Paul in London

An ingenious staging in the round and some rousing numbers (in the second half) may still have you wondering about the point of this revival of High Society at the Old Vic Theatre, a show that was probably best left on film rather than attempting to transfer it to a staged musical. The production is quite marvellous to look at. Things just pop up from the floor - stages, tables with umbrellas, second pianos. There is even some on-stage cooking of breakfast and as someone who loves the smell of eggs and bacon cooking in the morning (although it could have been pancakes - I wasn’t sitting close enough), it was pure bliss. But by casting actors who are not the best singers, the shine seems to be missing in this frothy, superfluous musical, giving it a grittier feel that does not quite sit with it’s farcical and escapist plot.

It's well known that key messages espoused by politicians these days are the product of carefully considered focus groups and research. But here in the Candidate, it takes this a step further, suggesting that everything is up for grabs in shaping a new leader, presently bereft of any thought. It proves for an amusing and topical diversion. Arriving at the rather dreary looking 119 Farringdon Road, the former offices of The Guardian, and home to Theatre Delicatessen, you are ushered into a room and told that you would be taking part in what is described as a unique polling session. The Candidate, Omar Ibrahim , is seeking views (in this case the unsuspecting audience members) to help shape his ideals, policy and image. He can be whatever you want or need him to be, adjusted to suit the tastes of the theatregoers.

The Lonely Soldier Monologues , currently playing at the Cockpit Theatre, by Helen Benedict takes the stories of seven women who served in the US Armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. What emerges from this verbatim play is the subtle and none-too subtle methods of discrimination and sexual harassment that they suffer serving in the armed forces. The piece is not anti-war or anti-military; for many of these women the serving in the Armed services was a way to show patriotic duty after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or just a way off welfare. But it highlights many of the excesses known from the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, in war so poorly planned and organised that soldiers had to make do without body armour but could still eat lobster.

One of the lasting memories about watching the 9/11 terrorist attacks unfold live on television was wondering what would happen next. There was the first tower, then the second, then the Pentagon, and then somewhere in middle America. A few weeks later there would be the anthrax scare , the need to be alert but not alarmed , and to buy up duct tape . In the immediate post 9/11 period there was so much paranoia about how clever and evil the perpetrators of this terrorist attack were, that anything next was possible. Product , currently playing at the Arcola Theatre, is Mark Ravenhill's monologue about the pitching of a dubious script. It brings back the memories of the worst of this post 9/11 paranoia.

A sexy cast, terrific dancing and high drama make In The Dead of Night a fun, fascinating and classy take on the film noir thrillers of old Hollywood. The dialogue is clipped, the dancing is tight and the bodies are hot. So hot you can smell the sweat coming off them. Or it might be baby oil looking like sweat... The Landor Theatre is a pretty intimate space so sometimes nothing is left to the imagination. In the Dead of Night is set in a dodgy South American shanty town at the end of the war, and  everyone is on the take. The men work on the docks. The women sell their bodies. And if the men are up for it they sell their bodies too.

Judgement day and getting taken to the cleaners takes on a new meaning in this spectacular new take on the classic fifteenth century morality play Everyman at the National Theatre with Chiwetel Ejiofor . It feels like every theatrical trick is deployed during the roughly ninety minutes it takes for one man to account for his life. There  is a giant video screen, dazzling lights, a urinating penis prop. It’s all terrific stuff and an awe inspiring updating of the tale to modern and secular London.

Charbonnel et Walker pink champagne truffle boxes are piled up in an apartment. A video is hooked up playing Gone With The Wind. I’ve Seen That Face Before is playing in the background. And then Chris Ioan Roberts as Wallis Simpson vomits pink muck all over blue and white floor. Is it an aversion to seafood that she does not want to admit for fear of being considered too common? Or was it too many Charbonnel et Walker truffles? Whatever the cause you are left without any doubt that for the next sixty minutes you are in for a show that is going to be camp and dirty.

A Simple Space, by Australian-based circus troupe  Gravity and Other Myths , is the latest round of circus offering at the Udderbelly Festival  at the Southbank Centre . Between the amazing feats of acrobatics you can hear a constant sound. The sound of heavy breathing. It is coming from the stage. This is pretty intense stuff here and the energy and sweat from the performers is audible and palpable. And in the space of the giant purple cow, where you are up close to the performers, it seems much more intense and intimate.

It’s hard to get out of your head the scenes and dialogue in Clarion, the smart, new, foul-mouthed comedy currently playing at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston. What lingers is not the expected satire of a rabidly right wing tabloid that fills its pages with anti-immigration stories and showbiz fluff. Perhaps in the post phone-hacking days, not much can surprise us about the lengths a tabloid paper goes to get a story. Instead, it is the sensational performances and characters full of anger (and filthy mouths) that will shock and awe you into hysterics.

Note: this post was updated in December 2022 in an attempt to comply with Google content guidelines - however if a phrase about putting children in bubble wrap and eating nan violates these guidelines it still may have a content advisory… 🤷‍♂️ There is something dark and unsettling about Animals, a brilliant new play by Emma Adams at Theatre 503 . Its frank humour and intense performances from a terrific cast will have you loving every minute of it. It might also have you wondering what your grandmother really gets up to when she tells you she spent most of the day finishing a crossword. This surreal story set in a dystopian English seaside town where the old people are being displaced by incomers who dress smartly and keep their children in bubble wrap. For them life is a dream. But for anyone past their prime, life is pretty grim and involuntary euthanasia is the norm. Of course some people still manage to get by. Norma, a stubborn yet resourceful old lady who told aut

Watching  The Sound of Music  on tour is really an opportunity to indulge in comfort entertainment. As Maria and the Mother Superior in the stage production sing about crisp apple strudel in the early part of the first act you realise that it is a Pavlovian response to get all warm and fuzzy about the show. Apart from getting a taste for strudel it will have you recalling when you first saw the movie... Or first dressed up as Ray (a drop of golden sun) to the first singalong. Everyone did that right? This is probably a good thing, as take away fifty years of cultural repositioning the show is a bit of a non-event. Take away the film’s lovely Salzburg locations and the long lingering shots between the Captain and Maria, on stage you have the entire romantic plot condensed into a short speech by infant Gretel to Maria towards the end of the first act.

Now that the Oliviers are out of the way, Friday is the last day people have to vote in the Also Recognised Awards, set up by the exciting new London theatre resource, My Theatre Mates run by Mark Shenton and Terri Paddock. The Also Recognised Awards celebrate lesser-known but equally worthy talent in fields overlooked by other awards. They comprise ten categories including an award for musical direction, which is the the first award of its kind, and recognises how the contribution of musical direction can really set the tone of a show.

Death Row Cowboy , which has just finished a short run at the Courtyard Theatre is a gritty and realistic piece of writing that leaves you wondering if it was based on a real life incident. But of course if that were the case there would need to be a different ethnic makeup of the cast, given that the majority of inmates on death row  are not white... But real life is less important than the character study of the three key people in the piece. Carl, who is on death row, prison officer Bobby and a police officer’s widow Hillary. It is written by Andrew Lynch and Mark McCabe who play Carl and Bobby and serves as a vehicle to explore some intriguing themes on relationships, loneliness, love and regret.

Some people are rocks. Some people are rivers. Some people can be rocks in rivers. Some people can be rocks just nearby the river. And so on and so on and so on. These important observations are about as deep as things get in Hiraeth . The word is Welsh for longing. But notwithstanding the flimsy premise the piece is a sweet-natured, whimsical account of  one woman’s journey from a small Welsh farming town to London.

There is something appealingly convenient about the format of Pop Up Opera’s productions. They take witty (and often seldom performed) pieces and stage them in unusual locations, with a modern twist. The convenient part comes in the fact these locations are either close to your place of work, your home et cetera. So by the time Die Entführung came to south east London, I was ready to go. Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) is about a hero, Belmonte and his servant, Pedrillo, and their attempts to rescue their lovers, Konstanze and Blonde from an Ottoman harem. Given the popup opera treatment, the harem is now a big brother-like bath house come beauty boot camp where no men are allowed. And no women are allowed to leave (at least until the treatments are complete). In this production most of the spoken dialogue is removed and in place are some rather witty title cards. The role of the figurehead-dictator Pasha Selim is now an omniprese

Shrapnel: 34 Fragments of a Massacre by Anders Lustgarten is an angry and sweeping account of the Roboski airstrike that took place in December 2011 near the border of Iraq. Politicians, the military, modernity and the industrial complex are all called into account here. The startling thing about this piece however is how it shows it is so easy to forget the incident as just another case of collateral damage in a land far away. The relentless coverage of war and conflict framed through two minute television news stories simplifies everything and desensitises you. It also removes any chance to understand the context and history. This piece tries to slap you about and wake you out of such complacency.

Last Monday night was an opportunity for Cythia Erivo to strut her stuff in her first solo concert. Whether it is a quiet softly sung ballad or belting out a showstopper there does not seem to be anything she cannot do. She has been a rising star in the West End with stand out performances in The Color Purple, Dessa Rose and Sister Act, but here she was able to showcase a range of musical styles, and her phenomenal vocal range.

It is not often you get to go to the theatre and get an eyeful of spit, blood and tight-fitting Lycra. But this is the case in Lardo, now playing at The Old Red Lion theatre . It’s a descent into the subculture of Scottish wrestling, its characters and violence. It is also an immersive experience. Entering the Old Red Lion theatre is like entering into the world of insane wrestling. The performance space is a wrestling ring, the Scottish flag and walls smeared with muck and graffiti.   There are real stunts and some pretty nifty moves. Audience participation is a given. You will find yourself shouting and booing (whether you really wanted to or not). And even when the play feels like it is losing momentum there is always the next wrestling match that will save it. 

It was only for one night, but hopefully it won’t be too long before we see the Desperate Divas return (if they can find the time between their busy schedules). Tiffany Graves and Anita Louise Combe presented their show last Sunday about love and the fruitless pursuit of it. It was inspired by their real-life adventures dating men (and sometimes the same men). Both are exceptional singers with long careers on the West End. Their voices and be powerful yet nuanced - and when singing together they produced some sublime harmonies in this show.

Hellscreen updates Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’ s tale of  creating artistic hell on earth to the London art scene. It is a high concept treatment with film, music and other tricks creating a few chills in the damp and murky space under Waterloo station. However there are so many different theatrical styles and tricks at work here, at times it feels like they get in the way of telling the story rather than making for a truly gripping piece of theatre.

Idil Sukan’s debut exhibition, This Comedian , is now at the Embassy Tea Gallery through to 8 March. It is a retrospective of her creative work in production, design and photography in the comedy industry. The varied collection from the last decade includes 200 of Idil's portraits and photographs of live performance.

It had only a short run but A Local Boy which concluded yesterday at the Pleasance Islington is a great new piece of writing by Dan Murphy . The dialogue is funny and incisive about the cruel trials and traumas of today's youth, where anything is fair game and everything is online. It is a world where there is no privacy and sometimes this has unforeseen consequences. This time there has been an incident at the local war memorial in Romford where young people hang out and drink.

It has been a week since I caught She Loves Me at the the Landor Theatre, but there is something so sweet, perky and fun about this show that it lingers with you long after you have seen it. Perhaps the terrific cast headed by Charlotte Jaconelli and John Sandberg helps. There is so much enthusiasm in the performances that you can't help but like it. It is a show about mistaken identity, scandal and intrigue. The story revolves around a little shop in Budapest and two of its employees. Although they are constantly at odds with each other, through a personals advertisement, they inadvertently become anonymous pen pals. Soon romance starts to develop. The work is based on a play by Miklos Laszlo that would become The Shop Around the Corner and the inspiration for such films as You've Got Mail.

Finally caught Assassins at the Menier Chocolate Factory. This dark and grim piece of musical theatre is re imagined as a funfair where the cast of would-be and actual assassins of US Presidents tell their stories like a bunch of grim clowns. But it comes across heavy handed and lacking much irony. Staging a musical with this subject matter is always going to be a challenge, but both the material and the production don't really dig too much into the obsessive gun culture that is part of the country's DNA. Compared to The Scottsboro Boys , another musical based on an unpleasant subject, there is none of the bitterness or outrage presented ironically as a song and dance musical.

Gods and Monsters , now playing at the Southwark Playhouse is a showcase of incredible performances from its terrific cast and an engaging story. Oh and there is a bit of full frontal nudity too. Based on the novel Father of Frankenstein (which was also the source material for the film of the same name ), the story is a blend of fact and fiction. Age, memory, fame, youth and loss collide in the story of the last few months in the life of English director James Whale. Whale director and creator of the first two Frankenstein films, had a moderately successful career in Hollywood which enabled him to live comfortably in Los Angeles. He was also openly gay. But following a series of strokes in his sixties, he lost his ability to prevent painful memories from his past flooding back. And without giving too much away, his most successful creation, the monster in Frankenstein, seems to become something far more personal.

Going on a cruise seems like an awful lot of fun if this high spirited production of Anything Goes is anything to go by. The cast sing and dance their hearts out in Cole Porter's classic musical. There is so much to take in with the fast footed choreography, wonderful performances and imaginative staging.

New cast photos from the production of Shakespeare in Love are out. The new cast took over at London’s Noel Coward Theatre on 12 January 2015.

Currently enjoying a popular run on Broadway, Scott Ellis’ acclaimed production of The Elephant Man will transfer to London with the US cast starring Bradley Cooper (in various states of dress and undress), Patricia Clarkson and Alessandro Nivola this spring.

The Diary of a Nobody at the Kings HeadTheatre distills the best bits of the classic comic novel and adds much physical comedy and cheap theatrical effects for an hilarious evening. Originating in Punch magazine in 1888-89, the Diary of a Nobody has been called one of the funniest books in the world. It records the daily events in the life of Pooter and his family and friends over a period of 15 months. And although intended as a parody of the fashion for writing diaries, it also provides an insight into Victorian life, which today seems remote. After all a humble home for a city clerk in 1890s London is now an exception property that would fetch a few million.  

The Royal Opera and Roundhouse joint production of Orpheo is a surprisingly fresh and lively interpretation of Monteverdi's early opera based on the Greek legend of Orpheus and his attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back from Hades. When you first enter the Roundhouse, you know you are going to be in for something a little bit different from both companies. Apart from a large circular stage that is thrust forward, there is a giant ramp and seating surrounding it all. You don't normally see that in the Roundhouse where most concerts are standing room only affairs. As the music starts the performers descend down the ramp and take their places as if it were a royal court - with Pluto and Proserpina taking seats at the high gallery. It evokes the origins of this piece as court entertainment, but also as if you are watching Greek theatre. And it gives a sense of intimacy to this large venue. There is also a religious theme running throughout the production with perf

Confronting your demons has never felt so exhausting or in your face as with Craft Theatre's physical and modern update of Dante's Inferno. You enter The Rag Factory in Shoreditch with the performers already running around with bamboo sticks, jumping and tumbling about. There is an assumption that you are probably sophisticated theatre-going folk so you know that this is part of the process of mental and physical exhaustion the company uses to get the actors in the right frame of mind for their performance. You will also observe that some of the performers have feet and wrists bandaged so perhaps the unexpected injury happens here as well. As most of the audience is sitting with a front row seat to the action, it can make you feel nervous as bodies fall and tumble rather close to you.

It's not theatre but the source material is, and Into the Woods makes for a nice film. There are some things to admire in this film which is a mash up of fairy tales tells the story of what happens when the characters get their wishes and try and live happily ever after. While some songs are lost from the stage musical, the end result is a shorter, more focussed story. But something seems to get lost lately when musicals are adapted for the screen. Like other film adaptations it suffers from some poor choices in casting. Notably James Corden, who is not known for his singing abilities, in the central role of the baker. His performance comes across as a bit one note and lacking any sense of comic timing (or charisma).  And Corden's voice, while not as bad as hearing Russell Crowe sing flatly in Les Miserables, it comes a close second.

The intimate setting of the Finborough Theatre and some wonderful performances make The Grand Tour a surprisingly enjoyable and sweet romp across France. Jerry Herman's 1979 show is only now getting its European premiere. While then it was a full-scale musical, the smaller space of the Finborough allows the focus of the show to be on the three leads and the various adventures they run through as they attempt to escape France under Nazi occupation. At the opening we are introduced to Jacobowsky, a Polish-Jewish intellectual who has always been one step ahead of the Nazi's as he explains in the show's opening number I'll be here tomorrow . As the Nazi's invade France he finds himself with a car that he cannot drive. By chance he meets the snooty and slightly anti-Semitic Polish Colonel Stjerbinsky, who needs to flee France with information for the Polish government in exile. And he can drive. So the Grand Tour begins.