and love the only answers. Do see it.
Review: My Left Right Foot The Musical
An Outrageous and Genius Explosion of What Inclusion Actually Means in the Arts Carried on the Heroic Chariot of Musical Theatre
Review: Return to the Forbidden Planet
It’s a must-see. Whatever warp factors you have to go through.
Review: The Dark Carnival
An underground plot with other worldly twists and live turns in a carnival of music and stories that has massive over ground appeal
Review: Hole
Wow drama, the original Greek tragoidia. It invokes the same powers, almost the same gods.
Review: Madagascar The Musical
Highly Recommended for monkeys and lemurs of all ages – quite apart from lions, zebras, hippos and giraffes.
Review: Dirty Dancing
There’s a fitting heart-warming climax to a dream of production. And a surprise to those who think they know the film.
Review: Mao That’s What I Call Music!
Des Kapital presents a strange brew of pop karaoke and Communist China
Review: The Mould That Changed the World
A creative attempt to develop a new musical that integrates a public health message within an interesting, true story.
Review: We’ve Got Each Other
The Bon Jovi Musical that has it all, except everything that is a tour de force, with lights, an incredible Sir Jon sound track and a narrator that brings it all together without the glitz and aplomb but all the flair.
Review: 89 Nights: An Original Musical
An exciting, fast-paced new musical - creatively staged using minimal set.
Review: A Fair Tale About a Fairy Trade
A brave attempt to tackle a serious issue, from an ambitious, enthusiastic and passionate young company.
Review: A Man’s A Man
Celebrate the life and death of the acclaimed poet Robert Burns, with marvelous music and daring prose
Review: Timpson The Musical
A pair of star-crossed lovers out to out-invent their foe, one Keypulet, the other Montashoe.
Review: A Gallant Life
An engaging and memorable performance, recounting motor-racing champion Muriel Thompson’s remarkable First World War experiences.
Review: Voldemort and the Teenage Hogwarts Musical Parody
An hour of delightful escapism for muggles, witches and wizards
Review: Holy Moses
A charming retelling of the Moses story through two young people who may win the prize for show furthest travelled and certainly tell this tale with confidence.
Review: The Red Shoes
Sizzling reimagining of the Hans Christian Anderson tale in the context of Weimar Germany that brims full of artistic value
Review: When You Fall Down: The Buster Keaton Story
A creative one-man musical, featuring songs, slapstick, dance and film
Review: Pirates Revisited
A highly enjoyable, beautifully sung, fast-paced and entertaining production
Review: Summer Holiday
Stunning Ray Quinn and ensemble work their bobby-socks off with notable support from Rob Wicks and his band. Give No. 9 a proper MOT and it’ll strike gold too.
Review: Showstopper: The Improvised Musical
An improvised musical with a bizarre plot that they somehow manage to pull off
Review: Legally Blonde
You must see this. Apart from the heroic production itself, if there’s one outstanding performer it has to be Lucie Jones with Rita Simons’ superb support. Jones' voice is stunning, stratospheric, above all characterful.
Review: The Adventures of Robin Hood
A Plethora of Swashbuckling Heroes and Lovable Rogues in this endearing rendition of Robin Hood
Review: Crazy For You
This is a blast of the purest kind. You have to see it. In terms of talent on display worked to a supreme ensemble pitch, this is quite simply the most stunning pure musical I’ve seen this year.
Review: Into the Woods
This is an outstanding first-class revival, but more, it’s intimate knowing and innocent at the same time: it sports a residual wisdom beyond its brief.
Review: Whaddya Know – We’re In Love!
There’s first-class musical entertainment here, crouched under the disguise of a schoolboy plot. Irresistible.
Review: Blaas (Blow)
Tender, otherworldly, explorative and extraordinary, this is an exquisite show that is more than worth the trip out of town.
Review: Son of a Preacher Man
Son of a Preacher man has real potential. It’s easily more than a cut above a jukebox musical, and Revel-Horwood’s work particularly coupled with Herbert’s musical arrangements is exemplary. As is the marvellous and marvellously hard-working ensemble.
Review: Flashdance
It’s Joanne Clifton’s night. She lives Alex, dangerously pushing every routine with an extravagance, a hunger, sexiness and raw power that makes it one of the most memorable dance performances in a musical I’ve ever seen.
Review: Flashdance
Review: Medea Electronica
Like the recent Suppliants, in a very different way, Medea Electronica asks just what we mean by Greek tragedy, what our conceptions of drama without music are. An essential experience.
Review: The Suppliant Women
In one of the most radical productions ever mounted of Aeschylus indeed any Greek tragedy we’re literally taken to its roots: as in Greece, a community chorus of fifty, twenty-one of them the suppliant women of the play’s title. In this outstanding production, everything to resurrect this astonishing vision has been invoked.
Review: Saint George and the Dragon
This is an unsettling, unsettled play. Creating its own world, it asks something of substance no-one else is quite doing – not even Rory Mullarkey previously in The Wolf From the Door. His adaptation of the Oresteia for the Globe has after all come between. It’ll be intriguing to see where this big-boned, big-themed dramatist will venture next.
Review: Dreamboats and Petticoats
It’s back again. Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran’s nine-year dream Dreamboats and Petticoats returns to Theatre Royal, Brighton with a cast and creatives deserving high praise for creating the lightest touch out of slight narrative. Those who’ve seen it should start marvelling at the musicianship, and those who haven’t will increasingly join in.
Review: Follies
It took a visit into past and pastiche to propel Sondheim’s language into a modernity no-one foresaw. This is the finest realisation of this Janus-faced masterpiece, ringing with towering performances: Staunton, Bennett, Dee, Quast and Forbes simply at the head. This must be the definitive production.
Review: Fiddler on the Roof
Evans allows this musical theatre to breathe on his own big-hearted terms whilst allowing the bones to show, as it does with a breath-taking diminuendo that seems to raise and settle the dust of emigration as we watch. For sheer penetration, heart and balance it’s as definitive as we’re likely to see for many years.
Review: The Wedding Singer
This is an outstandingly-conceived show, generous to cast and audience alike, superbly choreographed and performed in what might seem challenging spaces. The last blast of summer’s breath: enjoy.
Review: Prom Kween
Come shimmy your sequined ball gown sister this is an hour of supercharged feel good musical fun -with a heart.
Review: La Cage aux Folles
La Cage aux Folles one might say comes home to Brighton’s Theatre Royal in this revival by Bill Kenwright Productions directed by Martin Connor. There’s no mystery why Brighton gets two weeks of this.
Review: Wall
An enthusiastic musical which promises to view the world from an alt left American perspective given current world posturing
Review: Committee
This edgy new development, faithful to one incident, marks a more than worthwhile variation on such larger works as London Road. It’s more illuminating than the history it sheds music on.
Review: Gilbert and Sullivan’s Improbable New Musical : The Fringe Lozenge
A magic lozenge ensures all’s well at the end in the Fringe for four G&S hopefuls.
Review: All or Nothing
Carol Harrison’s written the band proud and plangent; her split hero strategies work to make this one of the best possible storylines of a British band, given hell-bent Marriott burning his talent at both ends, just like the decade.
Review: The Mikado
This Mikado not only redefines but rescues the operetta from an edgy oblivion, where we could never lose the melodies, yet increasingly hesitate to stage the work. It’s back.
