Theatre review: Life of Pi

Another show I've had rescheduled a couple of times over the last 18 months, the stage adaptation of Life of Pi that originated in Sheffield finally gets its West End opening. Yann Martel's novel was a huge bestseller twenty years ago and has already had a CGI-heavy film adaptation, and its fantastical story of animals on the high seas lends itself to stage spectacle - if they could figure out how. Lolita Chakrabarti writes the adaptation and Max Webster directs, but it's puppet designers Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell who ultimately make it possible. Piscine Patel, known as Pi (alternate Nuwan Hugh Perera) is an Indian teenager whose father (Nicholas Khan) runs a zoo. When 1970s politics turns violent and the family get stuck in the middle, they accept an offer from a Canadian zoo to relocate there along with all their animals. But along the way the cargo ship they're on sinks, and Pi is the only survivor.

Theatre review: Everybody's Talking About Jamie

In what must be the first West End musical to be based on a BBC3 documentary, Dan Gillespie Sells (music) and Tom MacRae's (book and lyrics) Everybody's Talking About Jamie transfers to the Apollo from Sheffield, where it's set and where it premiered earlier this year. Jamie (John McCrea) is 16 and facing pretty dispiriting careers advice from his sour-faced form teacher Miss Hedge (Tamsin Carroll,) but he's already got very different and specific plans for how to make a living: He's never really been in the closet about his sexuality but the fact that he's always liked dressing up in his mother's clothes is more of a secret; but now, realising that it can actually be a job (there's a hat-tip to "Our Lady RuPaul,") he wants to be a drag queen when he grows up, and sees no reason not to get started straight away.

Theatre review: The Infidel

As he documented in Fame earlier this year, David Baddiel missed out on his chance at becoming a millionaire writer of musicals when Andrew Lloyd Webber couldn't tell the difference between him and Ben Elton. He's making up for it now with the book and lyrics to the musical adaptation of his own film The Infidel, with music by Erran Baron Cohen. Another very silly comedy about religion, this one has a definite feel that nothing is out of bounds. Mahmud (Kev Orkian) is a minicab driver and self-styled fun guy to be around, whose son Rashid (Gary Wood) feels like he's the one having to parent his father. He's well-liked and though hardly the most devout Muslim, is quietly a believer. He has a major crisis of identity though when his mother dies and he discovers adoption papers proving he was actually born to Jewish parents. Hoping to be allowed to meet his dying biological father, he tries to learn enough about Judaism to impress the rabbi, while keeping this development from his family.