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.

Theatre review: Dickens Abridged

I wasn't sure if I was going to bother with Dickens Abridged, in which Adam Long of the Reduced Shakespeare Company gives the same treatment to another of England's best-loved writers. This was largely because unlike Shakespeare, Dickens isn't a particular favourite of mine, so although I'm as familiar with the broad strokes of his stories as anyone, I'm not interested enough to get every in-joke. But there was a GILT offer for the show, and there's worse ways to start the year than a bit of Jon Robyns. Not that bit of Jon Robyns - that would be one hell of a start to the year. No, he's fully-clothed as one of a five-strong cast who, through songs and sketches, do a 100-minute run-through of the life of Charles Dickens, as well as some of his best-known stories (what with all the short stories and Boz sketches on top of the novels, the show makes no claim to present the complete works.)