Theatre review: Sylvia

Sometimes theatre rewrites history; for instance, the official line on Kate Prince (book & lyrics,) Priya Parmar (book), Josh Cohen & DJ Walde's (music) Sylvia is that it got a short work-in-progress run in 2018, whereas the way I remember things it was sold as part of the regular season, and only had its entire run reclassified as previews when it lost its leading lady early on. In any case, when I saw it the first time I thought there was a lot about it that was promising, but that it certainly still needed a lot of work before you could call it finished. Four and a half years later enough of that work's been done for Prince's production to return to the Old Vic for its official premiere, largely with a new cast but keeping a couple of its original stars, most importantly the powerhouse Beverley Knight as the title character's mother, legendary suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst.

Theatre review: Avenue Q

It's the musical that won't go away - it was resident at three different West End theatres, then got a large-scale UK tour, a fringe debut last year and now a smaller-scale UK tour kicks off in Greenwich (its history in That New York has similarly seen it bounce on and off Broadway for years.) Anyone who's been following this blog for a while knows Avenue Q is my favourite musical and, Hamlet excepted, the show I've seen more times than any other - tonight's visit was my thirteenth. For anyone who's somehow missed the fun, Avenue Q is the story of Princeton (understudy Will Hawksworth tonight,) who moves into the titular New York neighbourhood just after graduating from college, hoping it'll be the first step in finding his purpose in life. What he gets instead is a funny, rude and touching lesson in making the best out of what life throws at him.