Clementine Scott - Page 4

This is a great opportunity to hear the breadth of Beethoven’s work performed in a novel way, and the drama does have its flashes of brilliance. In order to preserve these fleeting moments of conviction, though, Beethoven: I Shall Hear in Heaven needs to move away from tired biographical tropes and allow the composer’s music to speak for itself.

Saving Mozart has created an enticing musical and visual universe, and the culture of 18th century court musicians is promising territory for musical theatre. However, the show needs to decide if it’s Amadeus: The Musical or a feminist retelling of a well known story, rather than landing awkwardly somewhere in between.

There are no firm tabloid-headline conclusions to be found in Clive about how technology’s ruining our lives, or how younger generations don’t know how to speak to people, and the play is all the better, and more timeless, for it.

Once reliable Oscar bait, the classic “inspirational” biopic become something of a social media punchline in recent years. They all have the same familiar beats – the humble beginnings, the early setbacks, the internal tensions, and the rising from the ashes – and rarely say anything new or unique to their particular subjects. Maiden Voyage, a new musical charting the first all-female circumnavigation of the globe, is unfortunately not an exception to the rule.

101 Dalmatians is a solid retelling of a classic that feels life-affirming without being too sentimental. It’s a reliable choice for a family evening, that is, if you can get over those freakish dog puppets.

“What is it about this hotel room?” This is the question posed by a cast member of Echo, over halfway through the play, when we’ve been trapped inside a deliciously kitsch B&B, all lilac wallpaper and shag carpets, for over an hour. The effect is claustrophobic, somewhere between the Overlook Hotel from The Shining and the apartment from Rosemary’s Baby, and the horror doesn’t stop with the set design.

Sitting in the grand tradition of the ‘partner swap’ drama, 2015’s Four Play spoke to the LGBTQ+ community post-marriage equality, grappling with the desire to fit in in heteronormative suburbia versus the freedom to explore sexuality in a way that feels authentic. Now, in a new production directed by Jack Sain, the answers to the questions it poses seem more ambiguous than ever.

“Who cares what happened after?” This is the question posed by song cycle 35MM, which takes its structure from a series of photographs, each projected onto the back wall, and giving us a musical insight into a single moment, where nothing beforehand or afterwards matters – a breakup, the tender beginnings of romance, or on one occasion a parent wrangling their Satanic baby.

“What does a woman feel like?” Not an easy question for any woman, cis or trans, to answer, and Ugly Sisters, an Edinburgh Fringe transfer from transfemme production company piss / CARNATION, resists giving us any easy solutions, while also making the issue at hand feel more expansive than any reductive media culture war.

You could be forgiven for thinking that there isn’t much more to be said about Le nozze di Figaro, the most performed opera in Glyndebourne’s history. However, Mozart’s classic role subversion comedy is deceptive in its simplicity: beneath the farce and improbable plot twists is a complex web of power dynamics and social cues upended, and above all a libretto full of dry humour that’s striking in its timelessness.

For anyone who loves or even likes the game of tennis, Jimmy is a worthy paean to how harrowing the sport can be at its best. The character it carves out from Connors’ story may need some more depth and refinement, but it’ll certainly be playing at the back of my mind as we head into Wimbledon.

A thoughtfully selected double bill making up the operetta segment of Opera Holland Park’s summer season shows the genre at its technical best, but also illuminates its troubling shortcomings.

This Medea feels at one with its ancient origins, with Athens’ strict patriarchy and fractured psyches and desperate quests for glory, while also injecting a risk-taking dose of dread and brutality.

Sometimes the Brechtian veers into the over-literal, but there is still clarity and catharsis to be found in a child's newfound understanding of life and loss.

The recent UK premiere of Here We Are, Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, certainly demonstrated that the much-mourned legend had his flaws. His aficionados already knew this, though – Sondheim had nearly as many flops as he had successes, and The Frogs was one of them.

You may not know Athena Stevens’s name, but you may remember her legal troubles: her allegations against Shakespeare's Globe of sexual abuse by a fellow actor and disability discrimination were widely reported in March this year. Now, after a period of what she terms “creative exile”, the Finborough playwright in residence is back with a stiflingly claustrophobic look at the disabled community’s relationship with the police, set entirely in a prison cell.

To pin an entire show on one piece of local government legislation may seem an implausible move at first glance. But After The Act has made it happen, which is testament to the seismic impact and notoriety of its subject: Section 28, the Thatcher-era clause that, until 2003, forbade local authorities across the UK from “intentionally promoting homosexuality” as a “pretended family relationship” in state-maintained schools.

If there’s any fanbase that is totally unafraid of in-jokes and self-references, it’s musical theatre enthusiasts. This is a group of people who will quote a throwaway line from one of Sondheim’s lesser known shows and not care whether or not the joke lands. It’s that kind of sentiment that The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!) tapped into when it first premiered in 2003, and little about theatre kids has changed, so the show goes on.

“That’s life”, sings Frank Sinatra over the sound system, in just one of the many hits from his back catalogue that makes up the soundtrack to In Other Words. And he has a point: this understated drama about the slow progress of Alzheimer’s disease, which returns to the Arcola after an acclaimed 2023 run (and an award-winning French translation), is a heartbreaking paean to the parts of life that we can’t avoid.