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High anxiety: Collapse - Riverside Studios

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It’s a brave or maybe slightly provocative production to use Hammersmith Bridge on their artwork for a show called Collapse, which is about how everything collapses—poorly maintained bridges, relationships, and jobs. Nothing works. That’s probably too close to home for Hammersmith residents stuck with a magnificently listed and useless bridge on their front door. It gets even weirder when you realise the piece is staged in what looks like a meeting room with a bar. However, keeping things together in the most unlikely of circumstances is at the heart of Allison Moore's witty and engaging four-hander, which is currently having a limited engagement at Riverside Studios . The piece opens with Hannah (Emma Haines) about to get an injection from her husband (Keenan Heinzelmann). They’re struggling for a baby, and he’s struggling to get out of bed. But he managed to give her a shot of hormones before she started worrying about the rest of the day. She’s unsure she will keep her job with ...

Theatre: Musical of Musicals

Tuesday night I caught The Musical of Musicals which is playing at the Sound Theatre (part of that Swiss Building where those hideous chiming things happen on the hour in Leicester Square). I understand that at some point the building will be demolished, which will be a victory for decent architecture. Having said all that, the theatre is not a bad space. Even better was this production.

If you like your musical theatre (and hey who doesn't as what's there not to like??) then this show offers the same story about a girl who can't pay the rent, in the five different styles: Rodgers and Hammerstein, Sondheim, Jerry Hermann, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Kander and Ebb.

The great thing about the show is even if the in-jokes sail over your head, the songs and the performances were good enough to stand on their own. While the Lloyd Webber segment managed to show how much the composer loves / copies / borrows from other composers, my favourite was the Kander and Ebb segment where everyone spoke in a foreign language and had dirty sex (a la Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spiderwoman).

Jerry Hermann's parody seemed particularly apt after seeing his show "Mack and Mabel"… Now there's a composer who writes for dopey showgirls in gooey gowns… It reinforced that making your cast look less glamorous by playing their own instruments is probably not a good idea in a Hermann show.

It finishes this week and deserves to have another run…

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