Theatre review: Miss Myrtle's Garden

Next Bush Artistic Director Taio Lawson directs the first in his predecessor's final season of shows, and Miss Myrtle's Garden suggests we might get a continuation of some of the themes Lynette Linton's established: Not just stories that foreground queer people of colour, but also ones that take quite a literal approach to the theatre's horticultural name. Danny James King's play takes place entirely in the titular South East London garden, the pride and joy of Jamaican-born Myrtle (Diveen Henry,) but one she can't look after on her own as she gets older, with husband Melrose (Mensah Bediako) and old friend Eddie (Gary Lilburn) tending to the plants under her watchful, and generally judgmental eye. When her grandson Rudy (Michael Ahomka-Lindsay) visits and mentions that his rent is being raised again, she invites him to move into the top floor she no longer uses.

Theatre review: Legally Blonde

The Open Air Theatre launches its 2022 season with one of its trademarks, a hit Broadway/West End musical reinvented for the space; but both the choice of musical and the kind of reinvention feel like a big step forward for what can traditionally be an old-fashioned, tourist-courting venue. Laurence O'Keefe & Nell Benjamin (music & lyrics) and Heather Hach's (book) Legally Blonde is based on a novel by Amanda Brown, but more famously the Reece Witherspoon-starring film adaptation. Elle Woods (Courtney Bowman) is a wealthy Malibu girl who likes tiny dogs and the colour pink; from the start, Bowman's take on Elle is no dumb blonde, but neither has she done much to dispel the stereotype. She did graduate from UCLA, but she mainly seems to have gone there to join a sorority and nab herself a future husband.