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Eyes, hair, mouth: Darkie Armo Girl at Finborough Theatre

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Darkie Armo Girl, Karine Bedrossian’s electrifying one-woman show, commands attention from the moment it begins. First performed in 2022 and revived last year, it now returns for extra performance and it's an event not to miss. The show takes you through the thrills and horrors of a hectic life. She struts, shimmies, and taunts while revealing some horrific truths. She is such an irresistible storyteller that you find yourself hooked. The story is one of fame, glamour, abuse, self-harm, and suicide. If that subject matter doesn't sound like your cup of tea, you haven't seen it delivered with such high energy and provocation. It's currently at the Finborough Theatre . The show's title refers to a slur a popular girl at school once called her. Her ancestry is Armenian, and her parents were from Cyprus, where they fled the civil war and arrived in the UK with nothing. Shortly after she was born in Roehampton. The birth was an emergency C-section that left the baby and ...

In jokes and big vocals: Forbidden Broadway @MenChocFactory

If you are overly familiar with musical theatre and what is on offer on the West End, catching Forbidden Broadway at the Menier Chocolate Factory is a must this summer.

The long running series from New York, conceived and written by Gerard Alessandrini, it is a combination of greatest hits from previous incarnations of the show and wry new observations.

The new material includes send ups of Matilda and an over-reliance on child actors in British musicals, Once with its bizarre plot device and the foul mouthed Book of Mormon.


There is a hilarious dig at the tendency for the Chichester Festival to come up with endless bland revivals of old hoary musicals (such as The Pyjama Game). But the best song in the show is actually not from a musical (yet), but from Disney's Frozen. Idina Menzel's /Adele Dazeem's showstopping song, Let it Go, is presented as Let it Blow, referring to her bellowing vocals and how "nodes never bothered me anyway".

Other shows such as overblown productions of Miss Saigon and the never-ending run of Phantom and Les Miserables are also sent up rather cheekily.

The corporatisation of the West End is lamented in the parodies, but of course savvy Londoners know that Fringe venues like the Chocolate Factory are much better places to catch theatrical entertainment nowadays anyway.

It is not just cheap laughs however as there is a very fine cast of singers (and impersonators). Included in the lineup is Anna-Jane Casey and Sophie-Louise Dann. Both ladies only have to show their faces to elicit laughs. There is also a surprise comic turn by Damian Hubley, who after the short run with Andrew Lippa's cabaret, shows he knows a thing or two about comic timing.

All good fun and a great show. Performances run through to 16 August at the Chocolate Factory.

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Photos: Production Photos

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