Longer versions of reviews featured on the YouTube channel and podcast One Minute Theatre Reviews, mainly London shows and selected regional and touring productions
Tesori’s music powers a musical both funny and sad
Hampstead Theatre
⭑⭑⭑⭑
Maria Friedman & Gilli Jones in Kimberly Akimbo. Photo: Marc Brenner
Thank you, Hampstead Theatre, for letting us to see why this musical won five Tony Awards. In the UK premiere, Maria Friedman plays Kimberly, who has a rare disease that causes her to age prematurely, so at sixteen years old, she has the body of a seventy year old, and death looms over her. It sounds sad, and it is a tear jerker but it’s also funny and uplifting.
Without wanting to take anything away from the foundation provided by David Lindsay-Abair’s book, Jeanine Tesori sure knows how to build a musical. Well, we knew that already- she gave us Fun Home and Caroline, Or Change among many others. The plot benefits from a simplicity that gives the songs and the emotion they generate a chance to breathe. Lindsay-Abair’s lyrics are sometimes a little clichéd (‘When opportunity knocks, When possibility calls, Take the bull by the horns, Grab life by the balls’) but Tesori takes them on a ride that mixes heartbreak with humour, always with apposite styles of music.
There isn’t one dud or filler – all the songs reveal and advance the narrative- and there are some bangers, with soaring melodies for the cast of talented singers: a soulful Better belted out by Alice Fearn, a lovely ballad Father Time sung by Niamh Perry, and the optimistic rocker This Time. Maria Friedman sings beautifully the poignant Make A Wish.
The show is tinged with nostalgia, since the original play was written in the 1990s and set in working class New Jersey. So, there are no mobile phones, people pay bills using cheques, and kids weren’t hooked on social media. This in itself adds to the sense of lost time.
For time is ever ticking by, and a huge clock dominates Soutra Gilmour’s set which is a giant multifaceted truck. A revolve reveals the background to all the scenes and contains a three storey house. It helps director Michael Longhurst keep the pace moving and its size pushes the performers to the front of the stage, preventing the relatively small cast from being spread out too thin and keeping an intimate feel to the show.
Maria Friedman is extraordinarily good as Kimberly, behaving like a teenager while carrying the burden of her mortality. She has a sparkling smile and sadness in her eyes, and my goodness can she hit those notes that pierce your heart. Gilli Jones plays Seth, her friend and romantic interest, who is shy and inhibited by a need to be ‘good’ in memory of his late mother. His fresh open face conveys a range of emotions from fear to sincerity to affection. And he sings well. A star in the making.
Kimberly’s school friends are a foursome representing a range of teenage angst. Their insecurity about their sexuality leads to a comical circle of attraction. Ambitious to take part in a local competition as The Dreamgirls, they are desperate for money to buy costumes. They also form a chorus for some of the musical numbers. Sara Hajizadeh, Ronav Jain, Robin Simoes da Silva and Aviva Tulley combine fine singing with convincing acting. They all deserve a name check, as does casting director Anne Cooper.
Kimberly’s parents are disfunctional and self centred. Her father Buddy is a drunk who feels he has wasted his life. He is played by Peter Hannah with a delicate balance of care and negligence. Her mother Patti (Niamh Perry) is pregnant and looking forward to Kimberly being replaced by a new baby.
Alice Fearn & cast members in Kimberly Akimbo. Photo: Marc Brenner
Kimberly’s aunt Debra drives the plot with a plan for herself and the kids to make some money by scamming banks. Alice Fearn gives a bravura comic performance as the amoral criminal who corrals the kids into temptation, and provides one of the best lines in the show: ‘When life gives you lemons…You gotta go out and steal apples, ’cause who the fuck wants lemons?’, a sentiment that sums up the thrust of the story.
Having set up an intriguing situation in the first act, there are revelations and resolutions in the second. Even though there is drama, it feels risk free, so there is a certain lack of tension. Yes, Kimberly sees that she needs to take control of her remaining life but it is not quite the Wow moment it should be musically or dramatically. We are easily led to the message that we should seize the day because we won’t get the time again.
That Kimberly really doesn’t have much time left is amplified in a classic torch song Before I Go, where the usual lost love is replaced by a lost future. Ultimately it’s a character rather than plot driven musical in which we feel the pathos and humour of this inspirational woman’s situation. It also feels like it could become a classic.
Kimberly Akimbo can be seen at Hampstead Theatre until 7 November 2026. Tickets from hampsteadtheatre.com
I know you don’t expect me to be reviewing a novel on this theatre blog but I think you’ll be interested in this because a substantial part of Jack Jewers‘ gripping whodunit Seething Lane is set in a theatre at the time of the Restoration of the Monarchy. The book is the follow up to The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys featuring the famous diarist as a proto-detective.
In this mixture of fact and fiction, Sam, who was a fan of theatre (fact), spends time at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane investigating some murders (fiction). For anyone interested in theatre, the preparations for a production of As You Like It provide many fascinating insights into what went on backstage in the latter part of the seventeenth century.
Women had only just been allowed to appear on stage, and Nell Gwyn was wowing the crowds, as well as King Charles II. Sam, Nell and the King aren’t the only real people in this book, and if you know your theatrical history, you won’t be surprised at one of the revelations of Sam’s investigation.
Mr Jewers’ historical knowledge also covers London post-Great Fire and the feverish politics of the time. He wears his research lightly but it helps enormously in his evocation of life in London- the muddy streets, the primitive system of law and order, the transport (did you know you could hire a horse like you might hire a car?) and especially the bitter cold weather of the winter of 1670.
Samuel Pepys and his right-hand man Will Hewer are recruited by the King to look into the grisly murders of someone close to his son and of a mysterious second person. The son is illegitimate but controversially tipped to be his successor. This comes on top of Sam’s spying on a firebrand preacher. Inevitably, the two activities are linked, although I found the connection slightly stretched credibility. No matter, there’s plenty of intrigue and excitement- and more unpleasant deaths- as the detective team peel back the layers of a conspiracy and find themselves in danger.
This book is a pastiche of Samuel Pepys’ diary but Mr Jewers writes in a tight easy-to-read style that, while it suggests the language of the period, is never obscure or anachronistic, and always thrilling. Incidentally, Seething Lane is where Sam lives and works, and where the first murders take place.
If you’re familiar with the real Samuel Pepys, you may be surprised to find this corrupt government official, who enjoyed sexual liaisons with servants and actresses, has metamorphosed into a moral beacon who is devoted to his wife. So, he’s a fictional character based on fact, and all the better for it. Mr Jewers’ Samuel Pepys is determined, despite obstacles and threats, to uncover the truth. In doing so, he becomes a hero we admire and care about, whose adventures keep us turning those pages.
Seething Lane by Jack Jewers is published by Moonflower Book on 3 September 2026.
Roger Allam in How The Other Half Loves. Photo: Manuel Harlan
There was a time when there were five plays by Alan Ayckbourn running at the same time in the West End. That was 1975. His work is not so regularly performed these days, so it’s possible there are theatregoers who have never seen one of his plays. In which case, this is the perfect introduction. A farce about infidelity infused with deception and misunderstandings, a cast whose comic timing works with the precision of a Swiss watch, and, talking of running at the same time, a set in which two sitting rooms occupy the same space and the action segues between the two.
This production at The Old Vic takes place in the round, as it did when it was premiered back in 1969. Since it’s nearly always performed within a proscenium arch, it’s fascinating to see what a difference this makes. You really feel you’re in the thick of it, with actors entering and exiting in four different directions, front, back and sides. Rob Howell‘s set is a masterpiece of construction. He presents two sitting rooms in the same space while keeping it simple enough not to block anyone’s view,. It also evokes the late sixties and early seventies with some deft touches in the choice of furniture and costumes, including Roger Allam‘s very short shorts.
The households that are both present on stage belong to two couples- well-off Frank and Fiona, and flat dwelling Bob and Teresa. Fiona and Bob are having a secret affair. To try and keep it that way when their partners become suspicious, they both, independently, pretend that they are spending time helping someone who suspect their partner is having an affair. The two ‘someones’ are another couple William and Mary. Things start to spiral out of control when Frank and Teresa invite William and Mary to dinners on successive nights. The simultaneous view of what other characters are doing elsewhere underlines the secrets, the lies and the self deception.
Adam Gillen & Roger Allam in How The Other Half Loves. Photo: Manuel Harlan
The genius of the play is to be seen when the consecutive dinners take place on stage simultaneously with William and Mary flitting between them, culminating in an hilarious incident with flying soup.
You may know that on this website I compile roundups of critics’ reviews. Well, they all praised Roger Allam‘s performance as Frank, more than one referring to his masterclass in comic timing. I absolutely agree that there can be no-one better at the pause and the look, before pouncing with a killer line. His character is pompous but with a dimness that doesn’t live up to his image of himself as someone in charge of situations. So he puts two and two together and makes five with continuous regularity while being so absorbed in his view of the world that he doesn’t notice hat’s happening in front of him.
Excellent as he is, all the cast are to be commended for their comic timing, as is Philip Breen for directing their propulsion through time and space. Dorothy Atkinson‘s flustered Fiona is a triumph of staring looks and tight lips. Rowan Polonski moves smarmy Bob from inconsiderate to downright nasty. You can almost see the sparks coming off Ayesha Antoine‘s explosive fiery Teresa. William, an abusive husband, is given a slimy obsequiousness by Adam Gillen. Laura Elsworthy as Mary is painfully shy but so full of emotion it feels like she could explode at any moment.
Although it concerns three very different marriages, none of them entirely happy but all of them somehow rubbing along, How The Other Half Loves only looks in depth at Frank and Fiona. We can see why she might have wanted a temporary escape from the dullness of her patronising husband. Less fully portrayed are the other two couples. In both of their cases, the men are abusive and the women seem to forgive them relatively easily. More insights into the female characters would be needed if the play was written today.
As a farce, though, it’s a great night out.
How The Other Half Loves can be seen at The Old Vic until 19 September 2026. Buy tickets directly from the theatre www.oldvictheatre.com
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Cleansed is a play containing a lot of scenes of torture. In fact, if you see it, you might feel you’ve been tortured yourself, at least mentally. The trigger warnings issued by The Almeida Theatre read like a litany of everything that could possibly cause upset: Torture, murder and violence, including sexual violence, Depictions of sex and nudity, Drug abuse, Depictions of suicide, Homophobic language, Misogynistic language, Blood.
Oh yes, there’s a lot of Kensington Gore or whoever makes stage blood these days. And no explanation of why, where or who. But this is a serious work by a talented playwright, not out to shock for the sake of it. Sarah Kane, who sadly committed suicide a few years after writing it, claimed that Cleansed could only be done in a theatre with no mediating by TV or film censors. It’s just them on stage and us in the audience. Except, thirty years on, I doubt any of the incidents that take place on this stage would be censored in an 18 certificate film. Ironically, this production’s director Rebecca Frecknall has censored it quite a bit.
Nevertheless it is still more potent as theatre than it would be on screen because we are present in the same space as the actors, who use their own voices and bodies, to communicate directly with our senses to stir our imagination. And the power of imagination is where theatre scores every time. This is especially so when stimulated by Sarah Kane’s beautifully constructed play and spare, lyrical writing.
‘Cleansing’ has a specific meaning in religions, particularly the Catholic one, where immorality needs to be cleansed. Also, we have witnessed too often in our own lifetimes attempts at ‘ethnic cleansing’. Only four years prior to the premiere of Cleansed, the Rwandan Civil War had taken place, in which the Hutus in power tried to wipe out Tutsis completely, and murdered up to a million people including fellow Hutus who opposed them. The play takes to the extreme the way moral disapproval or disagreement can spiral into punishment and elimination.
She knew that the torture and, for some, the sexual relationships would be shocking. Her first play Blasted had been described by Daily Mail theatre critic Jack Tinker as a ‘disgusting feast of filth’. Perhaps to counter this way of dismissing her work, she incorporated many echoes of previous respected plays and other works, some of which I’ll mention.
In this play, we meet a number of what you might call transgressive people. There’s a homosexual male couple- and this play was written when there were still restrictions on gay relationships that didn’t apply to heterosexual ones. Even today gay people in the UK don’t feel entirely safe. Elsewhere, including that influencers’ and holidaymakers’ paradise Dubai, same sex relations are illegal. In the UK’s great ally Saudi Arabia, the death penalty still applies.
We meet a brother and sister, Grace and Graham, who are or were in an incestuous relationship, something still illegal in the UK. It didn’t end well for a similar relationship in John Ford’s 17th century play ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, nor does it here. The line ‘Love me or kill me’ which Grace says to Graham is a direct lift from it.
Completing the victims, Robin is a submissive transvestite; and a character described as Woman, who performs in a peep show, would seem to be a sex worker.
The play is set in a place said in the script to be a university but it bears all the hallmarks of a secret prison or asylum. Madeleine Girling‘s set is an anonymous grey. If it is a university, this may be a humorous reference to the re-education taking place under the tutelage of a man called Tinker. (Probably not coincidentally the name of the aforementioned theatre critic.) He is played by Leo Bill as a seedy and creepily unpleasant psychopath but with hints of anxiety. He sets about punishing the inmates, for want of a better term. The gay couple promise love to each other, although the heart-on-his-sleeve naive Carl, played by a wide-eyed Luke Cinque-White, is far more certain of his commitment than Parth Thakerar’s Rod who settles for love in the here and now. Thus, it is Carl who undergoes one ‘correction’ after another, his tongue removed to stop him talking about love, his hands to stop him writing about it, and more. That’s a straight steal from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, and there’s further scene that echoes the red hot poker fate of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward the Second.
Ms Kane seems to be reminding us that there’s nothing new in the horrors of the world, nor the challenges that authors present to audiences and directors in portraying them. Carl does betray his lover, and here there are echoes of George Orwell’s 1984, another story of the intolerance of totalitarianism.But it is Rod who pays the ultimate price when he realises that his love is deeper than he realised.
Graham, the brother in the incestuous couple, played by Jack Riddiford, dies at the very beginning of the play in a scene that sets the tone for the evening. He begs to end it all and is injected by Tinker with a drug in the eyeball. But he remains on stage as someone in the imagination of his sister, Grace. This is a clue for some that the play is a dream, or series of dreams. It’s a possible interpretation and one that was leaned on in the National Theatre production of 2015, but I don’t think we should give in to our need to understand and explain. There’s no plot in Cleansed, and no need to try to find one. Rather than a dream, Cleansed seems to offer a metaphor, floating outside the confines of narrative or plot, for the price of love, the pain it causes in a loveless world.
The Kinks’ Days is played at one point which I assume is significant for its lyric: ‘though you’re gone, you’re with me every single day, believe me’. We also hear Handel’s Water Music throughout, as if art is neutral in the battle between love and hate. Only Angus MacRae’s repetitive background sound picks up the menace.
Grace, who is played with passion by Pearl Chanda, arrives asking for her dead brother’s clothes. She is introduced to Robin, who is wearing Graham’s clothes. Both are made to strip off and put on each other’s clothes. I think the nudity here is meant to prove she is a woman, since she subsequently identifies with her brother, first seeing her and him as one, and ultimately seeing herself as him. Shades here of Viola’s adoption of her brother Sebastian’s persona in Twelfth Night,, and of Cathy’s exclamation ‘I am Heathcliff’ in Wuthering Heights. Grace is submitted to a number of horrible humiliations, including rape, and eventually a possibly logical but not necessarily welcome surgery.
Robin, played with sensitivity by the Stuart Thompson, falls in love with Grace, and is punished for that. Grace tries to teach him to read. Tinker burns the books. Book burning has gone on through the centuries when authorities have wanted to eliminate opposition, immorality or whole cultures. In the 20th century, the Nazis burned books by Jews and left wing writers.
Love is tested, and characters are punished for their love, but it survives until they die. Flowers, first a sunflower, then a field of daffodils represent a world of beauty.
Tinker himself is susceptible to feeling love, although in his case it manifests as lust which he cannot satisfy. Every so often he makes a peep-show dancer called Woman, played by Lizzie Connolly, perform for him while he masturbates unsuccessfully. She says her name is Grace and eventually takes advantage of his lust by showing him her breasts, saying she loves him, and having sex with him, even though she is probably exploiting his weakness in order to escape.
So, how does Rebecca Frecknall handle the violence? She starts with two explicit events- the injection in the eyeball, and the cutting off of a tongue. This serves to put us on edge as to what might happen next. What does happen is that she moves much more towards suggestion. I do see the difficulty of making torture on stage convincing, without distracting us into thinking ‘how did they do that?’ or ‘that wasn’t very realistic’. What Ms Frecknall does is go all symbolic. So hands and feet are not prosthetics that are actually cut off. Instead, these bodily extremities remain attached and are simply soaked in blood. A castration is so symbolic, you might not even realise what was happening.
The characters are beaten up, hurled against walls, or sexually assaulted. Their attackers are invisible and the actors mime their reactions. Ms Frecknall makes this beautiful and balletic but not particularly upsetting. Rats, a prominent feature in the script, don’t make an appearance although we do hear them.
Maybe Sarah Kane would have approved of the violence becoming beautiful. After all, she went on to say after writing, and even performing in it: ‘I’m past violence – I’m really sick of it.’ She did go on to write less violent plays but my impression is, she intended this play to make us confront the violence in ourselves, not skirt around it. To look squarely at what we as humans are capable of. And what we as individuals fear: the point at which we might cause violence to others, even someone we love, to save ourselves. For me, Rebecca Frecknall’s interpretation toned it down too much.
Cleansed’s representation of evil and the fight for love does lack subtlety. Personally I find the less explicit plays of Harold Pinter more menacing and more effective in their explorations of intolerance and domination. Even so, Cleansed is a well constructed piece of theatre from a playwright who had much insight into our world of hate and love.
Cleansed can be seen at The Almeida Theatre, London, until 29 August 2026. Tickets from https://almeida.co.uk
She Did It! Rachel Kavanaugh’s production and newcomer Keziah Ibe’s Eliza hit the right notes
Chichester festival Theatre
⭑⭑⭑⭑
Keziah Ibe & Hadley Fraser in My Fair Lady. Photo: Johan Persson
Let’s start at the beginning. Except, where is the beginning? The overture is missing! I love an overture. It sets the mood and fills you with anticipation.
But it seems churlish to complain when Rachel Kavanaugh‘s production plunges you straight into the uplifting story of an impoverished cockney flower seller called Eliza Doolittle. She soon encounters and confronts Professor Henry Higgins, an expert in phonetics. The musical establishes their characters from the get-go, so we the audience glimpse from the start the quality of the two stars on which the musical stands or falls.
Higgins is entitled, lacking social skills, self centred, insensitive and misogynistic but in Hadley Fraser’s hands, this is leavened by his child-like enthusiasm. He’s often shown in production as stiff and distant but here his sheer bullheaded enthusiasm- and Groucho Marx-like postures- make him more loveable than expected.
Eliza is feisty and ultra aware of her inferior position in society. Keziah Ibe, making her theatrical debut, gets the mix right. And she nails the first big song of the night Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? That’s a relief because a lot of big songs are coming her way, which she goes on to sing beautifully and with expression.
So it’s game on as Higgins and his friend Colonel Pickering set about transforming this ‘squashed cabbage leaf’ as he calls Eliza into a Lady. It’s worth noting that Eliza initiates the process by offering to pay for lessons- an entrepreneurial move that flies in the face of Higgins’ sexist views, as expressed in Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?
This is the first time 60 year old Chichester Festival Theatre has presented My Fair Lady. So how do the open spaces of the huge thrust stage with no capacity to fly in scenery convey the spectacle? Not with big sets. The lavish Embassy Ball at which the transformed Eliza triumphs is represented by, in effect, a few standard lamps, the ‘street where she lives’ is two lengths of iron fencing, Ascot Races an empty stage. The Chichester ‘wow’ factor, picking up from the musical’s use of the ensemble to provide a kind of Greek chorus, is to fill the stage with people.
So we have Gary Milner as Eliza’s dustman father Alfred P Doolittle leading an exuberant chorus of around twenty through Stephen Mear’s complex choreography in With A Little Bit Of Luck and I’m Getting Married In The Morning, as well as a more restrained but still impressive circle of racegoers. It’s not completely sparse of scenery. There is one magnificent set, namely Henry Higgins’ study. Designer Peter McIntosh has created a massive truck that sweeps on and off stage, full of cluttered corners and different levels for the actors to weave and jump through.
It’s easy to understand why some consider My Fair Lady the perfect musical. Lerner and Loewe‘s songs consistently reveal character or advance the narrative, possibly even more so than those of the great Rodgers And Hammerstein who invented the modern musical. And they’re nicely played by a small orchestra under Cat Beveridge.
Keziah Ibe performs the songs with great eloquence. Her high point is also the apex of the musical itself, the moment when she is so excited at getting the pronunciation right in The Rain In Spain. It’s a moment of euphoria for Higgins, Pickering and Eliza that leads her into the incomparable I Could Have Dance All Night.
There is also a lot of dialogue, perhaps this was because Lerner, who wrote the book as well as the lyrics, wanted to give due respect to George Bernard Shaw‘s socialist message in Pygmalion, on which the musical is based. There’s a lot of conversation about class divisions and the importance of language as a marker of class: Shaw’s point being we’re all people with the same qualities and faults under our disguises. So you need good actors, which this production has assembled in spades.
A loverly production
Gary Milner & company in My Fair Lady. Photo: Johan Persson
In the end, Eliza undergoes more than a superficial transformation. She realises there is more to happiness than a romantic husband and a ‘loverly’ room. And she has learned from those around her that there is more to class than how you speak. From Colonel Pickering, well played by Tony Jayawardena, she learns politeness and respect, although he is shown to be a bit of a dunderhead. From her father, she acquires cynicism. From Higgins, she not only acquires received English but the value of being honest to oneself and others. She also learns what she doesn’t want when she is courted by the full hearted but empty headed Freddie, nicely played by Ben Culleton. He performs On The Street Where You Live. It’s my favourite song from the musical even if it is, as the programme points out, evidence that ‘his head is too much in the clouds’. I guess I’m an old romantic.
Eliza also observes the women in Higgins’ life as a model for dealing with him. His housekeeper Mrs Pearce and his mother, given strong, humorous portrayals by Finty Williams and Belinda Lang respectively, maintain a balance between loving him and being honest with him.
Eliza initially leaves because she feels unrecognised for her achievement. (Higgins and Pickering take all the credit in the song You Did It, behaving as so often like two little boys). Ultimately Eliza recognises he can’t help being what he is, but, more than that, he has a depth of character that the featherweight Freddie or the pliant Pickering haven’t. Most importantly, in this production, it is clear she realises she wants to be with him as an equal.
For his part, Higgins seems more stuck in his ways and shows less development, but he learns to feel love for another person, or as he puts it, I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face. Hadley Fraser delivers the song with great poignancy from the front of the stage, despite the difficulty of bringing emotion to songs that are virtually spoken, this in deference to the non-singing Rex Harrison who first played Higgins. Rex? Forget him. Hadley takes the crown.
As a love story, it’s highly unlikely and potentially offensive to feminists. The problem is exacerbated because the coming together of Higgins and Eliza was not the climax intended by Shaw. Quite the opposite: the professor was to be left a sad and sorry man by the newly independent woman. However, Rachel Kavanaugh, supported by her fabulous cast, makes it work by avoiding extreme portrayals and emphasising friendship and respect as the basis for their relationship. Well done, Ms Kavanaugh, You Did It!
Tour-de-force from Russell Tovey in nerve-shredding drama
The Donmar Warehouse
⭑⭑⭑⭑
Russell Tovey in The Guilty. Photo: Helen Murray
It’s an on-the-edge-of-your-seat thriller. It’s a pull-the-rug-from-under-your-feet whodunit. Most of all, The Guilty is a grab-you-by-the-throat triumph for Russell Tovey.
It’s already a tense atmosphere in the Donmar because nobody is more than four rows away from the stage. Whatever is going to happen, it will right in our faces and in real time. And we know the director Felix Barrett is a master at shock and suspense- he directed Paranormal Activity as well as many a spooky immersive production from Punchdrunk.
There’s one claustrophobic set. And one actor. Joe, played by Russell Tovey, sits at a desk in the middle of the night taking police emergency calls. The rest of the room is in semi-gloom with two desks at the back shrouded in dust sheets. An overhead fluorescent tube flickers, pin prick red lights flash to flag emergencies. Frankly, I was so riveted by Tovey, I hardly noticed the rest of Alex Eales’ set, but I can say it was pretty gray and decidedly spooky. Credit too to Gareth Fry’s sound design and Anna Watson’s lighting.
Joe appears to be on this light duty, and I use the word ‘light’ advisedly, away from both his colleagues and what he might regard as real police work because he has been accused of doing something wrong. He faces a hearing the next day and is clearly upset. But is he guilty? If so, of what? We wait to find out while he takes annoyingly trivial calls.
If he’s had any training in customer service, it’s clearly forgotten or subsumed by his current problems. For example, he receives a complaint about music from a neighbour: ‘Get some f—-ing ear plugs’, he responds angrily. He’s a man on the brink but will something tip him over? We’re already feeling stressed.
We hear the people at the other end of the phone- the callers, the colleagues he needs to investigate reports, his colleague who is giving evidence in his favour, his estranged daughter and wife. Then he gets a call that sets a crisis in motion. A woman, speaking quietly and in code, tells him she has been abducted in a van. Not only that, her young children are left alone at home. Joe instigates a chase, while undertaking an unofficial remote investigation of where she is and who has taken her.
He seems to have a desperate need to be a hero, the powerful man who will save the day .
Russell Tovey in The Guilty. Photo: Helen Murray
He obtains a telephone number and is able to talk to the woman’s daughter. Like us, he constructs a story of who is guilty, and of what, around what he is hearing and what may be missing from the conversations. It feels like this opportunity is just what he needed, to help him feel good about himself.
Thanks to Russell Tovey’s extraordinarily committed performance, we feel his frustration, his anger, his panic. We are carried along with him, passengers on an unstoppable rollercoaster that is leading to a potentially tragic conclusion.
There’s no time to consider whether some of Chloë Moss‘s script may not add up (would he really be on his own, or even doing this kind of work?). You’re right in the thick of it and the stress is unbearable. Your fingers are clamped to your seat, you can feel your perspiration. When the climax arrives after quite a few twists, you are wrung out.
Only for there to be one more revelation, of a more theatrical nature, which may or may not suggest this was all in his head- a dream or a fantasy in which he hoped to redeem some of the guilt he feels. But that’s only one of many possible interpretations of this taut thriller. What is indisputable is that Russell Tovey gives a tour-de-force in a drama that could only take place in a theatre.
Stephen Mangan & Janie Dee in The Truth. Photo: Johan Persson
What can I say about The Truth? No, I mean, literally, what can I say about this comedy by Florian Zeller without it being a spoiler. I can describe the first scene to you. After that, twist follows revelation follows surprise, so much so that to say anything may be to say too much. What I can tell you is that the four actors are fabulous and funny.
So, in the first scene, we find Michel played by Stephen Mangan in bed with Alice, played by Sarah Hadland. They are having an affair. It turns out Alice’s spouse Paul is Michel’s best friend, and her lover seems more guilty about betraying her husband than his wife. In fact, he seems to think it quite normal to be commit adultery.
Six more scenes follow in which Michel meets each of the other three one at a time. In these amusing confrontations, truth sometimes seems like a lie, sometimes is a lie, and sometimes what seems like a lie turns out to be true. The second scene sets the pattern. Michel is with his wife Laurence, played by Janie Dee, who seems suspicious about what he might be up to. He gets more and more tied up in his casual lies, and stutters his way into further deceits. Even after an hour and a half without interval, some questions of what is true and what is a deception are left hanging deliciously for us to chew on as we leave.
Zeller’s companion piece The Lie, that followed The Truth a few years later and featured what appear to be the same characters, explores the notion that deception makes the world go round and truth brings it to a halt. But that’s a more serious play. This is out-and-out comedy, written before Zeller got into ‘reverse theatre’ in a big way, causing us to question truth and reality by showing us scenes from various subjective perspectives, something that reached the height of confusion in his latest play on the subject of adultery The Forest.
Without the later plays’ theatrical trickery, the thin plot is exposed. While the many twists are funny, the play relies on its lead actor to do the heavy lifting as far as the laughs are concerned. Fortunately, in Stephen Mangan, the production has a player made for the part. Unfortunately, and not his fault, his blustering becomes repetitious, and there is no character development to offset the monotony. – no sense of a lesson learned or an issue resolved.
The fun is in what the characters say and don’t say, and how they react to what they’re told. And in an extension of that, how we as an audience react knowing what we think we know, and then finding out we didn’t know after all.
Perfect casting
Ardal O’Hanlan & Stephen Mangan in The Truth. Photo: Johan Persson
The casting is perfect. Stephen Mangan is like a naughty child, crashing into situations his own constructions like a toddler learning to walk, shouting as way of defending himself, and even at one point sitting sulkily in the corner with a big bottom lip. He not only doesn’t listen to others, he doesn’t listen to himself, being so self-centred that he cannot see the hypocrisy of being outraged by the betrayal of his friend deliberately losing at tennis, but oblivious to the upset caused by the revelation of his betrayal of wife and friend. Janie Dee’s facial expressions are quite brilliant: a slight widening of her eyes becomes as revelatory as a whole speech. Ardal O’Hanlan as Paul quietly hides behind his neat beard, displaying a tight smile and a penetrating look that could be concealing either a secret or a feeling. Even Sarah Hadland‘s emotive Alice appears to have something up the sleeve she seems to wear her heart on.
In Lizzie Clachan‘s set design, hotels, a changing room, and sitting rooms all look similarly anodyne- there is even a joke about hotel rooms looking the same- suggesting an emptiness to these characters’ lives.
There is a familiarity about the creative team. This is an excellent translation by Christopher Hampton, who has brought seven of Zeller’s plays to English speaking audiences, including most famously The Father. Director Lindsay Posner has previously directed The Truth and The Lie at The Menier, and we should probably be thankful that he moves the production with such a pace that we have no time to dwell on the some of the more unlikely or more repetitive elements of the plot.
The Truth is a straightforward play compared with Zeller’s other hits, although you can argue that it m akes some profound points about the importance of deception to human society. It may also have become more relevant in an age of media and of leaders who give equal weight to lies and truth.
Adrian Lester as Cyrano is funny, lyrical and tragic, often all at once
Noel Coward Theatre
⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑
Adrian Lester as Cyrano de Bergerac. Photo: Marc Brenner
I have rarely enjoyed a night as good as this in a theatre. This new adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac first seen in Stratford and now in London pays homage to the language of poetry, and provides a uniquely theatrical experience. Best of all, it features a performance by Adrian Lester to rank among the greats. He is funny, lyrical and tragic, often all at the same time.
I last saw him as Othello in 2013 at the National Theatre, when he won an Olivier Award for Best Actor, and I don’t believe he’s been in a fully staged play in the UK since. Which is a loss to those of us who love great acting.
It was his idea, apparently, to play Cyrano de Bergerac. And you can see the attraction: an awesome anti-hero possessed of supreme swordmanship, a quick wit and a poet’s passion for language, but cursed with a tragic flaw- he is convinced his large nose makes him an unattractive laughing stock.
Of course, the story of a man who is so self loathing that he cannot declare himself to the woman he loves and instead woos her through a proxy has become one of the most familiar in the world since it was written by Edmond Rostand at the end of the 19th century. Thankfully, this adaptation doesn’t attempt to modernise the narrative. In fact it sticks pretty closely to the original, even to the setting in 17th century France. What makes it special is the translation into modern poetry by Simon Evans, who also directs, and Debris Stevenson, poet and author of one of my favourite recent musicals Poet In Da Corner. She was brought in to provide the actual poems within the play but she has clearly contributed to the whole script with a dazzling display of wordplay.
Just as the original play was written in verse, so much of the dialogue is here is based on classical poetic metres, but each character has his or her own rhythm and use of language. I can’t convey to you how well this is done. but here is a sample of the verse. Cyrano talking as he faces battle: ‘This is what words mean here: / Not beauty. Not art. But armour. / Words that hold the line when hands can’t. /That give the dying something to chant. / That beat across time like a giant’s drum, / and say: I was here and I was Loved and I was someone.’ I didn’t scribble them down while watching the show- I was so impressed by the script that I bought a copy!
The adaptation squeezes every drop of comedy out of the play as well. We first meet Cyrano in a theatre, the theatre we’re in. Someone introduces a show we’re apparently about to see. There’s clearly some nervousness that Cyrano might turn up. Actors looking for him appear all over the place- in the boxes, at the back of the stalls, leaning over the circle, sitting among the audience. (Try doing that in the cinema.) And instantly we’re involved.
When Cyrano does appear he’s accompanied by a six piece band. He won them in a bet about grammar, what else? Sometimes they play at his command, sometimes they play when he doesn’t want them to, but mainly they play sublime music by Alex Baranowski that enhances the emotions being expressed by the characters.
He gets into an argument with Valvert, a stooge of his arch enemy the Comte De Guiche. Cyrano is disappointed that the best insult about his nose that antagonist can come up with is ‘It’s fucking huge’. Apart from the fact that we go on to witness one of the best stage sword fights I’ve seen, Cyrano decides to accompany it with an acrostic. He explains that he’s going to take each letter of that insulting phrase and make it the beginning of a whole line about his nose. So- ‘F: Look Papa Geppetto, I’m a Real boy. U: Utilitarian- what’s it for? Hanging coats, putting out candles, herding wild goats? C: Capricious – should we worship it, for fear it might destroy us? K: Kinky – Do women moan if you pull it out mid-coitus?’ And so on. But before that, he gets us, the audience, panto-style, to join in and remind him of the insult.
Susannah fielding and Adrian Lester in Cyrano de Bergerac. Photo: Marc Brenner
Now, I don’t know how funny I’ve made this sound but I can assure you that when it’s done by Adrian Lester, it’s hilarious. The deftness of the dialogue is present throughout. When he meets Roxane, the woman he loves and whom he has known since childhood, they play a word game, constructing a conversation where all the words begin with the same letter. She apparently has something to tell him, so here’s some of the repartee: ‘Some secret?’ ‘Soon.’ ‘Straightaway.’ ‘Stop searching.’ ‘Silence?’ ‘Suspense.’ ‘Stubborn!’ and so it goes on.
Words, which are both Cyrano’s power and his protection, carry us through the play like a trip down the rapids. It all goes wrong when Cyrano, convinced he cannot possibly be attractive to Roxane, decides to assist a new recruit to his rag tag cohort, a farmer called Christian, in wooing her. She has told her old friend that she finds Christian attractive but it is the words supplied to him by Cyrano with which she falls in love. Now, I know this sounds unlikely, but, then, think of the verses in greetings cards that people use to express the feelings they cannot.
Christian himself is only be able to speak ‘plain, rough, simple, small’ words of love which are totally inadequate to her ears. He does actually appreciate some words- he has learnt the collective nouns for animals. So, when Roxane exhorts him to come up with a word other than the cliché ‘love’, in desperation he tells her ‘The collective noun for wildebeests is a confusion’. The door slams in his face. Roxane falls for Christian through the words of Cyrano, foolishly believing that good looks and a poet’s art go hand-in-hand. Ironically, she even realises that there is ‘a strange darkness lingering’ behind the flattery of the poems, she detects that the writer ‘hates the world in which he loves me’.
This quality of script means each actor is given the tools to be exceptional and the cast rise to the occasion. Susannah Fielding as Roxane is suitably bolshy and arrogant, so relaxed in Cyrano’s company and so blinded by the idea of romantic poetry that she loses touch with what is in front of her. My only caveat is that she doesn’t convey sufficiently the sadness of her situation.
Levi Brown as Christian could easily be eclipsed by the remarkable repartee of the two stars but he is perfect as the cheeky, naive farm boy with a big bursting heart. Scott Handy is superb as Comte de Guiche, sly and slimy but never overplaying the villain, always suggesting a sensitivity beneath the sneer. Greer Dale-Foulkes is a joy as Roxane’s randy servant Abigail. And Philip Cumbus and Christian Patterson are heartwarming as Cyrano’s faithful friends.
And what a production. Grace Smart‘s set is just right. At the back, various flats suggesting a theatre, a tavern, a courtyard, and, as we move to the finale, a battlefield and a garden. No gimmicks, just sensitive support for the story. The lighting too, designed by Joshie Harriette, bathes the various scenes in beautiful colours.
We move to war and tragedy. Then, far too late, Roxane and Cyrano realise how they have deceived themselves. We are told right at the beginning that our time in the theatre offers us ‘precious moments. The world out there. Us, quiet in here.’ To take time out from the cares of the world and immerse ourselves in the life of Adrian Lester’s Cyrano is a privilege.
Fabian Soto Pacheco, Anna-Jane Casey and George Blagden in Kiss of the Spiderwoman. Photo: Marc Brenner
John Kander and Fred Ebb are best known for writing Cabaret and Chicago. Their musical Kiss of the Spiderwoman is far less familiar. Adapted from the novel by Manuel Puig, it premiered in the West End in 1992 before transferring to Broadway in 1993 where it won seven Tony Awards including Best Musical. I can’t believe it’s not performed more often.The score, infused with evocative Latin rhythms, stirs deep emotions, while story is profoundly moving, not to mention harrowing. This co-production by Bristol Old Vic, Leicester Curve and Southampton MAST is tremendous.
This revival is far more intimate than the apparently spectacular premiere over thirty years ago. But no way is it a cut price version. The set entirely befits what is ultimately a love story. The setting is a prison cell in 1970s Argentina, shared by Valentin, a political prisoner, and Molina, a gay man.
These were dark times in that country. The growth of fascism shown in Cabaret is fully developed here, the celebrity prisoners of Chicago are now wretched victims of the governments of Juan Peron’s widow and the subsequent military junta of General Galtieri. Trades unionists, left wingers and gay people face imprisonment, torture or, notoriously, become The Disappeared.
Seeking refuge from the brutality of prison life, Molina, played by Fabian Soto Pacheco and wearing soft feminine garments, transports himself to his childhood memories of movies featuring a screen goddess called Aurora. As he recounts the plots of these films, the star materialises before us singing and dancing.
David Woodhead’s set brilliantly contrasts the austere greyness of the cell and its two narrow beds and floor to ceiling iron bars, with the colourful glamour of Aurora and her fabulous costumes, designed by Gabriella Slade. She appears as a mature woman, presumably reflecting a child’s perception of the movie star as much older than himself.
Anna-Jane Casey is charismatic in the role, commanding the stage with her swaggering dance and her seductive smile. Projected at the back of the stage are scenes from her black-and-white movies, cleverly created by Andrzej Goulding.
George Blagden delivers a compelling performance as Valentin. As an idealistic revolutionary, and a heterosexual, he is initially indifferent or even hostile to Molina but comes to value the escape into ‘beauty and love’, as the latter describes it. The movies and their songs become more meaningful to him than the ideological book by Karl Marx he keeps by him.
Both sing and act well. Molina is vulnerable and pragmatic, Valentin tough and principled. Although both remain attached to loved ones outside the prison walls, their love for each other grows, as both recognise and appreciate the strengths of the other. Inevitably we think of fluidity of gender and sexuality.
The prison authorities attempt to exploit this developing relationship to pressure Molina into extracting information about Valentin’s associates.
What follows is a gripping struggle within Molina between love and self preservation. Throughout, the movies (a metaphor for all art), not only provide escape from life but a blueprint for how to live
All the acting is top class but I’ll mention Jay Rincon as the cunning, sadistic Prison Warder. His chilling performance sends a shudder down the spine and makes the scenes of violence that much more believable.
This production, directed by Paul Foster, serves as a timely reminder to people like me who spend most of our time in London theatres that regional productions can be as artistically accomplished, emotionally powerful and theatrically thrilling as anything the capital has to offer.
Kiss of the Spiderwoman completes its short tour at The MAST Southampton on 6 June 2026.
Paddington Bear’s secret weapon that turns an ordinary musical into a great one
Savoy Theatre
⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑
Paddington The Musical at Savoy Theatre. Photo: Johan Persson
Paddington The Musical without Paddington would be just, well, The Musical. Then we’d notice that the plot, taken from the first film, is a bit flimsy. Tom Fletcher’s songs tend toward the generic. Some of the effects are a bit panto for a musical spectacular. But, transported on a wave of love for the little bear from Peru, the show is determined that you will be moved by its message of kindness, caring and tolerance. Forget any criticism, resistance is futile. You are overcome by a script from Jessica Swales that’s as sweet as marmalade.
Although tolerance is a theme of Michael Bond’s books, Paddington has become a focus for a kinder Britain. The bear is now a hymn to multicultural London and this tale of an illegal immigrant seems like a riposte to people who promote hate of those who simply seek a better life on our shores. ‘It doesn’t matter that he’s a different species’ declares Mr Brown. ‘Everyone is different, and everyone can fit in,’ says Paddington. I fear if the Reform Party forms a government, they’ll bring down the curtain!
It helps that the cast are so enthusiastic. They sell the show like chuggers in the high street. And then, there is the bear himself. A superbly conceived ‘skin’, as they say in theatrical circles when describing outfits that completely cover the actor. It’s a bit like the costumes they use in The Masked Singer but here Paddington is a perfect physical realisation of Peggy Fortnum‘s original drawings. Designed by Tahra Zafar, it is moved from within by an actual human (a brilliant Abbie Purvis on the night I saw it, but usually Arti Shah) with eye and mouth movements operated off stage by James Hameed who also provides his voice (and is occasionally seen on stage in strange meta moments). Between them, they make the bear as alive as any of the actors around him.
The Brown family are just what you expect. Adrian Der Gregorian is the risk averse but increasingly confident father and Amy Ellen Richardson the creative, rebellious mother. Bonnie Langford as the lodger Mrs Bird is astonishingly good, not only a musical legend with a powerful voice but still knocking out splits and high kicks at the age of 61. Victoria Hamilton-Barritt with a deeply reverberating voice is so frightening as Paddington’s would-be stuffer that I’ suspect younger children will be hiding under their seat. Teddy Kempner is a loveable Mr Gruber. Timi Akinyosade, Amy Booth-Steel, Tom Edden and Tarrin Callender all add to the fun.
Tom Pye‘s pretty set designs make clever use of projections which soak the stage in colourful images, and there are back projected drawings which remind us of Paddington’s literary origins. And Director Luke Sheppard keeps the whole thing moving at a pace, even if the final chase becomes a bit haphazard.
Paddington is an innocent creature who offers unconditional love and trust. What kind of cold-hearted cynic wouldn’t return that love, and take care of this bear?
Paddington The Musical can be seen at the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End. Paul advises booking at least six months in advance to obtain the best prices.
Paul paid for his ticket.
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