Theatre review: Little Shop of Horrors

Last seen in London in 2007, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken's Little Shop of Horrors is the Open Air Theatre's main musical offering of this summer, and if it hadn't already been a must-see for me the fact that Maria Aberg is directing definitely would have tipped the scale. And although everything that's fun about the show remains, there's certain directorial touches - and one casting choice in particular - that really make the production feel like it's been looked at with fresh eyes. The 1982 musical is based on a 1960 Roger Corman B-movie, a fact nodded at by Tom Scutt's design making the stage a drive-in cinema; but as the story's set on Skid Row and everything's run down, this drive-in is long-since closed and derelict, everything is grey and lifeless, and the scenery is wheeled on and off stage in shopping trolleys.

Theatre review: In The Heights

Set among the Dominican and Puerto Rican community of New York's Washington Heights neighbourhood, Tony-winning musical In The Heights has taken a few years to make it to London, but finally does so explosively at Southwark Playhouse. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes' show follows a couple of local families, starting with the narrator-like Usnavi (Sam Mackay) who runs a grocery store and coffee shop with help from his younger cousin Sonny (Damian Buhagiar.) Their grandmother Claudia (Eve Polycarpou) is a matriarch to the whole community, which also includes entertaining hairdresser Daniela (renowned Flashclomper Victoria Hamilton-Barritt,) who is having to relocate her salon to the Bronx because the rent on her Heights place has got too high.