Musicals

Review/Revisited: How Wicked is ‘Wicked’ @ Apollo Victoria Telling the tale of how opposite personalities Elphaba (who might become the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz) and Glinda (The Good...

Matilda Wormwood is five.  And just had her sixth birthday.   Or rather the production of Roald Dahl's children's book Matilda adapted with enormous wit by Tim Minchin this week celebrated six years at the...

It might be too early for pantomime, but it’s never too soon to see Mel Brooks’ ingenious updating of Young Frankenstein delivered as a spoof both of the horror movie genre and of the theatricality of...

No 'turn' unstoned?  The fourteen young performers in Hair certainly give a credible impression of being out of their skulls on psychedelic substances while still managing to deliver some sharply-focused...

We should never be afraid to attack sacred cows. And when sacred cows are also cash cows we should never be afraid to kick them in their milky udders and demand to know how our National Theatre made such a...

Against the odds, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ is an energetic, sharp and witty triumph.  I say 'against the odds' because in the over-extended franchise Olympics, Adrian Mole would be in a...

The concentric hooped wooden arches framing the proscenium should give you a clue: made from the barrels scraped during the production process. There can be few writers of my generation whose ten year-old...

A ‘Privates on Parade’ for the war in the Pacific, YANK! is everything you don’t expect from the cheesy title - a cleverly-constructed and original musical about illicit gay love which avoids all the...

I’ve been trying to remember why I didn’t go to either the 1983 original or the 2006 London revival of Blondel. Especially as its central character is King Richard I of England whose heir presumptive...

This is a difficult one. I really like Annie Get Your Gun but the 1946 original was butchered in 1999 for a US revival with Bernadette Peters and most references to ‘Injuns’ excised to suit PC...