GRAMOPHONE Review: War Paint – Original Broadway Cast Recording/Frankel
The title, the concept, the casting would seem to have Broadway success written all over it. A musical about the bitter rivalry between two iconic cosmetic giants – Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden – who never met…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Falsettos – 2016 Broadway Cast Recording/Finn
The two parts of William Finn and James Lapine’s brilliant urban opera Falsettos first came together in 1992 when the horrendous human cost of the AIDS epidemic was still incalculable. But March of the Falsettos (1981) and…
GRAMOPHONE Review: 42nd Street – 2017 London Cast Recording
The sound of tapping feet invokes a whole era of classic Broadway and Hollywood musicals and when the curtain rises on this tap-infused extravaganza it pauses eighteen inches or so off the stage to afford us our…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Dear Evan Hansen – Original Broadway Cast Recording/Pasek & Paul
Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are perhaps best known as collaborators on the phenomenon that was La La Land and amongst other things an insidiously memorable little ditty called “City of Stars” (with composer Justin Hurwitz). But…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Natalie Dessay – Pictures of America Paris Mozart Orchestra/Gibault
Anyone who has ever seen Natalie Dessay on the stage will know what an accomplished actress she is. It is that which has put flesh on her singing and enriched her operatic career. And now a new…
Dreamgirls, Savoy Theatre
It’s taken almost four nail-biting decades for Dreamgirls to evolve from the germ of an idea to the most anticipated show never to have quite made it, lock, stock, and smoking barrel across the Atlantic. The germ…
Lazarus, King’s Cross Theatre
When David Bowie first met with producer Robert Fox to discuss Lazarus back in 2013 you have to now wonder if he was seriously contemplating his own mortality. The clue, of course, is in the title, and…
The Last Five Years, St James Theatre
From Monteverdi to Schubert to Bernstein and Lloyd Webber the dramatic song cycle has travelled far and wide over the centuries though not until Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years in opposite directions. His two-handed tour-de-force…
Groundhog Day, Old Vic
Well over a decade ago Stephen Sondheim expressed some interest in turning the movie Groundhog Day into a musical. Presumably he, too, would have turned to the movie’s scriptwriter Danny Rubin for the book – it is,…
Ramin Karimloo, London Palladium
Strictly speaking it should have been billed as “Ramin Karimloo and Broadgrass at the London Palladium” – then we might have anticipated the support act and late arrival of the West End and Broadway star known especially…
