Theatre review: Road Show

After the rise of the Nazis in the first part of his two-show season at the Union, director Phil Willmott goes for something a bit lighter but not necessarily easier: Road Show is the fourth title, and who knows how many dozen rewrites and reinventions, for Sondheim and Weidman's attempt to tell the story of Addison Meisner, the turn-of-the-20th century architect whose style defined much of how Florida looks to this day. After their father dies, leaving them poorer than they expected, Addy (Howard Jenkins) and his brother Willie (Andre Rafig) seek their fortune in the Alaskan gold rush. Addy's hard work and determination sees their plot of land yield results, only for his brother to lose it in a card game. It sets a pattern: The drunk coke-head Willie is a schemer whose plans always seem to leave him penniless and take any number of other victims with him.

Theatre review: See Rock City And Other Destinations

One reason I don't like star ratings is that they make it hard to go into a show without preconceptions. I haven't read any reviews of See Rock City And Other Destinations but I've seen it get five stars - unfortunately they were spread across three or four different reviews. This apparent universal dislike for the piece made me go in wanting to see something in it that everyone else hadn't, but Brad Alexander and Adam Mathias' musical doesn't make that easy. The road trip is a much-loved American narrative, but one that's notoriously hard to translate to the stage. Alexander and Mathias approach this by steering in a different direction, throwing together a number of stories in which people visit a variety of landmarks. A cast of thirteen take on these little vignettes, starting with the title story in which waitress Dodi (Nancy Sullivan) has lived all her life in a town filled with "See Rock City" signs but never contemplated going there herself until a drifter (Alex Lodge) comes to her diner.