Theatre review: Redcliffe

Musical theatre performers sometimes turn their hand to writing for the genre, and this is not the first time I've seen one of the resulting shows staged, but it's got to be the most accomplished debut I've caught. Jordan Luke Gage has been lucky enough to perform in a few outstanding musicals and Redcliffe, which he's written book, music and lyrics for as well as starring in, proves he's been paying close attention. Set across 1752-1753 in the titular area of Bristol, William Critchard (Gage) returns home for Christmas from his job as a footman at a rural mansion. He hasn't yet told his family that the return is more permanent than a seasonal holiday, as he's been let go on vague grounds of "not being quite right." Inevitably this boils down to him being quite an effete, bookish young man who's never really fit in, and whose mother (Rebecca Lock) is still hoping might meet the right girl soon.

Theatre review: Eugenius!

Since its 2016 concert debut Ben Adams & Chris Wilkins' (book, music & lyrics) musical Eugenius! has been popping up in various concerts and full stagings; I have a feeling I was planning to catch its West End transfer, but that became a lockdown casualty. But the show's become known for developing an instant cult following, so instead we now get Hannah Chissick's revival at the Turbine Theatre, which may in fairness be a better home for a comic book musical much of whose appeal comes from a likeably thrown-together feel. Set at some point in the 1980s in a generically John Hughes Ohio high school, Eugene (Elliott Evans) is a bullied geek who dreams of an intergalactic superhero called Tough Man (Dominic Andersen) and his evil nemesis Lord Hector (understudy Louis Doran) by night, and turns the stories into comic books by day.

Stage-to-screen review: BKLYN

An original offering from the stream.theatre service, Dean Johnson's production of BKLYN unearths a 2004 musical by Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson (book, music and lyrics) I don't think I'd ever heard of before; having now watched it, its obscurity is no suprise. That particular American mix of maudlin and saccharine I have no truck with, BKLYN is like Rent (a show whose success it's blatantly trying to capitalise on) without the decent songs or any attempt at coherence. A storytelling musical told by a group of homeless people under the Brooklyn Bridge, the Street Singer (Newtion Matthews) narrates the story of Brooklyn (Emma Kingston,) a young French girl whose mother (Sejal Keshwala) commits suicide when her American father never returns from the Vietnam War. Brooklyn returns to the city she was named after to become an overnight singing superstar, but this is just a coincidental sideline to finding her lost father Taylor (Jamie Muscato.)