Theatre review: Twelfth Night, or What You Will(Regent's Park Open Air Theatre)

Well it's a good job I'm already more than familiar with the plot of this one, because any show featuring Nicholas Karimi as a sugar daddy in a low-cut top is going to be a tricky one to remember anything else about. Drew McOnie's first season of programming at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre starts with Twelfth Night, but it does share a thematic connection with his predecessor's final production, La Cage Aux Folles: Owen Horsley sets his production in a faded cabaret club, and even gives us a drag queen version of Sir Toby Belch. If the club's not heaving with customers it's probably because the owner, Olivia (Anna Francolini) has imposed a lengthy period of mourning for her dead brother, whose ashes she carries around with her everywhere, addressing her soliloquies to the urn. One regular patron is Orsino (Raphael Bushay,) who's performatively in love with Olivia, and keeps hoping despite all signs to the contrary that he might be able to woo her.

Theatre review: La Cage aux Folles [The Play]

I've had misjudged or unlikely musical adaptations on the brain recently, and not just because of the obvious suspect - announcements in the last couple of weeks have suggested that Joe diPietro alone is going to be flinging a hell of a lot of insanity at stages both sides of the Atlantic over the next few months. But then there's the other extreme, where a musical adaptation has worked so well it's overshadowed the original: The Jerry Herman / Harvey Fierstein musical is what comes to mind when you hear La Cage aux Folles, to the extent that Park Theatre have felt it best to append [The Play] to the title, to clarify that Simon Callow's new version is based on Jean Poiret's original French farce. Any songs that show up are going to be lip-synced because the title refers to a drag club run by Georges (Michael Matus) in early 1970s St Tropez.

Re-review: King Lear (Duke of York's)

King Lear is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays and I must have seen at least a dozen productions by now, so I don't say it lightly that Jonathan Munby's Chichester production from last year was the best I've seen yet - in fact I chose it as my overall favourite show of 2017. With Ian McKellen in the titular role it was always going to make commercial sense to transfer it to London, and I wasn't going to miss the chance to see it again even if I knew the changes that come with a transfer meant it couldn't quite match up to the original experience. For one thing, the Duke of York's might be a small theatre by West End standards but it's a world away from the intimacy of the Minerva, where even sitting near the back of the theatre only actually translated to the fifth row or thereabouts, and the cast made lots of entrances and exits by an aisle right next to me.

Theatre review: The Frogs

Well into the realm of Stephen Sondheim marginalia, it sounds as if the original 1974 version of The Frogs was never even meant as a full musical. Sondheim and Burt Shevelove took Aristophanes' comedy and built a short revue out of it, not very well-received and soon becoming an obscurity. Nathan Lane then took that revue and expanded it into a full-length show in 2004, Sondheim bulking it up with seven new songs. This, too, was poorly received and went back to being a footnote, but the Jermyn Street Theatre now gives it another try, inspired by the bleak state of current affairs that mirrors the premise of Aristophanes' original: Dionysus (Michael Matus,) god of theatre and wine among other things, despairs at the state of the world and decides people need a great mind like Bernard Shaw to boost their spirits while showing them the error of their ways.

Theatre review: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

When I first saw Pedro Almodóvar’s film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown I remember being struck by how overtly theatrical it looked, and how well it would work if put on the stage. But Almodóvar is reluctant to license stage adaptations of his work, and as the film finally comes to the theatre it's in the form of an off-Broadway musical with book by Jeffrey Lane and songs by David Yazbek. Pepa (Tamsin Greig) is an actress most of whose work is in TV commercials, and in dubbing foreign film into Spanish, usually opposite her boyfriend Iván (Jérôme Pradon.) One morning she wakes up to find Iván has dumped her via answerphone message, and suddenly there's a lot she didn't know about him, like the estranged wife Lucia (Haydn Gwynne) who's been in a mental hospital for the last 19 years, and doesn't come across as massively sane even now she's been released.

Theatre review: The Return of the Soldier

Charles Miller and Tim Sanders' new chamber musical The Return of the Soldier is based on the 1918 novel by Rebecca West, an early literary response to the First World War and the physical and mental toll it took not only on the combatants but on the people left behind. Captain Christopher Baldry (Stewart Clarke) is sent home from the front with shell-shock, and he immediately sets about reconnecting with the woman he loves. Unfortunately this isn't his wife, but his holiday romance from a decade earlier. He's completely forgotten Kitty (Zoe Rainey,) his wife of seven years, and plans instead on proposing to Margaret (Laura Pitt-Pulford.) But she too has since got married, to the kind-hearted but sickly William (Michael Matus.) In an attempt to help cure his amnesia, Chris is allowed to meet with Margaret, but it turns out neither of them is ready to give the other up now they've found each other again.

Theatre review: Hostage Song

It's a truism that no subject matter is too difficult to get the musical theatre treatment, but creatives always seem to find new ways to test the theory. In the Finborough's Sunday-Tuesday slot the unlikely subject matter is the kidnapping and beheading of American hostages in the Middle East. Clay McLeod Chapman's Hostage Song features rock songs with music and lyrics by Kyle Jarrow, performed by an onstage band with Pierce Reid on vocals, as well as some numbers taken on by the couple at the centre of the story: Jim (Michael Matus) is a contractor for the Pentagon, Jennifer (Verity Marshall) a journalist reporting the plight of the very people who have now captured them both. Thrown together in a cell and both expecting to be executed, the pair try to deal with their fear and missing their families, by playing games that develop into an extended fantasy where they're a normal couple, meeting in a bar, being introduced to each other's parents and planning a future.

Theatre review: The A-Z of Mrs P

You might assume the story of the first A-Z map of London wouldn't make much of a musical. And you'd be right, but not for the reasons you might think. A new show with book by Diane Samuels and music & lyrics by Gwyneth Herbert, The A-Z of Mrs P is based on the autobiographies of Phyllis Pearsall, whose company made the first detailed street guide of London since motor cars came along and made the whole enterprise all the trickier. We first meet Phyllis (Isy Suttie) in Venice as she walks out on her husband and returns to the city of her birth after many years away. With barely a penny to her name she quickly gets back on her feet making a living as a painter, but soon an alternative offer comes in from her father: A mapmaker, he now lives in New York, where he's published the first street guides of the city and wants his daughter to do the same for London.