Theatre review: Thoroughly Modern Millie

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The press night takes place later this week.

After premiering what could well be the best new musical of the year a couple of months ago, the Landor have looked to the past for a follow-up, with a 2000 musical, based on a 1967 film, set in 1922. Thoroughly Modern Millie is something of an oddity: It does feature original songs (by Jeanine Tesori and Dick Scanlan) but these are interspersed with older songs from a variety of sources, from "My Mammy" (most associated with Al Jolson,) here performed in Chinese, to a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song, rewritten to become a boss dictating a letter to his stenographer. The stenographer in question is Millie (Francesca Lara Gordon,) who's moved from Kansas to New York to be a flapper and, in what she believes to be the most modern approach, marry for money. She identifies the suitably wealthy heir to an insurance company fortune, Trevor (Samuel Harris,) and takes a job as his secretary with complete certainty she'll soon be upgrading to his wife.

Theatre review: Princess Ida

I was due to see Princess Ida last week, but instead spent the afternoon on a District Line train stuck between stations. Although Gilbert and Sullivan aren't one of my biggest theatrical interests, I'd rather decide which shows to see or miss myself, not have TFL do it for me, so I gave it another go. And I'm glad I did - apart from anything else if a piece by writers this popular is being staged at the Finborough, you know it'll be one that's slipped through the cracks and doesn't get performed often. Although adaptor-director Phil Willmott hopes to change that - Princess Ida as written has apparently dated badly and is structured in a confusing way that puts people off. So he's given it a more linear telling of the story of Ida (Bridget Costello,) who has many suitors but, on the day she turns 21, her guardian Gama (Simon Butteriss) decides he'd much rather marry her himself. To keep her away from rivals he convinces her that men are beasts to be avoided, and she should establish a women-only university.

Theatre review: H.M.S. Pinafore

Gilbert and Sullivan aren't among my theatrical must-sees; until now H.M.S. Pinafore existed for me only as a handy distraction technique if Sideshow Bob's after you. But I've enjoyed Sasha Regan's recent revivals so this had to be worth a look. Regan's all-male productions are becoming a bit of an annual institution, but all-male G&S also finds an unlikely historical precedent in the Second World War, where POWs would put on operettas to keep themselves entertained in Stalag 383. So this latest production has a more rough-and-ready feel than usual, with a framing device that sees a group of captured airmen break into song in their bunk beds. Actually, the archive photos in the programme suggest the real POWs managed to get together costumes at least as elaborate at the Union's productions usually provide, but there's a layer of fun in having life-jackets and collars co-opted to suggest the women's dresses and brooches.