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.

Theatre review: Scissorhandz

Another day, another jukebox musical movie parody transfers from the US to London. And where I thought New York hit Titaníque's confidence in going straight for the West End was warranted, LA export Scissorhandz landing at the more modest Southwark Playhouse was probably also wise: Its underlying theme could not be more relevant to the current darkest timeline, but it's just a shame the creatives who came up with the idea couldn't follow through on its promise. Based, of course, on Tim Burton's 1990 suburban fairytale satire Edward Scissorhands - which has already inspired a Matthew Bourne ballet - Bradley Bredeweg's version ditches the "Edward" part to make Scissorhandz (understudy Lauren Jones) a non-binary humanoid creature, built by The Inventor (Dionne Gipson) out of various spare parts. But their mother dies before replacing the scissors with real hands, and Scissorhandz is left alone in her mansion/lab.

Theatre review: Bonnie & Clyde

It's a human peculiarity to take dead-eyed career criminals and turn them into heroes, celebrated by the very people whose money they've taken. But I'm not here to talk about the Jubilee parade, instead I bypassed the crowds and went to the Arts Theatre for Bonnie & Clyde, a musical I had to postpone when I got Covid in April. Frank Wildhorn (music,) Don Black (lyrics) and Ivan Menchell's (book) show flopped on Broadway but has developed a cult following since, and a concert version last year has now been developed into Nick Winston's production, its first full staging in London. During the Great Depression, West Dallas is a dead end its residents just want to get away from; Bonnie Parker (Frances Mayli McCann) dreams of becoming a famous film star, but a different kind of celebrity comes along when Clyde Barrow (understudy Barney Wilkinson) escapes from prison.