Theatre review: Dear Evan Hansen

Following The Book of Mormon and Hamilton as the hottest ticket on Broadway, it's inevitable that Steven Levenson (book,) Benj Pasek & Justin Paul's (music and lyrics) Dear Evan Hansen would make its way to the West End sooner rather than later, but there was always a question mark over whether this particular show would connect in the same way with a British audience. I can see how it might share the fate of the painfully earnest Rent, which has a dedicated UK fan base and has had a couple of decent runs here but never became what you might call an equivalent phenomenon. I have heard some Marmite responses since Michael Greif's production opened at the Noël Coward, but thanks to the way the world's been changed by the Internet - and the way it affects the musical's story - Evan Hansen's story could end up striking a chord everywhere.

Theatre review: Caroline, or Change

Daniel Evans' first season in charge of Chichester has already suggested he'll be following his predecessor in transferring a lot of shows to the West End: Quiz and King Lear are on their way, and Michael Longhurst's production of Caroline, or Change will follow them in the autumn, but first it has a sold-out run at Hampstead. Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori's musical, loosely inspired by Kushner's childhood and his family's maid, takes place in 1963 Louisiana, where Caroline Thibodeaux (Sharon D. Clarke) spends her days doing laundry in the sweltering basement of the Gellman family. Unlike most of the local maids, she wears her exhaustion and anger at hard work for little pay openly, which has got her a reputation as being particularly unfriendly and unlikeable. But the Gellmans' young son Noah (Aaron Gelkoff, alternating with Charlie Gallacher,) adores her, especially since his mother's death from cancer.

Theatre review: Bat Boy

There's a lot of musicals based on books, straight plays and movies, but there's also a few with more eccentric origins. Like a story about a half-human, half-bat from the Weekly World News, a tabloid for urban legends and tall tales, and the basis for Bat Boy: The Musical. In the town of Hope Falls, West Virginia, some kids exploring a cave uncover the teenage Bat Boy (Rob Compton.) He's taken to the house of Dr Parker (Matthew White,) in the expectation that the doctor will have him put down. But his wife Meredith (Lauren Ward) and daughter Shelley (Georgina Hagen) take to Edgar, as they call him, and he's soon accepted as a member of the family, learning to speak, read and do accountancy. But Dr Parker starts to feel as if Edgar is robbing him of his family's affection, and with the town's economy on the downturn he knows he can easily turn the population against a beastly-looking scapegoat.