Theatre review: Dreamgirls

Not every Broadway hit makes a quick move to the West End but Tom Eyen and Henry Krieger's 1981 show Dreamgirls taking until 2016 to make it to London must be one of the longest delays. The film adaptation a few years ago can't have hurt it finally making the trip, as it now has an enthusiastic audience ready for it, so the vast Savoy is the venue for Casey Nicholaw's production of a story set in the 1960s and '70s, about black music making a play to break out of its "specialist" niche and into the pop mainstream. Girl group The Dreams are childhood friends Effie (Amber Riley, doing this to supplement her income because her day job as a Dream Ghost doesn't pay so well,) Deena (Liisi LaFontaine) and Lorrell (Ibinabo Jack,) who sing original songs composed by Effie's brother C.C. (Tyrone Huntley.) Shifty producer Curtis (Joe Aaron Reid) convinces them to take a job as backing singers as a stepping stone to their own career.

Theatre review: Side Show

A 1997 musical with the dubious reputation of having been produced on Broadway twice and tanked both times, writer Bill Russell and composer Henry Krieger's Side Show finally arrives in the UK in the version from the 2014 revival, with additional book by Bill Condon. Based on the story of the real-life Hilton sisters who appeared in Tod Browning's Freaks, it opens with conjoined twins Daisy (Louise Dearman) and Violet (Laura Pitt-Pulford) as the star attraction in a freak show during the Depression. The show's owner Sir (Chris Howell) is also their legal guardian for life and essentially treats them as his property as well. When vaudeville impresario Terry (Haydn Oakley) visits the show he spots the twins' potential as performers, as well as the abusive situation they're in, and helps them mount a successful court case to be liberated from Sir. He does succeed in making them stars, for a while, and they also seem to find a chance at love, but their disability gets in the way of both in the end.