Theatre review: Here Comes J. Edgar!

With music by Peter Matz and the comedy pedigree of Harry Shearer and Tom Leopold on book and lyrics, Here Comes J Full Stop Edgar Exclamation Mark is a broadly comic attempt to satirise one of the most influential figures in shaping 20th century America: J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI for almost 60 years, but remembered as much for his fondness for wearing drag in his private life, as for the draconian policies he enforced in his public one. In an opening that fully embraces what a hokey cliché it is, Hoover (Bryan Batt) is visited on his deathbed by his younger self (Jess Pratley,) who'll take him through his life story in the form of a 1940s/'50s-style musical. As a child he's the editor of a school newspaper that publishes gossip about the staff and students, and it's an instinct that carries through to his adult life and the way he runs the country's most powerful law enforcement agency.

Theatre review: The Burnt Part Boys

Not actually about a naked barbecue, The Burnt Part Boys is an American musical set in a West Virginia coal mining community in 1962. Ten years earlier a cave-in caused the death of several miners whose bodies were never recovered; the company promised that the specific area where it happened - now known as the Burnt Part - would stay closed as a tribute, but they're now going back on their word. Jake (Tintin Chris Jenkins,) whose father was one of the dead, has followed him into the job and is now among the first who'll be sent down the reopened tunnels, but when his 14-year-old brother Pete (Joseph Peacock) finds out about it he sees it as a desecration of their father's grave. Bringing along his best friend Dusty (Ryan Heenan) he steals some dynamite and tries to break into the Burnt Part.