Dance review: The Car Man

For my roughly annual trip away from Dame Theatre to Baroness Dance, it's one of the Matthew Bourne ballets I've managed to miss on its numerous previous visits to London since its 2000 debut. The Car Man is based on Bizet's opera Carmen, although only musically - the story is apparently more directly inspired by The Postman Always Rings Twice. Set in a small town in 1950s America, whose economy seems disproportionately based on the auto repair and cabaret industries for a population of 375, drifter Luca (Will Bozier at tonight's performance) arrives looking for work. He makes quite an impression, seducing both the boss' wife Lana (Eleanor McGrath) and bullied young man Angelo (Harry Ondrak-Wright.) When Lana's husband Dino (Cameron Flynn) catches them, she and Luca kill him and frame Angelo for it.

Theatre review: Oliver!

After a 2024 full of shows with punctuation in the title, the West End gets the OG musical hit in 2025 with the transferring Chichester Festival Theatre production of Lionel Bart's Oliver Exclamation Mark. Charles Dickens' (Chickens to his friends) story of child trafficking, wifebeating, murder, grooming gangs, antisemitism, alcoholism and a quadruple revolve sees Oliver Twist's (Cian Eagle-Service, alternating with Raphael Korniets, Jack Philpott and Odo Rowntree-Bailly) mother die in a Victorian London workhouse giving birth to him. The child is raised there until the age of eleven, at which point he annoys Mr Bumble (Oscar Conlon-Morrey) by politely asking for a second helping of gruel and has to be got rid of. It being a century too early to sell him to a 1970s DJ, Bumble sells him to an undertaker, but soon the boy is back out on the streets.

Theatre review: The Divine Mrs S

April De Angelis' The Divine Mrs S feels, in subject at least, like a successor to Jessica Swale's Nell Gwynn: Tracing the history of the original star actresses, we're in the Georgian era but the Restoration style of theatre still rules the London stage, and a woman can be the biggest draw and a genuine celebrity - and on acting talent alone this time, without the royal connection of her predecessor. Of course, having achieved her fame without a history of gossip and scandal, she's not immune to them once she's in the public eye. Rachael Stirling plays Mrs Sarah Siddons, member of the Kemble acting family, eclipsing her brothers in talent and popularity, but subject to the fickle moods of the papers and public that plague any woman who seems to be getting a bit too popular: Over the course of the evening we see how she can't win, and at the play's opening she's been criticised for returning to work too soon after her daughter's death.

Theatre review: Manor

The world may be far from out of the pandemic woods yet, but in some parts of the theatrical landscape nature is healing: After a few months' honeymoon period, the papers have gone back to announcing that Rufus Norris has scheduled a show that will single-handedly bring down the National Theatre (a feat even Damned by Despair couldn't manage, calm down.*) The latest recipient of this dubious honour is Manor, Moira Buffini's new topical - perhaps too broadly topical - play that sets a political crisis against the backdrop of the climate crisis. Diana (Nancy Carroll) is the heir to a crumbling manor house somewhere near the coast, where she lives with her ageing rocker husband Pete (Owen McDonnell) and their daughter Isis (Liadán Dunlea). As a catastrophic storm destroys the area and threatens to flood the grounds, a number of unexpected guests seek shelter - not great timing, as Diana's just accidentally pushed Pete down the stairs during an argument, killing him.

Stage-to-screen review: Romantics Anonymous

I've more or less consigned Emma Rice to the same "I'm just never going to see the appeal" box Samuel Beckett has been sitting in, for more or less the exact opposite reasons, for years. But anything resembling live theatre is still a rarity, and Romantics Anonymous is a show that's inspired a lot of love among people whose opinion I consider worth listening to. It debuted at the Swanamaker at the tail end of Rice's notorious run at Shakespeare's Globe, and after playing at the Bristol Old Vic earlier this year it's now returned there to play to an empty theatre with the live performances streamed to computers (the platform they use, TicketCo, turns out to also have an app that works on my TV so that was better than expected.) Based on Les Émotifs Anonymes by Jean-Pierre Améris and Philippe Blasband, Rice (book,) Michael Kooman (music) and Christopher Dimond's (lyrics) musical plays out the familiar French movie trope of quirky misfits finding love.

Stage-to-screen review: Flowers for Mrs Harris

My latest virtual visit to a regional theatre is to one I've been to before in person, although not for a couple of years: Chichester Festival Theatre, and Daniel Evans' production of Flowers for Mrs Harris, which he transferred there in 2018 after a run at his previous job in Sheffield. Rachel Wagstaff (book) and Richard Taylor's (music & lyrics) musical is based on a novella by American author Paul Gallico better known as Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, which is perhaps a helpful indicator of the kind of salt-of-the-earth working-class image of a London charlady Ada Harris (Clare Burt) is. Widowed in the Second World War and childless, she has little in her life except making ends meet through the various ungrateful clients whose houses she cleans. She ploughs through stoically until one day she covers a friend's shift cleaning for a deluded minor aristocrat (Joanna Riding,) where she spots a Christian Dior dress and becomes determined to own one some day.

Theatre review: The Merry Wives of Windsor(RSC / RST & Barbican)

I'd been fully expecting the RSC to announce that Antony Sher would return to the role of Sir John Falstaff "by" "popular" "demand" when the complete works got round to The Merry Wives of Windsor, but apparently King Lear marked the First Lady's retirement from Shakespeare so instead it's another RSC stalwart who gets a crack at one of the most popular characters, albeit in his least popular appearance. David Troughton plays Falstaff in a play rumoured, somewhat dubiously, to have been commissioned by Elizabeth I herself when she wanted to see more of the breakout star of the Henry IV plays. It's this legend Fiona Laird's production takes as its starting-point, with a Terry Gilliam-style animation of the Queen demanding Shakespeare get out of bed and write her a spin-off in two weeks (a timescale that, let's face it, isn't rendered entirely implausible by much of what follows.)

Dance review: The Red Shoes

Time for one of my very occasional dips into the world of dance - this year my mum decided she'd like to be taken to the ballet for Christmas, and when she heard that Matthew Bourne had adapted a film she remembers fondly, The Red Shoes, into a new ballet that decided it. Bourne's also looked to the cinema for his music, choosing the work of Bernard Herrmann - best known for scoring Hitchcock films, although most of the music used here predates that collaboration. In many ways the story is a natural fit for a ballet as it's about ballet: Victoria Page (Ashley Shaw) is a dancer in the Ballet Lermontov who's never really caught the attention of its conductor Boris (Sam Archer,) and so has never got further than background roles. That's until prima ballerina Irina (Michela Meazza) is injured on tour.

Theatre review: The Rover, or, The Banish'd Cavaliers

Best-remembered today as England's first female professional writer (although it turns out in the 19th Century her name was a euphemism for a reet dorty hoor, society having decided that "female professional writer" wasn't actually something they were ready for yet, thanks,) Aphra Behn's most famous play is The Rover, or, The Banish'd Cavaliers. The subtitle sets the action a couple of decades before the play's writing, during the exile of the prince who would eventually be Restored as Charles II. His followers, equally unwelcome in England during Cromwell's rule, had a mixed reputation, seen by some as accomplished soldiers, by others as thrill-seekers lacking morals. Behn gives us just such a mixed picture - veering towards the latter - in her quartet of Cavaliers who end up in an unnamed Spanish town during Carnival season, and intend to make the most of its spirit.

Theatre review: 946

Although officially the new Globe regime won't see each cast double up over two plays, there's a lot of cast crossover between Emma Rice's A Midsummer Night's Dream and the family show she's brought with her from her previous company, Kneehigh, 946. Based on the novel The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips by War Horse author Michael Morpurgo, it's another in the writer's peculiar niche of children's stories about real war. War Cat 946 moves us from the First World War to the Second, and a coastal village in Devon where 12-year-old Lily (Katy Owen) argued with her father before he went off to join the war. Convincing herself she's not worried about his return, she puts all her concern into her cat Tips (puppeteered by Nandi Bhebhe,) who has a tendency to run away. The farming community gets further shaken up by the arrival of evacuees from London, including Lily's new friend Barry (Adam Sopp.)

Theatre review: Show Boat

Before Rodgers and Hammerstein were a thing there was Kern and Hammerstein, Oscar Hammerstein II writing book and lyrics for a number of shows with music by Jerome Kern, although of these only Show Boat is particularly remembered and revived - and indeed credited with creating the 20th century American musical. Daniel Evans' production from Sheffield has been quite rightly praised as it moves to London, although however stellar the production and performances are they can only go so far in papering over the many problematic elements. Starting in the 1880s and spanning approximately 40 years, Show Boat follows Magnolia "Nola" Hawks (Gina Beck) from her time as a teenager on the steamboat run by her father Cap'n Andy (Malcolm Sinclair,) which goes up and down the Mississippi every summer, stopping off at small towns and playing from their repertoire of melodrama. Nola's mother Parthy (Lucy Briers) would never hear of her daughter taking to the stage herself, but when their leading lady is chased out of town for being secretly mixed-race, she gets her chance.

Theatre review: Thirty Million Minutes

Dawn French's monologue is advertised as being neither standup comedy nor theatre but somewhere in between; essentially Thirty Million Minutes is a personal memoir that, instead of publishing, French has chosen to perform. The thirty million minutes of the title correspond roughly to her current age of 58, and the show is loosely held together by a theme of her learning how to be the things life demands of her: First a daughter and sister, then wife and mother, and later single again - before eventually and unexpectedly becoming a wife and stepmother again. The majority of her reminiscences come from childhood, growing up in an RAF family and therefore often moving around, calling places as diverse as Cyprus and Plymouth home. Discussion of her adult life also focuses on the personal and doesn't touch at all on her comedy career, although there's a few audience-pleasing offhand references to Jennifer Saunders, and photos of many of her comic contemporaries.

Dance review: Lord of the Flies

Sweaty topless dancing boys made Matthew Bourne's name when he first gender-flipped the swans in Swan Lake a couple of decades ago, and he obviously knows they still don't hurt if you've got tickets to sell. An obvious source of raging testosterone, though a less obvious choice for ballet, is a novel I studied at O'level, and I'll hazard a guess so did both the people reading this: William Golding's Lord of the Flies is rarely absent from the GCSE English curriculum. If by some chance you haven't read it, or did and have blocked it from your memory, it's the story of a group of schoolboys during World War II, who survive a plane crash that kills all the adults. Trapped on a desert island they follow very proper, English rules of behaviour led by Ralph (Sam Archer.) Until, that is, the rest of the boys realise these rules no longer apply to them, and the island descends into violence and chaos.

Theatre review: Seminar

The publicity image for Seminar shows Roger Allam throwing sheets of papers into the air, leading some people I know to be disappointed when more cast were announced, as they'd been hoping for two hours of Allam throwing paper around. Personally I was glad - after all, he needs someone to chuck the paper at. Of course, the throwing is (mostly) metaphorical, as Theresa Rebeck's play is about the ambitions, pretensions and easily bruised egos of aspiring writers. Allam plays Leonard, at one time a respected novelist, but nowadays better known as a talented and influential editor of other people's work. As a nice little earner on the side he holds exclusive writing courses, tearing into the efforts of the most promising new writers who can afford him - or go into debt to get him. Martin (Bryan Dick,) Douglas (Oliver Hembrough,) Izzy (Rebecca Grant) and Kate (Charity Wakefield,) whose vast flat they meet in, are in for the 10-week course.

Theatre review: Hysteria

Before he goes to Stratford-upon-Avon next year to take up his new position as First Lady of the RSC, Sir Antony Sher is playing Terry Johnson's version of Sigmund Freud at Hampstead. The writer also directs this revival of Hysteria which sees the psychiatrist shortly before his death, living in a large Swiss Cottage house having fled the Nazis. It's 5am when Freud is disturbed in his study by Jessica (Lydia Wilson,) an apparently suicidal young woman fixated on one particular case history the psychiatrist had documented, and which had helped him formulate his theses. She is still around, hiding in the bathroom, the next day when two more visitors are entertained: Freud's physician and friend Dr Yahuda (David Horovitch) and the artist Salvador Dalí (Adrian Schiller,) there to pay tribute to the man he credits with inspiring the surrealist movement, and perhaps even gain his approval.

Theatre review: The Empress

When did the House of Commons get its first Indian-born MP? I suspect most people wouldn't guess 1892, when Dadabhai Naoroji was elected MP for Finsbury Central, serving for 3 years. (Of course we'd already had a Jewish Prime Minister by then so perhaps a bit of diversity in the Victorian Houses of Parliament isn't that surprising.) Naoroji shows up as a supporting character in Tanika Gupta's The Empress, which shows South Asian people being a familiar sight in London long before the 1950s' wave of immigration. It opens with a ship arriving from India, two of whose passengers we'll be following: Abdul Karim (Tony Jayawardena) has been sent as a gift to Queen Victoria, a manservant to serve her breakfast. His air of superiority antagonises much of the royal family and household staff, but the Queen (Beatie Edney) is charmed by Karim, promoting him to be her "Munshi" or teacher, to teach her Hindi and about the country she's Empress of but has never visited.

Theatre review: Hedda Gabler

I've seen a fair selection of Ibsen plays in my theatregoing by now, but hadn't managed to see one of his most famous works, and what is considered one of the greatest female roles in all of theatre, Hedda Gabler. I've tried to remain unspoiled about the play, so Sheridan Smith is my first impression of what is apparently a very enigmatic character, interpreted by different people in a variety of different ways. I was perhaps expecting another Nora but Hedda is a much less straightforward figure. The much-admired daughter of a late general, out of a selection of suitors she's chosen to marry the unremarkable academic George (Adrian Scarborough.) On their return from a disastrously boring extended honeymoon, George cheerfully settles into their new life, not noticing Hedda's despondency. Feeling like she lacks control, his wife tries to wrest it back by viciously manipulating the lives of those around her.

Dance review: Play Without Words

Matthew Bourne's Play Without Words, which he first produced at the National ten years ago, gets revived for a tour to mark the 25th anniversary of Bourne's New Adventures company. Set in 1965, with a jazzy, trumpet-heavy score by Terry Davies, the show is based on Robin Maugham's The Servant and Joseph Losey's film version. Bourne's dance retelling of a story of multiple infidelities uses up to three dancers at a time to play each character: Anthony (Adam Maskell, Chris Trenfield, Richard Winsor) initially resists the temptation of housemaid Sheila (Anabel Kutay, Hannah Vassallo) but eventually succumbs, only to be caught by his manservant Prentice (Daniel Collins, Alastair Postlethwaite, Neil Westmoreland.) Prentice blackmails his boss with the information, but Anthony's fiancée Glenda (Madelaine Brennan, Saranne Curtin, Anjali Mehra) is herself cheating with a mystery man.

Theatre review: Long Day's Journey Into Night

If an actor gets too closely associated with a single role, he can end up trapped in it, and be seen as nothing more than that one part. So says Poirot, and he should know what with the little grey cells. In fact David Suchet has made sure to avoid the fate of his character James Tyrone, and his latest foray into stretching different acting muscles on stage is Anthony Page's new production of Long Day's Journey Into Night. Eugene O'Neill's play is hard work, but rewarding with it. The title gives away the structure as we join the Tyrone family in their summer house by the sea, and rejoin them several times during a day and night when a lot of harsh realities come out.