Theatre review: Operation Epsilon

I've talked before about how similar, highly specific ideas seem to crop up on different stages around the same time, but this is a whole new level of specificity: Alan Brody's Operation Epsilon is the true story of the German nuclear scientists who were captured by Allied forces near the end of the Second World War, and held at an English country pile so that the British and Americans could ascertain just how close the Nazis had come to developing nuclear weapons. And yes, this is based directly on the men's actual conversations, recorded by the military in secret. If I sound like I'm repeating myself it's because that was also the premise of Katherine Moar's Farm Hall, which I was a big fan of when it premiered about six months ago. I guess you can blame Oppenheimer for everyone deciding the other side of the story would hook audiences.

Theatre review: Moulin Rouge!

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This is one of those Broadway-style long preview periods, with the official press being invited in on the 8th of December.

I often get songs stuck in my head when I look at what shows are coming up in my diary, and lately I've just been hearing "Moulin Rouge! Aha! Take it now or leave it, now is all we get, nothing promised no regrets!" Which is ironic, because that's more or less the only song from the last 150 years not to make its way into John Logan's jukebox musical, which puts the much-loved Baz Luhrmann film on stage with a few twists on the soundtrack. The original Moulin Rouge! gave Bohemian 19th century Paris and the titular burlesque club a doomed love story set to incongruous, anachronistic music that mainly consisted of relatively recent pop hits, and Logan's stage version does the same: Many of the most popular numbers from the film remain (so it opens with an energetic "Lady Marmalade" from the club's chorus girls,) but it's been 20 years since the original, so a lot of newer hits also get a look-in.