Theatre review: The Human Body

Plays can take a while to go through development and writing and get to production, often ending up with similar ideas making it to the stage at the same time. I wonder if it was the sound of people banging pots and pans every Thursday night four years ago that now gives us a batch of plays about the founding of the National Health Service? I didn't have any particular preconceptions about how Lucy Kirkwood would take on the subject, but it certainly wouldn’t have been something quite as camp as the Donald and Margot Warehouse's The Human Body turns out to be, filtering the birth of the NHS through Brief Encounter. It's 1948 and Dr Iris Elcock (Keeley Hawes) juggles being a GP with being a local Councillor, prospective MP in an upcoming by-election, and right hand woman to a Labour MP (Siobhán Redmond.) She's also a wife and mother, although despite her reassurances to the press that she's also the perfect housewife this is a role she's less of a natural in.

Theatre review: Disney's© Aladdin®

When the Lyric Hammersmith took the frankly bizarre step of not only announcing but also putting on sale their 2016 pantomime when their 2015 one had barely opened, I couldn't help wondering if they were getting in quick before Disney© came to town, in case they announced that Aladdin® would henceforth be theirs and theirs alone to stage. After their films of Beauty and the Beast™ and most successfully The Lion King™ became stage shows, I did wonder why the 1992 Aladdin® was taking so long to join them, as it always seemed very innately theatrical to me. It finally has and now comes over to the West End, with the cartoon's well-loved original songs by Alan Menken©, Tim Rice^DAME and the late Howard Ashman© joined by a few new numbers* from Menken with lyrics by Chad Beguelin™, who also provides the book. Although it's years since I saw the film it's one of my favourite Disney© cartoons so I've seen it a lot of times, and can tell this stage adaptation sticks pretty close to the script.

Theatre review: Dinner with Saddam

Children's author Anthony Horowitz has a fondness for playing in other people's sandpits - he's written Sherlock Holmes novels and recently gave James Bond a sassy gay friend - and now he turns playwright. The subject is his enduring anger over Tony Blair and George W Bush's military action in Iraq, and he's attempted to confront it with shocking comedy - well, "shocking" is definitely a word you could use. Dinner with Saddam is an attempt at a farce based on the true fact that Saddam Hussein would sometimes appear unannounced at the home of one of his subjects; ostensibly to show solidarity with his people, though it didn't hurt that it meant the US army didn't know where he was so couldn't blow him up. In 2003 Ahmed (Sanjeev Bhaskar) and his wife Samira (Shobu Kapoor) are bickering over the lack of fresh food and water, the broken toilet and their daughter's impending marriage, when it's announced Saddam (Steven Berkoff) will be joining them for dinner.

Re-review: Urinetown

When I first saw Jamie Lloyd's production of off-Broadway musical Urinetown back in March, I thought Soutra Gilmour's too-large-for-the-St James set indicated that a West End transfer was planned; but I also thought it would always be a hard sell there. Both proved true: It's currently playing at the Apollo but has recently shaved a couple of weeks off its run to accommodate the incoming My Night With Reg transfer next year. You can read my original review of Urinetown here; I enjoyed it at the time but probably wouldn't have made a return visit if there hadn't been a very good discount deal at the Last Minute. It turned out to be worth the revisit though, partly thanks to some central recasting. And no, although Nathan Amzi is good as the new Officer Barrel, it's not him I mean.