Clive Davis — Theater Critic

The first thing to say about the chamber production by Gordon Greenberg — who has previously staged the musical on the other side of the pond — is that it looks gorgeous. As audience members take their seats on three sides of the cast they are immersed in a world of pétanque and terrace café chatter. Paul Farnsworth’s set glows with a Provencal sheen; Paul Anderson’s lighting evokes the sense of the sun weighing on everyone.

Will this staging dazzle all those youngsters who have virtual reality headsets in their bedrooms? To be honest, I’d expected the track design to be a little more audacious. The actors do pass through the middle of the audience, but after the first couple of circuits it begins to look quite sedate. Mad Max this ain’t. For all the flashing lights, the Troubadour itself, a fair trek from the centre of London, is also a baldly utilitarian venue. But my advice is to ignore the Ikea vibes, and let the songs transport you.

The timing couldn’t have been better. Joe Penhall’s new play arrives just at the moment when the relationship between members of parliament and the people they represent is uppermost in our minds. And the fact that James Corden is making his long overdue return to the London stage, playing a troubled army veteran alongside Line of Duty’s Anna Maxwell Martin as a hard-working backbencher, will surely help at the box office as well. That said, this turns out to be a surprisingly tepid study of a vulnerable man whose life has lost its moorings. Penhall, who has explored mental frailties before in the more accomplished Blue/Orange, a chamber piece set in a psychiatric clinic, is said to have interviewed a number of MPs including

There’s unorthodox casting in the form of Adrian Dunbar (Superintendent Ted Hastings in Line of Duty), who is playing the actor-manager Fred Graham. He may not be the most potent of singers — at times he seems to be coaxing his voice over the hurdles — but he certainly doesn’t disgrace himself. In the scenes of psychological warfare with the Broadway star Stephanie J Block, who plays Fred’s ex-wife Lilli Vanessi, he exhibits a light comic touch. Block is a dynamic presence, wringing every drop of mirth and venom from the semi-operatic I Hate Men. This Lilli is too strong and self-confident to need the protection of modern-day #MeToo campaigners.

Is that enough of a reason to catch what could possibly be McKellen’s farewell to the West End? I hesitate to say yes because Icke’s marathon modern-day Shakespeare production — which runs to nearly four hours — yields such mixed results. One or two of the performances are fiery: as Hotspur, Samuel Edward-Cook (who doubles as Pistol) delivers martial swagger and raw machismo, while Clare Perkins is a raucous Mistress Quickly. Others fade into the background; warlords are presented with the air of weary bureaucrats. And Hildegard Bechtler’s unassuming set, dominated by expanses of plain brickwork, with the actors pulling back drab curtains to reveal new scenes, provides little to distract the eye.

Fans of Succession certainly won’t complain of being short-changed in terms of pure man-hours: Cox, better known now as the media baron Logan Roy, is the dominant figure in a workmanlike venture, directed by Jeremy Herrin, which, at times, really does feel like it’s wending its way towards the witching hour and beyond. By turns stern and maudlin, Cox is always watchable, but he’s still not able to prevent long-winded confrontations and confessions from slipping into melodrama.

As the adult Jackson tries to perfect every routine, a cynical journalist (Philippa Stefani) hovers nearby, hoping to pick up titbits of gossip. But while we get fleeting references to painkillers, nose jobs and the skin condition vitiligo, the dance sequences assume priority. It will take another, much more candid show to tell the full story of this very American tragedy.

If there’s a problem with many of the other polished songs, it’s that they sometimes seem to have been inserted into the action almost at random. As much as you admire the musicianship of the band, tucked away on the first and second floors, you are often left wondering how exactly the numbers move the story on.

The underworld has never sounded so funky. At a time when jukebox musicals seem to be everywhere, singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’s captivating folk opera, inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, is a reminder of what musical theatre can achieve when it sets its sights beyond the lowest common denominator.

The sad truth, however, is that Thomas Ostermeier’s sophomoric attempt to drag the Norwegian playwright into the 21st century is so clumsy it might almost be part of some sinister conservative plot to kill off left-wing theatre once and for all.

What a frustrating evening. Jez Butterworth’s eagerly awaited new drama comes tantalisingly close to sweeping us off our feet: Laura Donnelly’s hypnotic central performance as Veronica, matriarch of a Blackpool guesthouse, will certainly linger in the memory. Yet in the end, the director Sam Mendes hasn’t been able to impose enough discipline on Butterworth’s penchant for baggy, poetic speeches.

Are the VIPs any good? The audience at the performance I saw had already made up its mind on that score, breaking into prolonged applause, Broadway-style, when they made their entrances in the first instalment, which explores what happens when a dowdy, middle-aged wife discovers that her workaholic husband is having a dalliance with his secretary.

Absurdity is piled on absurdity. Some of the jokes at Jay’s expense reminded me of The Strike, that marvellous little Comic Strip film in which a fictional version of Al Pacino sets about rewriting the miners’ strike when he plays Arthur Scargill on the big screen. Ireland’s writing isn’t as ingenious as that, but Harrelson gives such a winningly preposterous display, flouncing around Max Jones’s sleek set in a pair of outrageous pantaloons, that you’re willing to overlook the implausibilities. The moment when Jay, who delivers a few slaps at theatre critics, reveals that he is just as desperate for acclaim as any of his fellow thespians provoked a storm of laughter.

If you had doubts about whether the actor-director has the gravitas to take on one of the great Shakespearean roles, you’d have them confirmed here. At 62, Branagh has entered bus pass territory, yet there is still a hint of the unruly colt to the king who announces his decision to divide his domain between his daughters. For all the solidity of his verse-speaking, it’s hard to believe that this glossy-haired patriarch is really on the verge of mental and spiritual disintegration.

Very occasionally, a play comes along that is so weirdly inept that you don’t quite know how to respond. If you were to stumble across Penelope Skinner’s new drama in a thinly populated corner of the Edinburgh Fringe, you would put it down as an undergrad experiment. To find it in the West End, with Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily James in the lead roles, is bizarre.

Sondheim may have acquired the reputation of being the high priest of well-heeled Manhattan angst, but this show offers a reminder of what fun company he can be too. The irreplaceable Janie Dee reprised the pert bossa nova parody The Boy From . . . , Joanna Riding was memorably flustered on Getting Married Today, and the sight of Damian Humbley, Gavin Lee and Jason Pennycooke upstaging each other with feather dusters on Everybody Ought to Have a Maid was an absolute joy. If you care about musical theatre, you cannot miss this show.

You could sense the audience willing on the gutsy performers on press night. Yet it was just as hard to ignore the nagging impression that the project is several rewrites away from the finished article. The rock score by the debutant composer Nick Butcher aspires to be anthemic, but drifts into U2-lite territory. There’s not much cheer in the lyrics either: Butcher and his co-writer, Tim Ling, string together solemn platitudes as they piece together Fraser’s recovery after a beach accident which left him paralysed from the neck down when he was just 17.

The play, inevitably can only deliver a precis of a book that sprawls over some 700 pages. Sometimes the pace reminded me of the unhappy stage adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor epic The Mirror and the Light. The other obvious problem is that the storyline — including the bleak twist at the end — is so implausible. Strip away the gore and the gossip about Norton’s private parts, and what do you have? A stylishly mounted, second-rate melodrama.

This is no ordinary revival. Daniel Fish’s Tony award-winning production, which crossed the Atlantic to the Young Vic last year and now gets an upgrade to a traditional proscenium arch, is just the kind of experiment to set musical lovers at each other’s throats. Some will praise it as an audaciously grungy reinvention; others will call it sacrilege.

Sylvia is the show that came back from the dead. When it was presented at the Old Vic five years ago, the project suffered multiple crises and opened as a work-in-progress. Prince, founder of the ZooNation dance troupe, subsequently described herself as “embarrassed and out of my depth”. Now after rewrites the piece has been pared from three hours to just over two and a half. It’s still messy, but the good news is that the soul singer Beverley Knight returns in the role of Emmeline. Her voice, when you get to hear it, remains spine-tingling. There just isn’t enough of it.