Nick Curtis — Theater Critic

It’s both hilarious and liberating to see goggle-eyed, gape-grinning puppets drinking, swearing and shagging. The pitch-perfect, genre-mocking songs (Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx) and the book (Jeff Whitty) gleefully demolish taboos in a way that should leave the “you-can’t say-anything-these-days” crowd sputtering over their keyboards. The numbers Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist, Schadenfreude and the closing For Now are standouts. Lopez went on to co-create Book of Mormon and co-write the songs in the Frozen movies, while Mark has penned songs for Scrubs and Glee: astonishingly Avenue Q was the first completed work for both.

Onstage throughout, Pike is in constant motion, slipping in and out of outfits, catching a casually flung lemon, and keeping up a sometimes amused, sometimes emotionally frayed commentary for the audience on how her gender affects her life. The role plays to her dramatic skills but also a flair for physical comedy, as when a clothes iron spurting steam becomes a stand-in for her bumptious barrister husband.

But oh dear, what are we to make of Matt Cardle, winner of the X Factor back in 2010, in the underwritten role of reluctant factory owner Charlie Price? The singer has done stints in musicals (Memphis, Jesus Christ Superstar, & Juliet) alongside his recording career but doesn’t seem to have picked up much technique or showmanship in the process. In terms of impact, he’s the opposite of Radebe, exhibiting what Terry Pratchett called “charisn’tma”. When Charlie’s employee Lauren (Courtney Bowman) suddenly gets the hots for her morose, seedy-looking boss you think: what, him?

Gorky’s script has been given an idiosyncratic and often ribald updating by siblings Nina Raine and Moses Raine that will be divisive but which I found hugely entertaining. A play about inaction brings its own problems, however: as domestic spats and doomed flirtations play out, you wait in vain for something significant to happen. Perhaps it’s best to approach Summerfolk as a mood.

Kavanaugh wisely doesn’t try to revamp things. Her production, clad in shades of brown, black and grey, unfolds in measured fashion against Peter McKintosh’s set of lofty library shelves. Bonneville, who seems always to be putting on or taking off a raincoat or a dressing gown here, is a perfect fit for Nicholson’s avuncular, slightly pompous Lewis. Siff is similarly right for the beady-eyed, passionate Joy. Their relationship convinced but never quite moved me. This feels like a piece of heritage theatre, albeit one mounted with star power and skill.

Elsewhere the score, like the plot, defaults to the sort of generic you-can-do-it, anything-is-possible platitudes you might find on a motivational poster. I feel like a heel for gently putting the boot into this ambulant odyssey, but Harold Fry left me admiring rather than genuinely moved.

Alex Eales’s revolving, circular set deftly illustrates the idea that time cannot be unwound, or jam unstirred from rice pudding, and features two glowing ellipses and a host of celestial spheres above. Cracknell’s production is almost seamless and she has assembled probably the finest cast you’ll see on stage this year. Dillane is a saturnine and amused Septimus, while Hainsworth utterly convinces as a prodigy aged 13 and then 17. (The flirtation between the two could be deeply icky in this Epstein-filed era, but manifests as a chaste, and rebuffed, teenage crush.) Puwanarajah is resplendent as the swaggeringly cocksure, grizzle-maned Nightingale, whose opportunistic priapism – also somewhat jarring in a post #MeToo world - mirrors Septimus’s.

I’m not sure why veteran screenwriter Roth, who won an Oscar for Forrest Gump, thought the world needed this onstage horse opera, here and now. Nor why he and director Thea Sharrock stud the action with snatches of songs by Bruce Springsteen and others, plus occasional bits of square dancing. It shows how far we’ve gone through the political looking glass, though, that a hymn to American individualism, starring the ferociously right-wing Cooper, here becomes an anti-Trump parable. Miller is a lying demagogue as well as a criminal and the townsfolk’s reluctance to support Kane is a failure of collective action.

The play puts Susan through the physical and mental wringer and it works thanks to Smith. She has a uniquely vivid physical presence, and her emotions are shimmeringly close to the surface. It’s great to see her back on stage again after the unfortunate debacle of 2024’s Opening Night, where she was again required to fall apart. Maybe next time she could play a character who isn’t – to quote the Patsy Cline song played before curtain-up – Crazy.

Park is a force of nature, whisking around the teasingly basic set (by the “multi-disciplinary design collective” dots), hooped skirt flying, in a desperate search for liquor and attention. She addresses a portrait of George Washington (or as we should probably call him, “the Man who did Mary’s Husband’s Job In The Past”) as “Mother”. Induced to try oil painting, Mary guzzles a bucket of paint thinner, sicks it up, and drinks it down again.

Throughout, the slapstick is expertly handled. Tannahill’s Jonathan, as Jacob Marley, ends up dragging a chair, a bed and the hapless Trevor across the stage in his chains. Later, Trevor plays a top-heavy version of the spectre he calls The Ghost of Christmas Who’s About to Come, and demolishes the graveyard set. “Who cares about the review?” the cast ask after the curtain has come down on their amateur shambles, and it must be said that Mischief are probably critic proof by now. But for what it’s worth, I’m a convert.

God can’t exist in this hellscape and humans (and tigers) are hunted through it by conscience, even after death. The biblical exhortation “if thy hand offends thee, cut it off” is taken literally. This is heavy stuff, often handled by Joseph with acrid wit. There is a wickedly funny scene where Tom reveals the worst thing about having a state-of-the-art prosthetic (“like Robocop”) replace his right hand. Musa tries to understand the idiosyncrasies of American English through “knock knock” jokes.

As is customary, Oliver Savile doubles the role of Cinderella’s prince with that of the wolf salivating over Gracie McGonigal’s wonderfully bratty Red Ridinghood. His pervy song Hello Little Girl has not dated so well. After various shenanigans, including the Grimm-faithful mutilation and blinding of Cinderella’s wicked sisters, the first half ends in marriage and pregnancy. The songs “So Happy” and “Ever After” ironically foreshadow the darkness to come.

There’s a lack of dynamism and propulsion to the direction. There’s also an uncertainty of tone: the endless assertions of Iago’s honesty come across as absurd rather than ironic. Multiple scenarios provoke titters rather than horror, including Iago’s invented account of Cassio (an unremarkable Luke Treadaway) sleepily snogging him in bed while dreaming of Desdemona, and Desdemona’s cry of “kill me tomorrow” on the point of her death.

Each of its eleven scenes stand alone as dramatic snapshots of a life, but each informs the others. We connect threads, yet we’ll only ever have a partial picture of Mary Page, as we do of pretty much everyone. “Things are not what they appear to be,” says a fellow student, casting her tarot. Telling a palliative care nurse about her job, Sarandon’s final version of Mary Page says it’s rare for all the numbers to add up. Even a woman who considers herself “unexceptional” will have unknowable depths.

Once again, I was hugely entertained by the well-endowed living statue, the latex-masked gimp and the sexy Jesus in De Bris’s apartment. There are brilliant touches I don’t remember from the Menier: the close relationship between Franz and one of his antisemitic pigeons, dancers emulating the Reichstag fire, a backdrop of swastikas picked out in pastel roses for the show-within-a-show’s titular anthem. In that number, as has become traditional, Mel Brooks’s recorded voice delivers the line: “Don’t be stoopid, be a smarty/Come and join the Nazi Party!”

Glossy back-projections take us from Iowa to Manhattan. There’s a nod towards body positivity and trans inclusion among the lithe calves and twinkling buttocks. The costumes include a pair of cocktail-olive brassieres for the lissom twins performing a number called Dirty Martini, and a corset adorned with wing mirrors and protruding whips for Folley. Lights strafe and confetti cannons eventually ejaculate. This enjoyably absurd musical based on an enjoyably humdrum film is far better than I could have anticipated.

Great theatre can be about many things: star quality, spectacle, the lightning-in-bottle capture of a moment... In this Evita, all those things come triumphantly together.

However, Brady’s Hercules is sweet but uncharismatic, his romance with Hades’ bored-seeming servant Meg (Mae Ann Jorolan) low-powered. Alan Menken and David Zippel’s score includes hits from the original film and some new numbers added for the 2019 off Broadway premiere: I enjoyed the Muses’ much-reprised Gospel Truth, Hercules’ Go the Distance, and Meg’s Forget About It in performance, but none lingered in the ear or the mind on the journey home.

Bottom and his fellow artisans, rehearsing a dreadful play for Theseus’s wedding, are treated with more dignity and delicacy than is usual. The whole cast is allowed a measure of ad lib or embellishment, as in Shakespeare’s day. This is a gift to Akwafo, who is funny down to his bones, but also to the drily acerbic Fielding and to Moorst, who has further honed his interaction with audience members since he played Puck in 2019.

Mischief’s artistic director, Lewis co-wrote the script with Wright, and there are many of their fellow founders – who all studied together at LAMDA – and trusted regulars from previous shows in the cast. Dave Hearn’s elastic Lance, Chris Leask’s strangulated Sergei and Greg Tannahill’s fey hotel manager all delight – Tannahill also choreographs the fights. Nancy Zamit and Charlie Russell bring coarser grain to the roles of Lance’s mother Janet and Sergei’s eye-rolling partner Elena. James, a newcomer to the Mischief fold, plays it admirably straight as Rosemary. Director Matt DiCarlo keeps the pace up and David Farley’s simple set nicely recalls the backdrops of 1960s animations.

Smurfit is magnetic in expensive cream athleisurewear, hair artfully sleeked and cheekbones burnished like a battle visor: she’s not afraid to appear hard and unlikeable. Scott-Howells is an edgy and fascinating actor, always pushing the envelope of what is permissible. Stone, ever-dependable, is terrific here. Allison, part of the extraordinary talent school that was Sex Education, has a quietly compelling authority on stage. Deka Walmsley completes a fine cast as her father Jacob. Well, when I say ‘father’...

Before the last of many threats to commit suicide, sawn-off shotgun barrel socketed under his jaw, Moat has a speech about the crisis of masculinity. It feels timely, but like everything here it’s ambiguous, half-plea and half threat. Icke is one of the most gifted theatre artists working today – his magnificent 2024 Oedipus has just won a string of awards – but for all its intensity, Manhunt feels like it’s hedging its bets. Or worse, can’t make its mind up.

Exaggerated parody is a Marmite genre. You either love it or hate it, but it can take only a minor miscalibration in tone or pitch for affection to turn to abhorrence. I found Titanique delightful but many close to me loathed it. I’m deeply irritated by the way Dracula insulates itself against criticism by telling us how slapdash it’s going to be (“you’ll be horrified – one way or another!”). But mostly I was just unamused and bored.

Omigod guys, Amy Heckerling’s musical adaptation of her 1995 film about a rich Beverley Hills brat finding wisdom and true love is, like, kinda fun. It features a powerfully-sung breakout performance from young New Yorker Emma Flynn as the plaid-clad protagonist Cher Horowitz. I could mutter about yet another risk-averse, cross-genre exploitation of existing intellectual property – not just of the movie but of its inspiration, Jane Austen’s Emma – but frankly it’s more fun to just enjoy it.