Theatre review: Groundhog Day

Honestly, I feel like I've been here before...

The Old Vic premiered Danny Rubin (book) and Tim Minchin's (music & lyrics) Groundhog Day in 2016, and the musical adaptation of the beloved 1993 film was a hit with critics and audiences, which we expected to see make a fairly quick transfer to the West End. Instead the producers decided to take it to Broadway first, where it hoped to replicate the success of its original limited run. Things didn't quite pan out that way - a troubled and accident-prone run fizzled out, and the show lost its momentum. Seven years later Matthew Warchus' original production returns to the stage where it began life, with original star Andy Karl coming back to the lead role of weatherman Phil Connors, and the same warm reception it got the first time.

Theatre review: Clybourne Park

I'm yet to see Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun, famous as a classic work on race in America, not to mention one of the first big successes by a black female playwright, but I am now seeing a second London production of a more recent hit directly inspired by, and set in the same neighbourhood as, Hansberry's play. I think if Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park had been written now there would be more questions asked about whether this was a male white playwright's story to tell (and there's always been a certain amount of controversy around the subject,) but when it premiered in 2010 it was a big success, even becoming that rarity: A Pulitzer winner I don't hate. And Oliver Kaderbhai's revival demonstrates why, as the bold choice to tackle America's most contentious subject with broad comedy is backed up by Norris' pitch-perfect comic escalation.

Theatre review: Ghost

Every year I like to take advantage of at least one show on the discounted ticket promotion Get Into London Theatre. This year was rather slim pickings for me, with shows I either didn't fancy or had already seen, so I settled on one of last year's big new musicals which I'd skipped at the time. Ghost has just had a cast change, its original leads having gone to the upcoming Broadway transfer, so the very buff Mark Evans plays Sam Wheat (so named because he's well-bred. No? Please yourself) and Siobhan Dillon his girlfriend Molly, while Sharon D Clarke returns to play phoney psychic Oda Mae Brown after taking a break from the role. With its huge fanbase, the movie Ghost seems like a pretty obvious commercial choice to give the big-budget musical treatment. Though the fact that Matthew Warchus' production wears its budget on its sleeve is no surprise, given the fact that the romance is surely the draw for most of the aforementioned fanbase I didn't expect the show to be quite so in-your-face. Its personality is more that of the brash Oda-Mae than its pottery-fetishising central couple, and accordingly Clarke gets many of the biggest moments, and the biggest cheers.