Theatre review: The Producers

The last show I was able to reschedule from my most recent bout of Covid is the Menier Chocolate Factory's revival of The Producers, now settling into a West End run. I was a fan of Mel Brooks' film long before Brooks (book, music and lyrics) and Thomas Meehan (book) adapted it into a musical, saw the original West End production and have listened to the songs many times over the years, so this was one of those cases where I was looking to see if Patrick Marber's production would do something new with a show I was already very familiar with. In the end Marber doesn't attempt any kind of reinvention but offers up a solid version that hits all the classic comic notes. Max Bialystock (Andy Nyman) is a Broadway producer who was once, he insists, a success, but in recent years his career has consisted entirely of him acting as an unlikely gigolo to wealthy old ladies, who fund his invariably disastrous shows.

Theatre review: The Time Traveller's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 fantasy romance The Time Traveller's Wife has been so popular it's already been given multiple screen adaptations, in an apparent contest to see how many times you can do a story revolving around a lot of male nudity without ever showing cock. Now it's the, somehow simultaneously inevitable and utterly unlikely, musical theatre adaptation: Lauren Gunderson (book,) Joss Stone & Dave Stewart (music & lyrics) and Kait Kerrigan (additional lyrics) take on the story of a naked man who grooms a young girl over a period of several years, and then his feet fall off. Librarian Henry (David Hunter) meets Clare (Joanna Woodward,) who does papier-mâché professionally, in a library when they're in their twenties, but she already seems to know a lot about him, including his supernatural secret.

Theatre review: The Life

I would consider Sharon D. Clarke to be a fairly big name, certainly in London theatre circles, so it's a bit of a coup for Southwark Playhouse that she's starring in their latest musical. But then Clarke seems like the kind of actor who'll choose roles based on how much she likes them rather than how starry they are, whether it's panto or an ageing hooker in an ensemble piece like The Life. If Guys and Dolls is the classic musical about Broadway's past as one of New York's seediest streets, then Cy Coleman (music) Ira Gasman and David Newman's (book and lyrics) musical catches up with it a little while before it gets cleaned up and tourist-friendly, and finds it more dangerous than ever. It's 1978* and almost every character we meet is either a prostitute or a pimp; Vietnam vet Fleetwood (David Albury) currently only pimps out his own girlfriend Queen (T'Shan Williams) as they save up to get away from New York and make a new start.

Theatre review: Lost Boy

There was a lot of Peter Pan around last year, and as 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, there's going to be a great deal of theatre coming up commemorating it. The two years' themes come together as the Finborough is first out of the gate with its "THEGREATWAR100" series: Phil Willmott has imagined a Peter Pan who not only grew up but, like the Llewellyn Davies boys who inspired him, ended up fighting in the French trenches. Faced with orders to lead his men into yet another pointless bloodbath, George Llewellyn Davies retreats into a fantasy where it's his childhood hero who has to fight instead. Drawn from Neverland by the feeling that there's an awfully big adventure going on in Europe, Peter (Steven Butler) arrives in London to find Wendy still saving herself for him, and with the help of the Lost Boys finds out what sort of thing a woman expects from a grown man.