Theatre review: Miss Atomic Bomb

You can avoid reviews all you like - and I try - but sometimes it's hard to miss the consensus about a show, and even before the official reviews came out earlier this week it was clear which way the wind was blowing for Miss Atomic Bomb. So saying anything about it now already feels a bit like kicking a man when he's down, but I'm afraid I won't be going against the flow: Gabriel Vick, Alex Jackson-Long and Adam Long (the latter also co-directing with choreographer Bill Deamer) have assembled an impressive cast for their musical premiere at the St James, but the actors end up looking about as confused about why they're there as the audience do. Lou Lubowitz (Simon Lipkin) is a 1950s Las Vegas hotel manager working for a gangster (David Birrell,) albeit a gangster who doesn't actually seem to have any illegal business beyond running a hotel in an unnecessarily aggressive way.

Theatre review: Dickens Abridged

I wasn't sure if I was going to bother with Dickens Abridged, in which Adam Long of the Reduced Shakespeare Company gives the same treatment to another of England's best-loved writers. This was largely because unlike Shakespeare, Dickens isn't a particular favourite of mine, so although I'm as familiar with the broad strokes of his stories as anyone, I'm not interested enough to get every in-joke. But there was a GILT offer for the show, and there's worse ways to start the year than a bit of Jon Robyns. Not that bit of Jon Robyns - that would be one hell of a start to the year. No, he's fully-clothed as one of a five-strong cast who, through songs and sketches, do a 100-minute run-through of the life of Charles Dickens, as well as some of his best-known stories (what with all the short stories and Boz sketches on top of the novels, the show makes no claim to present the complete works.)