Theatre review: Standing at the Sky's Edge

Thanks to its original run at Sheffield Theatres, Richard Hawley (music & lyrics) and Chris Bush's (book) Standing at the Sky's Edge had barely started playing at the National Theatre when it became the most-nominated musical at this year's Olivier Awards. Both venues it's played feel appropriate: Sheffield is the city its sprawling cast of characters call home; and now one of the most famous brutalist buildings in the country is a fitting place to house another surprisingly beloved concrete structure. In fact, when Ben Stones' design puts several floors of a Park Hill Estate tower block on the Olivier stage, it blends right into its surroundings. The band gets pride of place in a first-floor flat for a musical history of one specific home, where in three overlapping timelines, three generations of residents move in - starting with steelworker Harry (Robert Lonsdale) and his wife Rose (Rachael Wooding) in 1960, when the building is brand new.

Theatre review: Pretty Woman

It's the film that made a generation of little girls write "crack whore" in their "what I want to be when I grow up" essays, so it was only a matter of time before Pretty Woman got turned into a musical. The movie's enduring popularity means that there was always going to be a ready-made audience for it, so the question was going to be whether the creatives would put in much effort, or just figure that the cash will roll in whatever the reviews say. One positive sign is that instead of the unholy union of jukebox musical and film adaptation (neither of which are necessarily a problem on their own, but together...) we've got original songs by, of all people, Bryan Adams and his long-time songwriting partner Jim Vallance. On the other hand neither of them had written for musical theatre before, which has a tendency to go one of two ways.