Theatre review: Assassins

Here's one of those shows I had huge expectations of: Assassins is my favourite Sondheim, and one of my favourite musicals full stop, but the last production of it I saw was disappointing, missing, in my opinion, most of the dark humour that gives the piece its real genius. So I was really hoping for a more successful production from Jamie Lloyd at the Menier Chocolate Factory, especially as he's assembled such an impressive cast to play nine of the people who've attempted, four of them successfully, to assassinate US Presidents. Soutra Gilmour has taken the musical's setting at a shooting gallery to give us a whole Dustbowl carnival in a traverse staging, with the seating reupholstered in lots of different colours, the words "HIT" or "MISS" lighting up after every attempt, and a bumper car in which Jamie Parker's Balladeer sits, which will eventually stand in for JFK's open-topped limo.

Theatre review: Terror 2012 - All In The Mind

There's plenty of shivers during Halloween show Terror 2012, but only because the air conditioning's been put on full in an underground room in October. This is the third year I've been to the annual mix of spooky theatre and cabaret, and the shows tend to be best described as a mixed bag: Usually there's more laughs than frights, with at least one downright terrible piece, a couple of fun ones, a couple of jumps in the dark and one piece of psychological horror that manages to send the odd chill down the spine. This year unfortunately doesn't even aspire to being hit and miss. I couldn't even call it "miss and miss," as that would suggest some attempt at least is being made at fulfilling the poster's promises, even if it doesn't succeed. But this is one of the laziest pieces of work I've seen in some time.