Theatre review: Out There

While Elliot Davis and James Bourne's first stage musical, Loserville, was unfairly maligned by the press, it's also true that it felt like it had gone too big too quickly with a West End run, and it did a lot better a couple of years later as a fringe show. So it's back to the Union Theatre (albeit in its new location across the road) and to director Michael Burgen that they return for the first outing of their sophomore effort. On the evidence so far, Davis & Bourne's niche is a British take on Americana: After the high school antics of Loserville we have the space race, dysfunctional fathers and sons, and a brash stranger finding redemption in a small town and saving it in the process, in Out There.

Theatre review: Loserville

It's barely more than two years since James Bourne and Elliot Davis' amiable teen musical Loserville took an early bath at the Garrick, and already it's back to make its fringe debut. Even with a big budget behind it the show had the feel of being cobbled together from old yoghurt pots and sticky-back-plastic - perhaps one of the qualities that baffled many of the critics and made them take so violently against it - so this lo-fi aesthetic means it translates well to a smaller scale in Michael Burgen's production at the Union. It's set in 1971 and follows the template of every American High School movie, as Michael Dork (Luke Newton) and his friend Lucas (Jordan Fox) obsess over computers, and hope to find a way to send messages between them - what will eventually be known as email. It's only when geeky girl Holly (Holly-Anne Hull) joins the school though, that they start to make real progress.

Theatre review: Loserville

It's all looking very retro at the Garrick at the moment, as it may be playing host to a new musical, but Elliot Davis and James Bourne's Loserville is set in 1971, while there's something of the Starlight Express to Francis O'Connor's neon microchip of a set. Though a British musical, this is very much the classic American high school story, as Michael Dork (they... they know what that word actually means, right?) and his Star Trek-loving friends spend their time in the school's computer room, steering clear of the popular kids. When a similarly geeky girl, Holly, arrives at the school, Michael not only gets a romantic interest on his wavelength, but also an ally who can help with his attempt to make computers send messages to each other: He essentially wants to invent email, and get there before the big computer corporation up the road does.

Theatre review: Soho Cinders

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This review is of the penultimate preview performance.

Soho Cinders is a long-gestating project from Stiles and Drewe, the songwriters behind last year's Betty Blue Eyes and the new songs in Mary Poppins. And though musical theatre is famed for being popular with a gay audience, you can see why a show as overtly gay as this one wouldn't quite be looking at a big West End run. Instead it gets an appropriate berth as Soho Theatre, just up the road from its Old Compton Street setting. Robbie (Tom Milner) is a student whose mother died without leaving a will, leaving him at the mercy of the two stepsisters who want to get hold of the launderette that should rightfully be his to inherit. Instead Robbie has to support himself by becoming a rent boy, but he's also having a secret relationship with James Prince, a popular, engaged candidate for London mayor. (Although, how exactly it's a secret is anyone's guess; I'm sure there's less public meeting places than at the foot of the Trafalgar Square lions.)