Theatre review: Be More Chill

Is any other country's art as disproportionately about High School as America's? You have to believe that all the angsty teens we've seen on stage and screen for decades aren't exaggerating, and it's an experience that really does scar everyone for life if so many people are willing to spend the rest of their lives telling stories about it. The dog-eats-dog race to be popular gets a sci-fi twist in Joe Iconis (music and lyrics) and Joe Tracz' (book) Be More Chill, which felt to me like an endearing mashup of Loserville and Little Shop of Horrors. Alarmingly skinny video game geek Jeremy (Scott Folan) seems happy enough with his status as a loser who'll come into his own when he gets to college, but when the bullying gets too much for him and even Christine (Miracle Chance,) the oddball girl he likes, falls for a jock (Miles Paloma,) Jeremy becomes desperate enough to try anything to become more popular.

Theatre review: SIX

The historical musical continues to be a phenomenon in the wake of Hamilton, and the good news is that however much reviewers (including me) like to compare the latest ones to the Broadway juggernaut, none of the British entries have really used Lin-Manuel Miranda as a template, each instead taking its own eccentric path. SIX is the first of the current crop to be sent back across the Atlantic – a Chicago production in the spring will be hoping to carry on to New York – and it’s hard to think of a piece of English history that’d be an easier sell to American audiences than the six wives of Henry VIII. Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’ musical played a short run at the Arts Theatre in the autumn, when I was too busy to catch it, but it’s now returned there after a national tour, and is already booking a year in advance. And it’s not hard to see why, as the publicity campaign must be getting help from enough enthusiastic word of mouth to fill the small theatre for a while.