Theatre review: The Devil Wears Prada

For the second week in a row Phill and I went to a show we'd had tickets to for over a year, and after that wait we can now definitively say that Elton John (music,) Shania Taub & Mark Sonnenblick (lyrics) and Kate Weatherhead's (book) The Devil Wears Prada is a thing that happened on a stage, while we were facing in its direction. Based on the novel by Lauren Weisberger and particularly the 2006 David Frankel film adaptation, it's a Ronseal musical: It does exactly what it says on the tin, no more, no less. Georgie Buckland plays Andy, the aspiring journalist who's been unable to break into the industry in the way she'd hoped, so as a last-ditch attempt somehow wangles a job many young women are fighting over: Second Assistant to Miranda Priestly (Vanessa Williams,) fearsome editor-in-chief of fashion magazine Runway.

Theatre review: Hello Dolly!

Recently-upgraded Dame Imelda Staunton finally gets to take the title role in Jerry Herman (music & lyrics) and Michael Stewart's (book) Hello Dolly Exclamation Mark: Dominic Cooke's production is another holdover from 2020, delayed even further by the leading lady's prior commitment to try and elicit sympathy for the Queen having to give up her favourite yacht. In an unusually widow-heavy Broadway classic, Dolly Levi has dealt with the loss of her husband by throwing herself into matchmaking. But after several years she's decided she's finally ready to find a new match for herself - except the man she's decided on has already engaged her services to find him someone else. Scrooge-like Yonkers shopkeeper Horace Vandergelder (Andy Nyman) is the half-a-millionnaire she'd originally matched with New York milliner Irene Molloy (Jenna Russell.)

Theatre review: La Cage aux Folles

A few years ago the original French play La Cage aux Folles played a run at the Park Theatre; now Jerry Herman (music and lyrics) and Harvey Fierstein's (book) better-known, to English-speaking audiences at least, musical version returns to London as Timothy Sheader's final production at the Open Air Theatre before he swaps it for the Donald and Margot Warehouse. It's a good cap on his time as Artistic Director at Regents Park, showcasing at it does a fresh production of a classic musical, with a lot of heart, a lot of energy, and a design (in this case particularly Ryan Dawson Laight's showstopping costumes) that would be in a lot of trouble if, say, it ever rained in summer in London. The spectacular frocks are there, of course, because the titular club is the French Riviera's premier drag cabaret.

Theatre review: The Grand Tour

Unusually for the Finborough, their first show of 2015 is running for two months rather than just one - like one of its characters, they must be optimistic about the chances of The Grand Tour, a 1979 Jerry Herman musical that has never before been staged in Europe, finding a large audience. Set in France in 1940, it follows Polish Jew Jacobowsky (Alastair Brookshaw,) who's been fleeing persecution all his life, and now buys a car to make his latest escape - except he can't drive. Antisemitic Polish Colonel Tadeusz Stjerbinsky (Nic Kyle) has a list of names he needs to deliver to London to help the resistance against the Nazis back in Poland. He can drive, but has no means of transport, so with only the country of their birth in common the two team up for a journey to freedom - stopping along the way to pick up Marianne (Zoë Doano,) the French woman the Colonel loves.

Theatre review: Mack and Mabel

The onstage preoccupation with the early years of Hollywood that's been an occasional theme this year returns with a revival of Michael Stewart and Jerry Herman's 1974 musical Mack and Mabel at Southwark Playhouse. Once again, the unforgiving space of the Vault has been given over to a musical but, perhaps thanks to the fact that he's worked there before with last year's Parade, director Thom Southerland has managed to get over the dodgy acoustics that plague the venue. Designer Jason Denvir has reconfigured the seating into a wide, shallow thrust, with a bank of seating and a curtain blocking the Vault's visually impressive double tunnels, along with their tendency to absorb every word anyone sings in there. The show charts the rise and fall of Keystone Studios through the turbulent relationship of director Mack Sennett (Norman Bowman) and Mabel Normand (Laura Pitt-Pulford,) the starlet he first discovered working at a deli.