Theatre review: The Messiah

Patrick Barlow’s spoof of Ben Hur featured a Nativity scene, and that’s now expanded to become the main focus of his latest, The Messiah (billed as a new play, although there’s clearly been versions of it around for over thirty years courtesy of Barlow’s National Theatre of Brent company.) And although there are new faces in the cast, the setup is familiar: Self-styled impresario Maurice (Hugh Dennis) has written and stars in his own adaptation of the Nativity, sharing all the roles with his unpredictable friend Ronald (John Marquez.) Musical accompaniment will be provided by opera singer Mrs Fflyte (Lesley Garrett,) who the two men are somewhat in awe of, and who will be joining them as soon as she can find the stage. Beginning with the Godhead (Dennis) asking how things are going on Earth (which he seems to have a somewhat romantic love for) and finding out they could be better, and moving on to the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary (Marquez,) who’s not best pleased about the whole thing because she’s only fourteen.

Non-review: Pleasure

Obviously, I can't make any kind of claim to actually be able to review an opera: I know nothing about them and have only ever seen a handful - there's far too much theatre to keep up with without adding opera and ballet to the mix regularly. But the Lyric Hammersmith are hosting a couple of touring productions from the Royal Opera, and Mark Simpson's Pleasure stars Lesley Garrett as a toilet attendant in a Northern gay club; and if that sort of thing isn't enough to at least make you curious you're probably in the wrong place. Simpson is apparently the only person ever to have won both BBC Young Musician of the Year and BBC Young Composer of the Year, and his music here mixes somewhat discordant strings with occasional hints of synthesizer, reminiscent of Peter Davison-era Doctor Who when the entire score was done on a Casio keyboard.