Theatre review: The Clockmaker's Daughter

Even with huge commercial musicals there's not always a guarantee you'll get a cast recording, so the odds are stacked against one turning up for a fringe show, no matter how ambitious. This unlikelihood is one that I was already feeling sad about within a few songs of The Clockmaker's Daughter, as among the many things right with Michael Webborn and Daniel Finn's new musical are songs I'd happily stick on my iPod. Set in the fictional Irish town of Spindlewood, it's an original story but with echoes of everything from traditional fairytales to more modern ones like Edward Scissorhands, as clockmaker Abraham (Lawrence Carmichael) mourns the death of his wife and decides to deal with the grief by building a replacement: Constance (Jennifer Harding) is a clockwork girl who magically comes to life, but although she does love her creator, as the title suggests it's as a father figure, not a lover. Frustrated, he forbids her from ever leaving the house.

Theatre review: Damn Yankees

The Landor reviving Damn Yankees wasn't an opportunity I was going to miss, largely because it's one of those musicals I know absolutely nothing about, but which I've always been vaguely aware of as it's such a regular pop-culture reference in US TV and film. The 1955 musical with songs by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, and book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, is inspired by the decades-long losing streak of Washington's baseball team, the Senators, while at the other end of the league the New York Yankees seemed unbeatable. Senators fan Joe Boyd (Gary Bland) is willing to sell his soul just to see his team win the pennant, and the satanic Mr Applegate (Jonathan D Ellis) also throws in the chance for Joe to be the one to win it for them: He'll be made younger and, calling himself Joe Hardy (Alex Lodge,) will become the team's new star player.

Theatre review: Meet Me In St Louis

A 1944 Judy Garland film a couple of whose songs became enduring standards, the 1989 stage adaptation evidently didn't become quite as iconic, as it's only getting its UK premiere 26 years later. I'm not huge on old-fashioned musicals but Robert McWhir at the Landor has a good track record with them so Meet Me In St Louis was a good bet for a bit of a break over Christmas. Apparently based on a number of short stories, it's evident in the rather vague storyline that follows the Smith family of St Louis over the year 1903, as they anticipate the World's Fair opening in their town the following year. Along the way the two eldest daughters fall in love, and as Christmas approaches they face the possibility of having to leave the place they were born as their father plans to move the family to New York.

Theatre review: [title of show]

A musical so self-referential it occasionally threatens to swallow itself, [title of show] chronicles its own creation. Songwriter Jeff Bowen (Simon Bailey) and book writer Hunter Bell (Scott Garnham) get wind of a musical theatre festival with only three weeks before the deadline. Without a story to hang a whole new musical onto, they decide to write about the process of writing, turning their frustrated conversations and workshops into the script and songs. Bringing in actresses Heidi (Sophia Ragavelas) and Susan (Sarah Galbraith) they end up with a quirky show that's a hit at the festival and gets a much-loved off-Broadway transfer. But this level of success leads Hunter to set his sights on a Broadway run, and the long process of trying to get the show ready for a wider audience puts a strain on the quartet's friendships.

Theatre review: Curtains

Kander and Ebb's Curtains is a fairly obscure musical by the standards of the songwriters of Cabaret and Chicago (they obviously liked one-word titles that start with "C.") It got a Broadway run in 2007 but no West End transfer, so Robert McWhir's production at the Landor, the pub theatre with a particular focus on musicals, is its UK professional premiere. A play-within-a-play, it follows the Boston run of "Robbin' Hood," a musical with hopes of making it to Broadway, but troubled not only by the unfinished songs but also by the terrible performance of the lead actress, a Hollywood starlet unable to hit her notes or remember her lines. When she suddenly drops dead at the curtain call, one problem at least is solved; but the policeman investigating insists on keeping the cast locked in the theatre until the murder is solved - and until the troublesome big number can be rewritten.