Theatre review: Allegiance

Jay Kuo (book, music and lyrics,) Marc Acito & Lorenzo Thione's (book) Allegiance had a relatively brief Broadway run a few years ago, but its original star, the beloved queer elder and Star Trek icon George Takei, whose own family partly inspired the story, has remained a staunch supporter of the project. He's evidently been instrumental in its getting a London transfer - so much so it's been rebranded as George Takei's Allegiance for its run at Charing Cross Theatre. It's not surprising that the Japanese-American actor wants the story to be widely told, as it covers a chapter of its racist past America has been remarkably good at hushing up: I'm not sure when I first heard about the internment camps for Japanese-Americans but it must have been a couple of decades after I first learnt about the Second World War. I guess having American movies control much of the way that story's told makes it easy to leave out inconvenient facts.

Theatre review: Falsettos

Another week, another show gets embroiled in controversy - in the case of Falsettos it's over whether the long-delayed (27 years) UK premiere of William Finn (music and lyrics) and James Lapine's (book) musical engaged meaningfully with the Jewish community during the rehearsal process. Tara Overfield-Wilkinson's production has no Jewish cast or creatives, and when a show opens with a number called "Four Jews in a Room Bitching" (as well as later featuring a major plotline about a bar mitzvah, and a whole song about the cliché that Jews are bad at sports) it does seem mind-blowing to me that nobody considered at the very least having someone in the room in a consultancy role for some scenes, just to make sure the show's brash, cartoonish style didn't tip over into something insensitive.