Theatre review: Guys & Dolls

After successes with Julius Caesar and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Nicholas Hytner applies the Bridge Theatre's signature promenade staging to a musical for the first time. As classic Broadway musicals go, Frank Loesser (music & lyrics,) Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows' Guys & Dolls seems to be permanently ripe for revival - its last West End run was in 2015/16. Weaving together two of Damon Runyon's "Runyonland" short stories of petty crooks and gamblers in 1930s' New York, its central event is a floating craps game organised by Nathan Detroit (Daniel Mays.) With gambling illegal, a new venue has to be found every time to keep the police guessing, and the only spot available for tomorrow night's game will cost him $1000 up front.

Theatre review: Barnum

One thing you can usually expect from the Menier Chocolate Factory is a pretty safe palate and a commercial sensibility, so it’s a surprise to see them spaff a big budget and their Christmas show on a gamble, and one that doesn’t pay off at that. Maybe it’s a reflection of Cy Coleman (music,) Michael Stewart (lyrics) and Mark Bramble’s (book) hero and his tendency to lay the big decisions in his life on the toss of a coin that’s led Gordon Greenberg’s production to cast Marcus Brigstocke in a part he has no obvious qualification for, the titular role in Barnum. The 19th century impresario P.T. Barnum was given the name (most likely by himself) The Greatest Showman, and the musical follows his earlier forays into show business (his co-founding of Barnum & Bailey’s Circus is pretty much the show’s epilogue) and his relationship with his wife Charity (Laura Pitt-Pulford,) who provides the nous behind his flair for spectacle.