Theatre review: Cable Street

The 1936 Battle of Cable Street in East London is known as the biggest anti-fascist protest on British soil. It's a piece of English history that can still be looked back on with pride at a time when most re-examinations of the past don't see it hold up too well, so it remains a popular subject. It also marks a significant moment of unity between the Jewish and Irish communities that until then might not have necessarily been on the same side, so there are bound to be many people in both those modern-day communities who have personal family stories about it. Which is all to say that when Southwark Playhouse put Tim Gilvin (music & lyrics) and Alex Kanefsky's (book) musical premiere Cable Street on sale it sold out the entire run before it had even opened, an impressive enough feat at the moment for an Off West End show with no star casting.

Theatre review: Unfortunate

Like Wicked with more clit jokes, Robyn Grant, Daniel Foxx (book & lyrics) and Tim Gilvin's (music) Unfortunate tells a famous fairy tale from the point of view of the villain. But Ursula the Sea Witch is quite specific to one particular telling of The Little Mermaid, so it's important to clarify that this is a parody musical, for legal reasons. Sorry, you'll have to wait a few more decades for her to come into the public domain and get immediately cast as a slasher movie killer. In the meantime Ursula (Shawna Hamic) is here to tell us how she escaped her apparent death at the end of the movie: Quite easily as it turns out, it's not like it was the first boatload of seamen she ever took to the chest. Yes, that's the Carry On level we're at, but contrary to the title we're fortunate in that this is Southwark Playhouse once again staging the best kind of musical silliness.

Theatre review: Stay Awake, Jake

Jamie Muscato has taken over the role of Joe for Bend It Like Beckham's final few months, but for a week he's swapped a particularly colourful West End show for a moody hour under Waterloo Station as part of the annual(ish) Vault Festival. Tim Gilvin's chamber musical monologue Stay Awake, Jake sees Muscato play the titular Jake, who's set off at one in the morning to drive from London to Carlisle. He's had a phone call from his estranged girlfriend Sophia that's shaken him up, and an all-night drive to where she's staying at her parents' house is his desperate attempt to reconcile. Jake is an aspiring comics writer with writer's block; as he tries to think about how to resolve the problems in his superhero duo's relationship, he goes back over the history of his own, which is how we get to hear what went right and wrong for them as he goes up the motorway.