Theatre review: "Daddy" A Melodrama

It's hard enough trying to keep up with everything going on in London theatre without adding Broadway to the mix, but even so I can't help but know that Slave Play was causing a stir in New York before Covid. So far I haven't heard any suggestion of it making the transatlantic trip but Jeremy O. Harris' earlier play "Daddy" A Melodrama has, after a lockdown delay of its own, now landed at the Almeida complete with its original creative team. Franklin (Terique Jarrett) is a young, gay black artist who moved to California a couple of years ago to pursue his career. His collections of doll versions of himself are slowly building a following, and while he's not quite got to the stage of making big money from his creations yet, he's got an enthusiastic supporter in gallerist Alessia (Jenny Rainsford,) who's about to host his first high-profile exhibition. A few weeks before it opens, he meets wealthy, white, fifty-something Andre (Claes Bang.)

Theatre review: Heathers

London might have to wait a bit longer for the musical adaptation of Mean Girls, but another classic American high school movie about, well, mean girls, gets the musical treatment in the meantime. Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy’s Heathers, based on the film by Daniel Waters, premiered off-Broadway and has been further workshopped since, now arriving on The Other Palace’s main stage in a production directed by Andy Flickman. Heather Chandler (Jodie Steele,) Heather McNamara (Sophie Isaacs) and Heather Duke (T’Shan Williams) are top of the social ladder of an Ohio High School, and led by the fearsome Heather Chandler they pass judgement on who should be accepted or demonised. When they discover Veronica (Carrie Hope Fletcher) has a talent for forgery they allow her to join their gang, but when she refuses to go along with bullying her oldest friend Martha (Jenny O’Leary) she’s kicked back to the bottom of the social pecking order.

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: The Life

I would consider Sharon D. Clarke to be a fairly big name, certainly in London theatre circles, so it's a bit of a coup for Southwark Playhouse that she's starring in their latest musical. But then Clarke seems like the kind of actor who'll choose roles based on how much she likes them rather than how starry they are, whether it's panto or an ageing hooker in an ensemble piece like The Life. If Guys and Dolls is the classic musical about Broadway's past as one of New York's seediest streets, then Cy Coleman (music) Ira Gasman and David Newman's (book and lyrics) musical catches up with it a little while before it gets cleaned up and tourist-friendly, and finds it more dangerous than ever. It's 1978* and almost every character we meet is either a prostitute or a pimp; Vietnam vet Fleetwood (David Albury) currently only pimps out his own girlfriend Queen (T'Shan Williams) as they save up to get away from New York and make a new start.