Theatre review: The Frogs

Director Georgie Rankcom seems to have established a very specific niche: Revivals of Stephen Sondheim obscurities that I'd previously seen at Jermyn Street Theatre, given bigger, better productions at Southwark Playhouse that still aren't enough to rehabilitate them. After Anyone Can Whistle it's the turn of The Frogs, Sondheim (music and lyrics) and Burt Shevelove's (book) short 1974 adaptation of the Aristophanes satire, expanded to a full Broadway musical by the composer and Nathan Lane in 2004. In a setting that's simultaneously Ancient Greece and the present day, the god of wine and theatre Dionysos (Dan Buckley) enlists his slave Xanthias (Kevin McHale) to help him travel to the underworld to bring back the deceased playwright Bernard Shaw: He believes Shaw's no-nonsense brand of wisdom is the solution to a modern world he despairs at.

Theatre review: The Lightning Thief

In among the Greek mythology that's been more present than ever on London stages lately is a more family-friendly version than the usual, um, complex mother-son relationships we get to dissect. Then again on this evidence Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series of YA novels are based on the idea of the Olympian gods knocking up dozens of random humans and then forgetting the kids ever existed. Add some "issues" regarding consent and you'd have 90% of the Greek myths right there. Joe Tracz (book) and Rob Rokicki's (music & lyrics) The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical is based on the first book in the series, in which Percy (Max Harwood) discovers that in his case the absent father is Poseidon, one of the three brothers who founded the Olympians, and therefore one of the three most powerful gods.

Theatre review: Then, Now & Next

With the new Elephant venue already feeling well-established, it feels like ages since I went back to the Borough building that's been Southwark Playhouse's home for the last decade (I can only take so many Macbeths, OK?) But not all the new musicals have been shipped to the new venue, and The Large premieres Then, Now & Next, a first venture into writing for current Phantom Jon Robyns, and fellow musical theatre actor Christopher J Orton (book, music and lyrics.) It is, needless to say, a lockdown project, the two actors having decided to make a more serious attempt at an idea they'd toyed with when they were in Spamalot together. The result is a low-key chamber musical about Alex (Alice Fearn) and the most serious relationships of her twenties and thirties. We meet her with Peter (Peter Hannah,) with whom she has a young son.