Theatre review: Moulin Rouge!

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This is one of those Broadway-style long preview periods, with the official press being invited in on the 8th of December.

I often get songs stuck in my head when I look at what shows are coming up in my diary, and lately I've just been hearing "Moulin Rouge! Aha! Take it now or leave it, now is all we get, nothing promised no regrets!" Which is ironic, because that's more or less the only song from the last 150 years not to make its way into John Logan's jukebox musical, which puts the much-loved Baz Luhrmann film on stage with a few twists on the soundtrack. The original Moulin Rouge! gave Bohemian 19th century Paris and the titular burlesque club a doomed love story set to incongruous, anachronistic music that mainly consisted of relatively recent pop hits, and Logan's stage version does the same: Many of the most popular numbers from the film remain (so it opens with an energetic "Lady Marmalade" from the club's chorus girls,) but it's been 20 years since the original, so a lot of newer hits also get a look-in.

Theatre review: Whisper House

The venue formerly known as the St James Theatre has been bought by Dr Baron Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Lord Webber BA (Hons) MEng, QC, MD to stage new musicals and, presumably on the basis that it being hidden in a back street wasn't obstacle enough to audiences finding it, has been renamed The Other Palace. A nod, I guess, to it being between the Victoria Palace and Buckingham Palace, but with there actually being two Palace Theatres in London already, one of them down the road, that technically makes this The Other, Other, Other Palace. In any case, everyone seems to read it as The Other Place, which is yet another theatre entirely, so basically what I'm saying is good luck with the #brand recognition, guys. Anyway, my first trip there since the name change is to a musical from Spring Awakening and American Psycho songwriter Duncan Sheik, but Whisper House is a much less explosive affair than either of those two.

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: Marry Me A Little

There's no shortage of Stephen Sondheim works but there always seems to be an appetite for more; hence the 1980 show Marry Me A Little, in which Craig Lucas and Norman René compiled a number of Sondheim's songs into an hour-long revue. Some, like the title song which comes from Company, are familiar but the majority were cut from earlier drafts of his shows. They're largely either love songs or heartbreak/breakup songs so lend themselves to a vague framework of a story about a couple. There's no dialogue, and looking up the show online it seems that it's down to the individual production to decide exactly what story it's telling. So Hannah Chissick's production at the St James Theatre's downstairs Studio space makes it the story of a couple who are just in the process of breaking up.

Theatre review: I Can't Sing!

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: No idea when the producers are going to risk letting the critics in for this one.

All the press about new musical I Can't Sing! has focused on the fact that it's got songs by Glen Ponder from Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge. OK, so strictly speaking none of the press has been about that - they seem to be more interested in the fact that it's a show about The X Factor and has a book by Harry Hill. But it's also true that Steve Brown, who was better known in the mid-nineties as the sidekick whose house band had a different name every week, has brought his musical Savoir Faire to composing the show's songs. All the signs building up to I Can't Sing! were less than promising, from the early previews cancelled due to technical issues to the most worrying fact of all - that this is an official X Factor spin-off, fully authorised and approved by Simon Cowell. To be honest I was planning on skipping this one, but the casting of Nigel Harman as Simon meant my sister wanted to see it as a late Christmas present.

Theatre review: [title of show]

A musical so self-referential it occasionally threatens to swallow itself, [title of show] chronicles its own creation. Songwriter Jeff Bowen (Simon Bailey) and book writer Hunter Bell (Scott Garnham) get wind of a musical theatre festival with only three weeks before the deadline. Without a story to hang a whole new musical onto, they decide to write about the process of writing, turning their frustrated conversations and workshops into the script and songs. Bringing in actresses Heidi (Sophia Ragavelas) and Susan (Sarah Galbraith) they end up with a quirky show that's a hit at the festival and gets a much-loved off-Broadway transfer. But this level of success leads Hunter to set his sights on a Broadway run, and the long process of trying to get the show ready for a wider audience puts a strain on the quartet's friendships.