Clive Davis — Theater Critic

Libby Todd’s set design and Roberto Surace’s costumes are a match for the larger-than-life madness. DiCarlo, who made such a fine job of keeping all the plot lines spinning in the multi-layered Comedy About Spies, is equally accomplished here. It’s no easy job to keep a production teetering on the edge of disaster. These actors know how to fail with a flourish.

Adam Fisher’s thunderous sound design provides a fine impersonation of a lumbering, unseen giantess seeking revenge for the death of her husband. Kate Fleetwood spits venom as the Witch, while the two princes (Oliver Savile and Rhys Whitfield) are engagingly over-the-top on Agony. Gracie McGonigal’s Little Red Ridinghood [sic] is drenched in convincing gore in her grand guignol moment. Jamie Parker and Katie Brayben win our sympathy as the baker and his wife.

Fletcher’s nimbly crafted songs come with deft lyrics and, occasionally, sleek harmonies that wouldn’t be out of place on an early Queen anthem. One of Us brings the first act to a thunderous conclusion, Don’t Touch That is the jaunty backdrop to a string of domestic mishaps. Just when the score starts to feel lacking in variation Marmalade opens the second act with a cheerful waltz tempo adorned with big-hearted choreography by Ellen Kane.

The cast does an honourable job of portraying the ravenous, genetically engineered creatures that go on the rampage towards the end. Euan Garrett wins our sympathy as Katniss’s comrade Peeta, while Stavros Demetraki camps it up as Caesar Flickerman, the games’ compere played in the film by a bewigged Stanley Tucci. While there were reports of chaotic scenes in the foyer at previews, things moved smoothly at the show I attended. There’s presumably more than enough of a fanbase to keep this venture running and running, but it really needs some genetic engineering of its own.

The cast does an honourable job of portraying the ravenous, genetically engineered creatures that go on the rampage towards the end. Euan Garrett wins our sympathy as Katniss’s comrade Peeta, while Stavros Demetraki camps it up as Caesar Flickerman, the games’ compere played in the film by a bewigged Stanley Tucci. While there were reports of chaotic scenes in the foyer at previews, things moved smoothly at the show I attended. There’s presumably more than enough of a fanbase to keep this venture running and running, but it really needs some genetic engineering of its own.

Harewood is similarly understated in the title role. This military genius is suave and faintly self-satisfied, yet his descent into madness never really tugs at the emotions. Harewood falls heavily to the ground in the scene where Othello slips into a paralytic fit, but there’s not much light and shade to his verse-speaking. (It didn’t help, to be honest, that throughout the evening the audience was prone to chortle at scenes and lines that weren’t remotely comical.)

Harewood is similarly understated in the title role. This military genius is suave and faintly self-satisfied, yet his descent into madness never really tugs at the emotions. Harewood falls heavily to the ground in the scene where Othello slips into a paralytic fit, but there’s not much light and shade to his verse-speaking. (It didn’t help, to be honest, that throughout the evening the audience was prone to chortle at scenes and lines that weren’t remotely comical.)

You wait in vain for this Marlowe to acquire some nuance when he flirts with Edward Bluemel’s ingenuous Will — “Who do you f***: boys or girls?” — as they begin their collaboration on the Henry VI series. (The play’s title comes from Gloucester’s speech in Part 3.) Duffy drew inspiration from research that suggests the two men really did work together on the text, and the script is studded with insider references that will raise a chuckle among some scholars. At its heart, though, it hovers at the level of conscientiously researched fan fiction.

All I can say is that, despite its rough edges — the book, by the film’s director, Steven Antin, gets hopelessly tangled in the second half — Todrick Hall’s production has more vim than that other recently arrived contender in the hen party stakes, The Devil Wears Prada. And in the pairing of Jess Folley and the American singer Orfeh (who is making her West End debut) the evening unfurls some powerhouse vocals.

Zegler… is reduced to a blank-eyed marionette for virtually the whole show. Her voice is fine but it has to compete with the musical director Alan Williams’s wildly amplified orchestra... Call it TikTok musical theatre, if you like.

From where I was sitting in the stalls, to be honest, a fair portion of Zippel’s over-amplified lyrics were so difficult to decipher that they might as well have been written in a classical language. Thankfully, those mighty muses — played this evening by Kimmy Edwards, Kamilla Fernandes, Sharlene Hector, Robyn Rose-Li and Brianna Ogunbawo — can blow the roof off of any temple.

If I sound exasperated it’s because Daniel Aukin’s production arrives at the Duke of York’s in London trailing so much praise and so many Tony awards. The performances are first-rate, and David Zinn’s set really does make you feel as if you have a seat on the mixing desk. Yet at over three hours long it’s burdened with far too many longueurs. How ironic that arguments in the second half turn on how to make minor cuts to the album’s running time: Stereophonic would be much punchier if it were at least 30 minutes shorter.

The problem now, of course, is how to make this period piece speak to a modern audience. “Speak” being the operative word, since, like so many of Shaw’s plays, you often feel you are being addressed by a writer who turns every other conversation into an Oxford Union debate. The torrent of words beats you into submission. Even with a text that has been cut down and clarified by Cooke himself, you still sense Shaw’s hectoring presence.

The problem now, of course, is how to make this period piece speak to a modern audience. “Speak” being the operative word, since, like so many of Shaw’s plays, you often feel you are being addressed by a writer who turns every other conversation into an Oxford Union debate. The torrent of words beats you into submission. Even with a text that has been cut down and clarified by Cooke himself, you still sense Shaw’s hectoring presence.

By the end, we’re much less sure that James has the upper hand. Luka confronts his sense of shame, sometimes in comically brutish language (his definition of marriage is having “pussy on tap”). What we see of James’s inner life begins to seem less serene than we first thought. Ireland conveys all this through memorably jagged exchanges bathed in redeeming black humour.

Lewis, who played the pompous mentalist in Mind Mangler — Mischief’s send-up of the magician’s trade — steals scene after scene as Douglas Woodbead, a monumentally self-satisfied thespian who arrives at a fancy West End hotel to prepare for an audition for the first Bond film. Although his recent credits do not amount to much more than appearing in a haemorrhoids commercial, he is confident of getting the role ahead of some Scottish upstart called “Sean”. Little does he know that he is about to be entangled with American and Soviet secret agents who have converged on the premises in pursuit of plans for a secret weapon.

Let me be absolutely honest and say that this star rating should come with a health warning. Why? Because the valedictory offering from the late Stephen Sondheim is such a curate’s egg. The musical fantasy that unfolds on the National’s Lyttelton stage is, for long stretches, utterly absorbing. Yet it’s undeniably flawed, too.

Nicholas Hytner’s immaculately paced production arrives at the Harold Pinter Theatre trailing a clutch of Olivier awards, and with the American actor John Lithgow reprising his incandescent portrayal of children’s author Roald Dahl as an unforgettable mixture of wit, charm, bully and unfiltered antisemite. With the war in Gaza still making news, Rosenblatt’s study could hardly be more timely. If the TV drama Adolescence did a solid job of catching the zeitgeist, Giant offers an even more incisive example of writing that holds a mirror up to the way we live now.

This is going to be a test of faith for Ewan McGregor’s admirers. How much are they willing to endure to see him in the flesh in a painfully windy psychodrama, modelled on Ibsen’s The Master Builder, which grinds its way to a wildly implausible conclusion? Kudos to him, I say, for appearing on a London stage for the first time in nearly 20 years. McGregor doesn’t come unstuck anywhere near as badly as Sigourney Weaver did in The Tempest. Yet the truth is that he simply doesn’t have the gravitas needed for the role of a superstar architect whose personal life is about to implode.

Peals of audience laughter are not the sound you normally associate with Ibsen. Gary Owen’s updated version of the playwright’s brooding drama about an embattled widow, an orphanage and the poisonous legacy of a dissolute husband certainly isn’t lacking in courage. In his latest offering at the Lyric Hammersmith in London the Welsh playwright throws himself into rearranging the original storyline of Ghosts, but the sudden shifts in tone, sometimes lurching from awkward comedy to Grand Guignol in a few sentences, undermine Rachel O’Riordan’s production.

Some of the script seems to have been tweaked to appeal to British audiences. That said, I’m not sure a joke about Janet Street-Porter’s teeth means an awful lot to anyone under pension age. Tijana Bjelajac’s set design has a touch of Rocky Horror Gothic, Ben Cracknell’s lighting is all tongue-in-cheek Sturm und Drang, and Yvonne Gilbert’s sound design adds cheeky comic effects. Have a strong drink or two before you go and abandon yourself to the sheer silliness of it all.

Some of the script seems to have been tweaked to appeal to British audiences. That said, I’m not sure a joke about Janet Street-Porter’s teeth means an awful lot to anyone under pension age. Tijana Bjelajac’s set design has a touch of Rocky Horror Gothic, Ben Cracknell’s lighting is all tongue-in-cheek Sturm und Drang, and Yvonne Gilbert’s sound design adds cheeky comic effects. Have a strong drink or two before you go and abandon yourself to the sheer silliness of it all.

Along the way the story has been streamlined. The officious Dogberry has been excised; the romantic entanglements are resolved even more briskly. Given that Mara Huf’s Hero has a penchant for full-on twerking, it might not seem obvious why James Phoon’s Claudio is alarmed by any threat to her virtue. But this is one of those productions where it’s best not to ponder the details too closely.

The actors also seem constrained by Bob Crowley’s narrow design and the use of hydraulics to raise and lower sections of the stage. The Bridge’s auditorium has to be one of the most atmospheric in the country, but here the rising and falling of platforms — which worked so well in Hytner’s magnificent version of Guys and Dolls — becomes more of a distraction. The same is true of Grant Olding’s music, which might as well have been written for yet another TV drama about a maverick detective.

There’s lots of explicit talk about goings-on in the boudoir — the language is very blunt at times. But watching Stephen Mangan, Nicola Walker and Erin Doherty exchange a mix of crude banter and philosophical profundities on the implications of a threesome — or “throuple”, if you prefer — is a little like wandering around a giant erotic emporium on an industrial estate. After the twelfth box of vibrators starts buzzing away, a certain boredom sets in.