Favourite shows 2021 (in-person)

It’s quite nice to go back to this, although when I had a look through my list of shows it wasn’t too hard to choose a top 10 – the hardest thing was getting them in the right order… I haven’t seen all of the shows that have been put on since things reopened, for […]

Cabaret

“There was a cabaret, and there was a master of ceremonies. And there was a city called Berlin, in a country called Germany… And it was the end of the world.” The Kit Kat Club is the place to go if you want to leave your troubles behind; based on the past five years (at least), […]

Love Theatre Day 2021: Brave new world?

Happy Love Theatre Day, everyone! This year I actually feel like marking it, not because all of London’s West End theatres are now back open for business (though that is obviously excellent news), but because I’m just about working out where theatre of all kinds fits into my peri-pandemic routine – note that I’m not […]

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

This GBM Productions musical version of DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover originally had a limited run at the Shaftesbury Theatre, but has now been given a digital revival by Stream.Theatre. The show features music from John Robinson and book by Phil Willmott, and was directed by Sasha Regan. It seems to be the year of […]

Hamilton and Me: An Actor’s Journal

Three years on from his award-winning stint as part of the original West End cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, Giles Terera has released his account of his time in the show. Hamilton and Me is made up of a collection of journal entries that Terera kept as he prepared to reveal his Aaron Burr to […]

Olivier Awards 2020

Whilst I have enjoyed my break from almost full-time theatregoing over the past few months, one of the cancelled events I was really gutted to miss out on was the Olivier Awards. You may remember that I was part of the dynamic duo covering the 2019 ceremony for BWW (and had previously gone solo for […]

2020 mid-year update

Against my usual penchant for starting off slowly and then steadily heading for entropy, I went straight in at the deep end this year: my first week back in London (& the first full week of the year) was set down as #MindTheMusicals 2020! That means, of course, I began my theatregoing year by […]

Hurry up and wait…

One month ago today I was sat in a theatre for what I fully expected to be the last time for quite a while. SOLT had closed all of its theatres even as audiences were beginning to arrive; the United Kingdom government, when it eventually acknowledged we needed daily briefings, began doing them at any […]

The Time Machine

Understandably, I find myself running a little behind on my reviews – this one, however, will probably be one of the more surreal things to have to write up. Press night was Wednesday 11 March 2020 (again, sorry): the day the World Health Organisation conferred pandemic status on the current COVID-19 outbreak. Why is that […]

Message In A Bottle

“More loneliness than any man could bear, rescue me before I fall into despair…” There are certain bands and artists that it’s almost cool to dislike or ridicule; Coldplay is probably the best modern example, but often it ends up being a selection of groups or singers from a previous generation – your mum still […]