"Plug it up! Plug it up!" I can't have been the only one hoping
Carrie would have a
Rocky Horror-style interactive element, with the audience throwing tampons at the stage in the opening scene? No I wasn't, shush. May seems to be the month for Southwark Playhouse to get a big hit musical on its hands, but while last year's
In The Heights came from New York with Tonys attached, this year's offering has, to say the least, more of a checkered past: Michael Gore, Dean Pitchford and Lawrence D. Cohen's
Carrie has gone down in history as one of the biggest-ever musical flops. Despite a Stratford-upon-Avon run plagued by cast accidents (the blood short-circuited the radio mics, electrocuting them) it went straight to Broadway. The humiliation suffered there meant the performance rights were withdrawn for decades. So this heavily rewritten version, seen off-Broadway in 2012, is the first time it's ever been seen in London.
