Marianka Swain

It’s an incredible showcase for a performer – which, on Broadway, has included Escola, Tituss Burgess, Jinkx Monsoon, and Jane Krakowski – and London is treated to a tour-de-force turn from Mason Alexander Park, who tears into the material like a ravenous tiger. Park hits every note with absolute comic precision: Mary’s infantile narcissism, crippling boredom, devilish humour, and, when presented with a hunky new acting teacher in tight breeches, all-consuming lust.

Aideen Malone supplies inarguably the year’s best lighting design. Huge shafts of expressive light come flooding through the trees to completely change the atmosphere and suggest an otherworldly presence. But then Fein’s production is packed with unforgettable painterly visuals, such as Rapunzel posed in her tower like the Virgin Mary in a stained-glass window. It has mischievous fun too: Jack’s cow is an adorable open-mouthed puppet, while the princes have 80s tennis player-esque bouffant hair and headbands, and comically large codpieces.

There are gleeful stagey in-jokes: Edden correctly boasts that he’s a “triple threat”, and Langford reminds us she was in Cats. That’s all of a piece with a production that wears its theatricality proudly: this is the Paddington we love, but reborn in a distinctly new medium. It invites a live audience in to become part of the story. It’s also a musical with a hero, and a message, that feels more important than ever to emulate – “Kindness isn’t complicated”. I tip my hat to Paddington: the small bear is a big hit.

Both actors sink their teeth into this juicy material. Gatwa is a charismatic force of nature as Marlowe, whether snorting drugs, swishing his cape like a matador, stroking his “throbbing quill”, or leaping across the table to pounce on Shakespeare – who compares flirting with him to “petting a leopard”. Yet he also wonders, poignantly, if his work will grant him immortality. Bluemel gives us an effectively hesitant young Bard who grows in confidence and stature as his artistic genius emerges. An electrifying exchange sees the pair acting out Shakespeare’s farewell scene in Henry VI – art that reveals real emotion, proving the power of his approach.

When Fabian Aloise’s super-athletic choreography… kicks into high gear… it feels like being inside a stadium gig, a football match and a political rally all at once: exhilarating, addictive, ultimately terrifying. This darkly brilliant Evita is bursting with star quality.

We have to believe that this fractured group is capable of greatness, and the sumptuous, blood-pumping original music by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler absolutely convinces us. When the band does finally nail a song, it is spine-tingling – especially as the cast sing and play all their instruments live. They’re so good that you wish there was more music. Adjmi’s wry, unhurried hypernaturalism deliberately immerses us in their experience – the stop-start frustrations, exhaustion, mundane moments juxtaposed with transcendent ones – but, over three hours, it’s slightly too gruelling.

There are a few too many Shavian speeches which pull you out of the drama, though the arguments remain compelling – whether the comparison between sex work and transactional marriage dressed up as romance, or the passionate defence of a woman’s right to find purpose and self-respect through a career. In that latter respect, Mrs Warren and Vivie are actually very similar, but, via the excellent performances here, you deeply feel the tragedy that there is as much to drive them apart as bring them together.

Just hearing those first few instantly recognisable notes of Sondheim’s score sends shivers down the spine; of course we want more of it. Still, what we do get is typically brilliant: crafted with immense rigour and care, emotionally and thematically rich, every rhyme ingenious, and meaning always allied with form – as when the panicking waiter at the Everything Café sings “I am so sor-ry, mad-am”, with increasingly biting, unhinged emphasis. That’s one of several roles (all overlooked service workers) taken by charismatic livewire Denis O’Hare.

Kait Kerrigan’s accessible book hurtles through the action, adding brisk explanations for the characters’ various dilemmas. In particular, she beefs up the female voices – an admirable intent, especially when it comes to Daisy, who is often depicted as a shallow socialite and a prize to be fought over. But so passionately underscoring the gendered double standards of marriage in this era (men can cheat publicly; women stand to lose everything, including their children) makes Daisy almost too sympathetic. She loses her moral shading – and these characters aren’t meant to be saintly, romantic victims of circumstance. It causes problems in the murkier second half.

A very game Hiddleston leans into the hamminess of the posturing Benedick, from his rock-star entrance amid a cloud of dry ice to his eyebrow-waggling audience flirtation (“I am loved of all ladies” indeed), madcap dad-dancing, or teasing of a buff chest by undoing his shirt buttons. The gulling scene is a total blast as he hides, unsuccessfully, in pink confetti, and even does a confetti spit take. Yet his eventual confession of love is stirringly sincere.

Bartlett provocatively poses the thesis that it’s surely better to share and do so honestly than to betray your spouse with lies and secret infidelity. There’s a split in generational attitudes here, with Kate calmly open to new ideas, although Polly also gets a wistful speech about pre-internet romance. Opening the night before Valentine’s Day, this promises to spark heated post-show discussions about contemporary relationships.

Among the wonderfully Dickensian eccentrics and grotesques, vivid characters all, are Oscar Conlon-Morrey’s preening (and often show-stealing) Mr Bumble, Katy Secombe as his eager paramour Widow Corney, and Stephen Matthews and Jamie Birkett’s creepily gothic Sowerberrys – another couple made in heaven, or perhaps hell. Billy Jenkins is an excellent Artful Dodger, with his cheeky-chappie swagger and dynamic moves, and Isabelle Methven is a sweetly gentle Bet.

The design (by Compton and Anna Kelsey) is a seafaring delight, with wooden crates, planks and ropes used to create everything from barstools to a boat, and, overhead, fairy lights twinkling among the fishing nets to suggest stars. Luke Swaffield’s evocative soundscape features lapping waves and a whistling wind; there’s a sense of the vast eternity of nature, in sharp contrast to the brief span of a human life. We must make every moment count.

Coogan, in fact, outdoes Sellers in playing four parts to his three. That necessitates some lightning-fast quick-changes and the odd creaking plot mechanism to get Coogan offstage. But the knowingness of the latter fits the tone of Foley’s assured production, which easily flips between Airplane!-style genre-busting farce and alarmingly resonant commentary on humanity’s reckless self-destructiveness.

There are good individual performances. Smith-Cameron (aka Gerri from Succession), playing Juno for the second time in her career, supplies an effective weary yet steely stoicism. Aisling Kearns and Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty give vivid turns as the two children – one gutsy, one haunted, both eventually ground down by an inescapable cycle of poverty and violence.

Soleimanpour’s writing is very meta, looping around to interrogate the act of a performer interpreting and communicating the work to an audience. It challenges us to analyse our natural responses: do we start to think of Mohammed as the author, and how much is our view of Soleimanpour shaped by him? Mohammed, who is an astonishingly good cold-reader and delightful company, certainly lent the author his charm, and – for better or worse – an eagerness to put us at ease. Other performers may revel in the uncomfortableness of the situation.

I confess I didn’t know much about the plays of Arthur Wing Pinero, but after seeing this absolutely knockout production of his 1890 farce The Cabinet Minister, brilliantly adapted by actress and debuting playwright Nancy Carroll, I’m now an ardent fan. This is, hands down, one of the funniest shows in London theatre right now.

Good as all these songs are, there are too many here – although I’d be sad to lose bonkers tangents like the operatic panic over a bee. But, since this is a full book musical rather than a SIX-style concert, it would help to have more breathing space for the raw, revelatory numbers, such as Nancy’s grief-fuelled ballad or Oliver’s electrifying, confessional “Disco Ball”.

What a pleasure to have Tom Stoppard’s brilliantly inventive 1982 Tony-winning play The Real Thing back in London. Even better, both its formal daring and its frank, subversive portrait of complicated relationships are thoughtfully handled in Max Webster’s stylish and strikingly cast revival.

An epic manhunt across the moors is achieved with shadow puppetry, Mic Pool’s sound design gives us instant changes of mood, such as sweeping strings for romantic tension, and Ian Scott’s clever lighting both aids the storytelling and supplies some atmospheric, even eerie, moments. There’s also a plethora of playful Hitchcock references if you want to fill your bingo card. It’s no mystery why this affectionate parody is still delighting audiences. Balancing suspense with slapstick, and a cracking yarn with theatrical in-jokes, it’s a welcome piece of thoroughly escapist entertainment.

Choreographer Julia Cheng keeps the best of Jerome Robbins’s work (like the famous bottle dance) while adding grit: one drunken reveller does a split jump off a table while spitting vodka. Mark Aspinall’s superb orchestrations find new details in the kletzmer-esque score, while onstage violinist Raphael Papo and Bristow, who supplies plaintive clarinet-playing, add to the spine-tingling atmosphere.

Hello, Imelda! It’s so nice to have her back where she belongs. And we’ve had quite the wait for the actress’s triumphant return to musical theatre: Dominic Cooke’s lavish revival of Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s witty 1964 Broadway favourite Hello, Dolly! was delayed four years by the pandemic. Yet somehow that makes this success all the sweeter, and contributes to an extraordinary production that is every bit as moving as it is utterly spectacular.

The irresistible immersive staging draws the audience in. Paul Farnsworth has filled his French bingo card: the square is framed by lush trees, dilapidated green shutters and ivy-clad wrought-iron balconies, plus there are adorable café tables (at which a few audience members are seated), men in flat caps playing boules, and constant, insouciant smoking. Matt Cole’s movement makes the entangled ensemble feel like one character.

The revelation here, playing Kaori, is Mia Kobayashi in a true star-is-born professional debut. She turns what could be an irritating Manic Pixie Dream Girl character into a charismatic delight, and she has a dazzling combination of exquisite vocal tone and a huge power belt – a Mariah Carey in the making.

Gabriella Slade’s fabulous retro-futurist costumes nod to both armoured Marvel superheroes and the Six queens, with cool details like smoke unfurling from the steam characters’ backpacks – although they must be heavy, making the cast’s silky skating all the more impressive. We’re talking SAS levels of fitness here. Ashley Nottingham, working with creative dramaturg and original choreographer Arlene Phillips, gives us everything from hip-shaking swing and a kick line to funky streetdance. The race marshals, riding scooters, do incredible upside-down flips off the ramp.