Franco Milazzo

Mae West famously asked, 'Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?' Well, at the beginning of the relationship, he will no doubt be very happy to see you. But, at the end of the relationship… And that, my friends, is as good a summary of Mozart’s The Marriage Of Figaro as any.

There’s a certain neat irony at the heart of this. A female director, returning to this opera for a second season (and for its third outing in Holland Park's semi-open staging), has chosen to stay largely faithful to a work whose central idea is that women are inherently unfaithful.

There is a moment, somewhere between the knife-thrower's insane grin and Brian the Goose making his entrance with the unruffled authority of a minor aristocrat, when you simply have to give in to the magic. Giffords Circus has this effect on people. It has had this effect on people for twenty-six years, and Waterfield — this season's new production, themed around the riverbanks and hedgerows of an England that exists mainly in children's literature — gives absolutely no indication that the spell is about to wear off.

There is exactly one joke in Peter Shaffer's 1965 farce: when the lights come on, the characters are in the dark. Everything else — the borrowed furniture, the hapless sculptor, the stern colonel, the ex-girlfriend arriving at the worst possible moment — is just escalation.

At this point in the history of humanity, a ballet translated from screen to stage or built around a real person is more likely to raise eyebrows than expectations. That’s not to say they have a uniform quality - Rambert’s Peaky Blinders: The Redemption Of Thomas Shelby blew the roof off Sadler’s Wells while Birmingham Royal Ballet’s tribute to Black Sabbath was an unholy mess. No, the main qualm is that it all smacks of hopping onto a passing bandwagon and hoping fervent fans of the source material fill the stalls.

Drummers are a particular breed. Keith Moon of The Who famously drove a limousine into a swimming pool during his 21st birthday party. Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham and Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee both engaged in hotel debauchery: Bonham rode motorcycles along corridors while Lee launched fireworks from balconies. Then there was the terrifyingly violent Ginger Baker who, when not raising hell on stage for Cream, threatened those around him with knives and canes. So, at least from a Western perspective, whoever came up with the concept of putting nine drummers into a band was either extremely foolish or admirably brave.

Cabaret-circus-champagne extravaganza Sabrage has been refreshed just in time to lift our hearts in this sorry hour. Wars continue in the Middle East despite claims of a “ceasefire”. Fuel and food prices are heading north for the summer. Fascism leers openly on both sides of the Atlantic. The thirteenth season of Love Island is launching in less than a month. These are desperate times which force one to look deep into one’s soul and quietly ask: what kind of world are we leaving to Cher?

With yet another highly-anticipated series of The Celebrity Traitors on the horizon, entire streaming channels dedicated to murder mysteries and absolutely no shortage of true crime podcasts (and TV shows about true crime podcasts), it appears we live in a nation completely insatiable when it comes to death and deceit. The jubensha-inspired Alibi: Dead Air, then, is perfectly timed as it invites audiences to step inside a story with secrets, subterfuge and a serial killer on the loose.

A band of bohemians pitching up in Kensington would normally have the locals reaching for a bottle of smelling salts. Happily, the only thing being upended here is expectation, as Lost Estate’s Chat Noir slips its latest slice of elegant decadence discreetly into this West London enclave.

As the name suggests, Midgitte Bardot is physically short albeit not short on ideas, impact, or charisma. And not just short but, at just 129cm, the shortest drag performer in the world according to the Guinness Book of Records.

Given only the slightest of insights into what Christopher Nolan intended, Hans Zimmer set about creating a score for Interstellar that he would later call the best work of his career. Hearing it live accompanied by a screening of the film is a sensational experience.

Eccentric artist Fenella Harford (Sylvestra Le Touzel) inherits her family’s stately home and uncovers a cache of hidden diaries that may rewrite its history. She recruits ambitious academic Marva (Rakie Ayola) to authenticate them, who in turn brings in her overlooked mentor Abi (Cherrelle Skeete), a meticulous expert with sharper instincts than she lets on. As the three women probe deeper into the documents, the house begins to yield uncomfortable truths about its colonial past. Personal histories begin to intertwine with national ones, tensions rise between the trio, and what starts as scholarly inquiry spirals into a confrontation with buried trauma, ownership, and the ghosts of Britain’s slave-trading legacy.

When this Rigoletto first opened the Royal Opera House’s first full season after the long pandemic silence, it felt less like a return to normality and more like a statement of intent. To relaunch with Rigoletto, arguably Giuseppe Verdi’s bleakest work, was a bold, almost confrontational choice. This is, after all, an opera in which a young woman is roughly kidnapped at the whim of one man and murdered by another. No sugar-coating, no operatic comfort blanket. Just darkness, undiluted.

Set in the bustling medieval castle of Carcassone, Excurio’s The Last Stronghold drops us into the midst of political intrigue, a budding romance and a nightmarish encounter

At The Vaults, Ancient Grease arrives with impeccable comic timing. The leather-jacketed mythology of Grease has rarely been far from London’s cultural bloodstream. Indeed, the city has been particularly well supplied with it of late thanks to Secret Cinema, which mounted Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical in Battersea Park last year.

After the recent avalanche of historical exhibitions which have stretched the “immersive” beyond the point of plausibility, is Vikings worth the trek to Dock X? 

At the Menier Chocolate Factory, the revival of Ryan Craig’s The Holy Rosenbergs arrives with the weight of history attached to it. When it first appeared at the National Theatre’s Cottesloe Theatre in 2011, it was a sharp entry into a conversation about Jewish identity, family loyalty and modern political fracture. Fifteen years on, the conversation has become rather crowded.

Imagine a space where the boundary between the stage and the stalls simply evaporates. Co-produced by Landmark Productions and Octopus Theatricals, Theatre For One appears at the Barbican Centre this month as part of their Scene Change season. It offers a singular, electrifying encounter that demolishes the fourth wall, leaving only you and a solo performer within a custom-built, intimate booth.

It appears Tosca Rivola is back for a sequel of sorts. After last year’s debacle that was Diamonds and Dust - a production she co-created with Dita Von Teese that promised the moon, delivered a pebble, was 'paused' shortly after its press night and then, two months later, quietly cancelled - the American cabaret producer has returned to Aaron Mellor’s Emerald Theatre with her long running concept show Sinematic. 

If you have ever suspected that opera might benefit from fewer Valkyries and more vaudeville, Opera Locos is here to confirm your prejudice and then sing it at you in Italian.