Theatre review: Dark of the Moon

Look, none of us are perfect, I never said I always choose which shows to see for the purest of reasons, and whomst amongst us can say they've never slowed down to look at a car crash? When I saw Stranger Things: The First Shadow a couple of years ago I assumed that the subplot about the high school kids putting on an unbelievably cheesy school play featured a deliberate parody of Twilight, all angsty teenage love between human and supernatural characters. When Dark of the Moon turned out to be a real Broadway show from 1945, which genuinely did become a school drama staple in the next couple of decades, I predicted it wouldn't be long before someone revived the real thing as a curiosity. I was expecting Howard D Richardson and William Berney's actual original play to resurface in some small scale, but instead we get a full-blown new musical.

Re-review: In The Heights

After a sold-out run at Southwark Playhouse last year, Luke Sheppard's UK premiere of In The Heights was widely rumoured for a transfer. It's taken nearly 18 months to happen, but the timing may be fortuitous - as a London audience eagerly awaits the latest Broadway smash Hamilton to make it across the pond, Lin-Manuel Miranda's earlier show is an exciting alternative, and as the limited run has already announced an extension it seems to be doing well in its new home. That home is the King's Cross Theatre, a disused platform of the train station, converted specially to house an adaptation of The Railway Children. So the show has been restaged to suit a larger, traverse stage, but Drew McOnie's memorably energetic choreography has settled in well, with a lot of the original cast also returning.

Theatre review: In The Heights

Set among the Dominican and Puerto Rican community of New York's Washington Heights neighbourhood, Tony-winning musical In The Heights has taken a few years to make it to London, but finally does so explosively at Southwark Playhouse. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes' show follows a couple of local families, starting with the narrator-like Usnavi (Sam Mackay) who runs a grocery store and coffee shop with help from his younger cousin Sonny (Damian Buhagiar.) Their grandmother Claudia (Eve Polycarpou) is a matriarch to the whole community, which also includes entertaining hairdresser Daniela (renowned Flashclomper Victoria Hamilton-Barritt,) who is having to relocate her salon to the Bronx because the rent on her Heights place has got too high.