Franco Milazzo

Franco Milazzo

The Daily Beast were kind enough to call me "a man with an encyclopedic knowledge of the city’s underground culture" and I have been editing/reviewing stage productions since 2010 for some of London's biggest websites covering theatre, opera, dance, cabaret, immersive and everything in between.






MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

Review: YOU ARE GOING TO DIE, Southwark Playhouse
Review: YOU ARE GOING TO DIE, Southwark Playhouse
April 23, 2024

A show dripping in pretension performed by a naked man? An impenetrable work obsessed with having a sex toy deep inside one’s backside? A meditation on “existential anxiety” that does little of note with an hour of precious life? There’s enough irony in You Are Going To Die to power an Alanis Morissette comeback, and then some.

Review: 1884, Shoreditch Town Hall
Review: 1884, Shoreditch Town Hall
April 22, 2024

What is the difference between a house and a home? And who gets to write history? Interactive experience 1884 provokes challenging answers to these questions in the context of an almost-forgotten historical event that had significant consequences for two continents.

Review: THE BALLAD OF HATTIE AND JAMES, Kiln Theatre
Review: THE BALLAD OF HATTIE AND JAMES, Kiln Theatre
April 19, 2024

Somewhere in King’s Cross, a middle-aged woman sits at a piano and plays an original piece with surprising fluency. There begins Samuel Adamson’s tumultuous tale of two teenage musical prodigies whose lives become thoroughly entangled.

Review: SOPHIE'S SURPRISE 29TH, Underbelly Boulevard
Review: SOPHIE'S SURPRISE 29TH, Underbelly Boulevard
April 18, 2024

As any fan of this art form will tell you, the first rule of cabaret shows is: never sit in the front row. The second rule is: never tell cabaret virgins the first rule.

Review: GISELLE: REMIX, Pleasance Theatre
Review: GISELLE: REMIX, Pleasance Theatre
April 15, 2024

Created by cabaret artist Jack Sears and Royal Ballet soloist Hannah Grennell, Giselle:Remix fuses dance and lip sync.

Review: AN ACTOR CONVALESCING IN DEVON, Hampstead Theatre
Review: AN ACTOR CONVALESCING IN DEVON, Hampstead Theatre
April 12, 2024

Sometimes reality and drama overlap so much that it can be hard to tell where one finishes and another starts. 

Review: MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Wilton's Music Hall
Review: MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Wilton's Music Hall
April 11, 2024

​​​​​​​Serving as a kind of Barber of Seville of theatre, Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the most accessible of Shakespeare’s plays. Its blend of mystic romance, daffy dramatists and fairy-powered shenanigans is not short on rambunctious comedy turns but, in the hands of Flabbergast Theatre, that aspect is turned up to eleven.

Review: PHANTOM PEAK: FESTIVAL OF INNOVATION, London
Review: PHANTOM PEAK: FESTIVAL OF INNOVATION, London
April 10, 2024

When Phantom Peak, one of London's most innovative and ridiculously fun theatrical experiences, holds a Festival Of Innovation, how can one say no? It is not the only impressive immersive show in town but its near-peerless execution and boundless imagination puts it up there with the more well known Punchdrunk.

Review: KYLE DEAN MASSEY, Crazy Coqs
Review: KYLE DEAN MASSEY, Crazy Coqs
April 4, 2024

After two years away, Kyle Dean Massey steps back onto the cabaret stage at London’s Crazy Coqs.

Interview: 'We Are Living Through a Contemporary Pansy Craze': Cabaret Star Mason Alexander Park on Their New London Show
Interview: 'We Are Living Through a Contemporary Pansy Craze': Cabaret Star Mason Alexander Park on Their New London Show
March 28, 2024

This weekend, Netflix star Mason Alexander Park brings The Pansy Craze to Underbelly Soho, a theatrical concert series chronicling multiple periods in history where queerness was celebrated, commodified, consumed, and then criminalised.

Review: DON'T.MAKE.TEA, Soho Theatre
Review: DON'T.MAKE.TEA, Soho Theatre
March 28, 2024

A pitch-black comedy thriller which gives Franz Kafka a run for his money, Don’t.Make.Tea doesn’t hold back in its excoriating view of modern Britain.

Review: MADAMA BUTTERFLY, Royal Opera House
Review: MADAMA BUTTERFLY, Royal Opera House
March 28, 2024

There are few things more life-affirming than christenings, orgies and operas. And few works are more life-affirming and cathartic than Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

Review: MIND MANGLER: MEMBER OF THE TRAGIC CIRCLE, Apollo Theatre
Review: MIND MANGLER: MEMBER OF THE TRAGIC CIRCLE, Apollo Theatre
March 25, 2024

A spin off from Mischief Theatre’s Magic Goes Wrong,  Mind Mangler: Member Of The Tragic Circle makes its official London debut.

Review: SISTER ACT THE MUSICAL, Dominion Theatre
Review: SISTER ACT THE MUSICAL, Dominion Theatre
March 22, 2024

Sister Act The Musical’s tagline is “A Divine Musical Comedy” but whether the gods were for or against the film or this later version is debatable.

Review: FAITH HEALER, Lyric Hammersmith
Review: FAITH HEALER, Lyric Hammersmith
March 21, 2024

Frank Hardy has a problem. He’s an Irish faith healer without faith in his power to heal. It comes, it goes and he only knows for sure when it is not going to happen. With his wife Grace and manager Teddy, their tour of Wales and Scotland in a battered van has seen his abilities steadily failing him. A last throw of the die sees him return to his homeland. What could go wrong?

Review: BIG FINISH, Battersea Arts Centre
Review: BIG FINISH, Battersea Arts Centre
March 20, 2024

Absurdist quintet Figs In Wigs return to preach an apocalyptic gospel - but is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?

Review: UNIVERSE: A DARK CRYSTAL ODYSSEY, Sadler's Wells
Review: UNIVERSE: A DARK CRYSTAL ODYSSEY, Sadler's Wells
March 19, 2024

Getting to grips with what a mute medium like dance is trying to convey is never easy even when there is a recognisable concept like Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal.

Review: THE BARBER OF SEVILLE, Wilton's Music Hall
Review: THE BARBER OF SEVILLE, Wilton's Music Hall
March 18, 2024

In the week when an Arts Council England report lambasted the current state of opera and questioned its relevance to wider society, Charles Court Opera’s The Barber Of Seville stands as a stern rebuff to those who consider this art form to be dated and irrelevant.

Review: THE RETURN OF THE KING IN CONCERT, Royal Albert Hall
Review: THE RETURN OF THE KING IN CONCERT, Royal Albert Hall
March 18, 2024

With a live rendition of the Oscar-winning score by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and the Philharmonia Chorus, the latest in the Royal Albert Hall’s “films in concert” series brings the The Lord of the Rings epic fantasy saga to a majestic conclusion.

Review: GINGERLINE'S THE GRAND EXPEDITION, Dalston
Review: GINGERLINE'S THE GRAND EXPEDITION, Dalston
March 18, 2024

Like some latter day Phileas Fogg, immersive dining specialists Gingerline’s revival of The Grand Expedition leads us on a merry virtual journey around the world all while sat in a hot air balloon gondola.



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