Shakespeare’s strangest and nastiest play is a kind of black farce where the reckless dash to redemption makes the redemption itself – forgiveness, reconciliation, all is sort of forgiven – seem like an afterthought. Joe Hill-Gibbins is having…
Mark Wigglesworth’s arrival as English National Opera’s new Music Director was never going to be a quiet affair. They probably heard it all the way over at the Kremlin. It wasn’t so much a case of a…
Mahler’s supersonic Seventh – a grand experiment in sensory colouration if ever there was one – needs no special pleading: it is what it is, a one-off, an oddity, a new departure of no fixed destination. But…
If the shoe fits, they say, wear it. But in truth there’s always been a bit of a size differential between Kinky Boots, the modest urban Brit-flick, and the Cyndi Lauper/ Harvey Fierstein musical that it spawned.…
Never in a million years would you guess that Grand Hotel – now brilliantly revived at the Southwark Playhouse – is one of Broadway’s great rescue jobs. That something seemingly so organic, so cohesive, so intricate, could…
The venerable and venerated Philadelphia Orchestra swept into London bearing gifts and mixed messages from Nico Muhly. Actually that was the title of his crowd-pleasing opener for the orchestra – Mixed Messages (UK Premiere) – and for…
It took 30 years for High Society to make its laborious transition from screen to stage. There are good reasons for that. The indelible impression left by the movie and its star Grace Kelly was undoubtedly the…
Let it never be said that English National Opera hasn’t done its bit for Gilbert and Sullivan – but the fact that only one its several stagings has achieved recognition and longevity surely says something about the…
Review for this week’s edition of The Spectator… Attend the tale… http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/theatre/9486232/sweeney-todd-eno-review-blunt-and-bloody/… [Read More]
Musicals stand or fall on their books; docu-musicals are defined by them. Even a bunch of great songs won’t entirely carry an evening on Broadway or in the West End and it’s certainly no coincidence that Marshall…