Theatre review: Marie Curie

The latest in the West End's influx of East Asian theatre is a South Korean musical, although I'm not sure it heralds a K-Musical revolution to match the popularity of K-Pop or K-Drama - not until the genre develops as distinctive an identity to make it stand out. Jongyoon Choi (music) and Seeun Choun's (book & lyrics) Marie Curie, in an English version by Tom Ramsey (book) and Emma Fraser (arrangements & lyrics) follows Marie Skłodowska (Ailsa Davidson) as she travels from her native Poland to France, where she'll be the only female student of science at the Sorbonne. On the train journey she meets Anne Kowalska (Chrissie Bhima,) who's planning to get factory work, and will become a lifelong friend and link back to her beloved homeland.

Theatre review: The Witches

One of Roald Dahl's most popular books saw him write about an evil underground cabal he thought were secretly running the world for nefarious purposes, but fortunately on this occasion he was talking about witches. Lucy Kirkwood (book and lyrics) and Dave Malloy (music and lyrics) take on the latest Dahl classic to get the musical theatre treatment. With Lizzie Clachan's staging cutting the front of the Olivier stage off and using designs that could easily fit into a more conventional proscenium arch, the National must be hoping The Witches does for them what Matilda did for the RSC. And, notwithstanding a running time that's pushing its luck with family audiences, they might get their wish. Ten-year-old Luke (Vishal Soni, alternating with Bertie Caplan and Frankie Keita) gets briskly orphaned at the start of the story, with the Norwegian grandmother he's never met before becoming his new guardian.

Theatre review: Once On This Island

After last year’s Bring It On, youth musical theatre company the British Theatre Academy returns for a second summer season at Southwark Playhouse, the centrepiece a revival of Lynn Ahrens (book and lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty’s (music) 1990 fable Once on This Island. Taking its themes (very loosely) from The Little Mermaid and applying them to a story about the legacy of colonialism, it’s set on an island in the French Antilles divided starkly along both geographical and racial lines – there are the black “peasants,” and the white “grands hommes,” descendants of the French colonisers. Orphan Ti Moune (Chrissie Bhima) is discovered in a tree after a tropical storm and rescued by peasants. When she grows up and witnesses a car crash, she believes that the reason she was saved from the storm as a child is so that she can in turn save the driver’s life.