Theatre review: She Loves Me

I started 2016 with a musical about a rather niche subject; I end the year on a more old-fashioned one that isn't strictly speaking formulaic - it became the formula for several Hollywood Rom-Coms. She Loves Me has a book by Joe Masteroff, music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and takes its story from Hungarian play Parfumerie, about hate turning to love in the titular shop. Georg (Mark Umbers) is the perennially single deputy store manager who's resorted to a lonely hearts column, and has fallen for a woman he's been exchanging letters with. When one of the shop clerks leaves, her replacement Amalia (Scarlett Strallen) instantly annoys him by selling a music box he'd bet would be unsellable, and their relationship is fractious from then on. Needless to say, Amalia is actually the "Dear Friend" he's been writing to, and she feels the same way about his letters.

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.

Theatre review: Candide (Menier Chocolate Factory)

Who'd have thought I'd be seeing a second show called Candide within a matter of months? What with Mark Ravenhill's "response" at the RSC, and the research that Ravenhill admitted was necessary before seeing it, I'm starting to feel very familiar with Voltaire's satire on optimism, despite never having read it. Raised on the philosophies of Pangloss, who teaches that this is the best of all possible worlds, therefore everything that happens must be for the best, Candide travels the world seeking his lost love Cunegonde. Beset by catastrophe after catastrophe, he blandly ascribes them all to the mysterious but necessary machinations of a benevolent god. The version of the story now being revived at the Menier Chocolate Factory is Leonard Bernstein's operetta, which has gone through a number of different versions over the years - the one used here is a 1988 text first staged by Scottish Opera, with book by Hugh Wheeler and lyrics by 70% of the earth's population.

Theatre review: Top Hat

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: Technically this doesn't open to London reviewers until next week. It's been on tour since August though, so hopefully they know what they're doing by now.

I should probably also add a disclaimer that this borders on a "not-review" because I've got a cold, and spent this show blowing my nose and feeling like death warmed up. Still, my £16 "restricted view" seat in the very back row of the Grand Circle proved good value with in fact an excellent, if distant, view of the stage - although the three rows ahead of me were empty, so perhaps in normal circumstances people's heads block the view.

A variation on the jukebox musical, there's a trend at the moment for adaptations of musicals by well-known composers - in this case Irving Berlin - with the soundtrack padded out with some of their well-known tunes from other sources. Top Hat was originally an RKO Fred-and-Ginger movie (and the programme notes have a lot of info on the studio's history, focusing especially on staff changes and brushes with bankruptcy, because everyone knows the most glamorous thing about Hollywood is the accounts.)