Nick Curtis — Theater Critic

Some moments are deftly done: the chase across the Scottish moors is performed in silhouette, with human shadows, miniature 2D-cutouts, and 3D models of biplanes providing a delicious mishmash of scale and perspective. The comic-erotic scene where Pamela removes her stockings while handcuffed to Hannay retains its edgy power. But we’ve now seen the other stuff – the ironic sidelong glances into the auditorium, the deliberately botched physical gags, the mood-puncturing jokes – done a million times in the last two decades, and often better. This is a reminder that even solid-gold hits tarnish with time.

Staunton is all brightness and bounce in the introductory Just Leave Everything to Me. She’s wry and tart in the witty Motherhood March and Dancing, quietly touching in the solo Look, Love in My Window. Then she unleashes the full-on, mind-altering force of her voice in the anthemic Before the Parade Passes By, in the title song, and in the swaggeringly flippant So Long, Dearie.

Staunton is all brightness and bounce in the introductory Just Leave Everything to Me. She’s wry and tart in the witty Motherhood March and Dancing, quietly touching in the solo Look, Love in My Window. Then she unleashes the full-on, mind-altering force of her voice in the anthemic Before the Parade Passes By, in the title song, and in the swaggeringly flippant So Long, Dearie.

It’s not an easy watch, not just because of the racist language and discomfiting power-dynamics. The role-playing leads to long sessions where the couples and their therapists (who are also in a racially mixed lesbian relationship) angrily express their feelings. Clint Ramos’s echoey mirrored set – enabling the mostly white audience to watch themselves voyeuristically watching – also makes it hard to hear at times.

Zheng Xi Yong’s classical piano playing in the lead role of Kо̄sei provides subtlety and real feeling in a welter of phony sentiment. Both he and Mia Kobayashi, making a bold debut as his inamorata Kaori though still at drama school, sing strongly. But the acting in Nick Winston’s production – the first West End musical with a cast entirely of South East Asian heritage – is relentlessly cartoonish.

As the titular, dysfunctional best friends who host a weekly murder podcast from a garage near Hull, Bronté Barbé and Rebekah Hinds sell the songs and the broad jokes better than they deserve. The whole thing has a rough and robust zest that doubtless helped it rise above the dross on the Edinburgh Fringe. But in the more rarefied atmosphere of the West End the constant barrage of gurning and caterwauling is a major turn-off.

As the titular, dysfunctional best friends who host a weekly murder podcast from a garage near Hull, Bronté Barbé and Rebekah Hinds sell the songs and the broad jokes better than they deserve. The whole thing has a rough and robust zest that doubtless helped it rise above the dross on the Edinburgh Fringe. But in the more rarefied atmosphere of the West End the constant barrage of gurning and caterwauling is a major turn-off.

Hell is other family members, just as it was for the Roys. I promised myself I wouldn’t make too many comparisons between Cox’s sublime turn in the best TV show in recent years, and his towering performance here. But, you know, f**k it: this is O’Neill for the Succession generation.

A rivetingly assertive central performance from Laura Donnelly sets the tone for a strong ensemble cast and the play more than earns its three-hour running time, at least until the garbled ending. Mendes told me last year Butterworth originally handed him “half a play”. It’s now nine-tenths of a superb one.

Equally, you can enjoy this immersive, overwhelming experience, which has a love for live performance at its very core, without having seen a second of the TV show. Daldry, the consummate showman of British culture, has done it again.

Equally, you can enjoy this immersive, overwhelming experience, which has a love for live performance at its very core, without having seen a second of the TV show. Daldry, the consummate showman of British culture, has done it again.

The play is lazy, the characters forced into absurd and improbable positions by the writer’s agenda. And behind the subjects it ostensibly confronts – misogyny, sexual violence, identity politics, cancellation by social media – I think it’s also about how awful it is to be a writer and have your work mutilated and misunderstood by idiot actors, directors and critics.

Designer Lizzie Clachan gives us overarching talons, nightmare fantasies and box-of-tricks physical sets, but the show’s muted colour palette gets a bit boring. Standout songs include Luke’s Ready to Go, the Grand Witch’s insinuating hymn to childlessness Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Gran’s When I Was Young and the irresistible clap-along Get up, sung by Helga (Jersey Blu Georgia on opening night) and the younger cast members. There are occasional lacunae here but this is a polished, witty, crisply sardonic serving of Dahl. And if the other child actors sharing the central roles are as good as the ones I saw, they deserve all the plaudits.

There’s undeniable emotional force in seeing such experienced interpreters of Sondheim pay tribute, but it’s refreshing too when newcomers like the charismatic Bradley Jaden and the captivating Beatrice Penny-Touré take the focus.

Bertie Carvel’s transformative turn as her mentor and tormentor Henry Higgins will, I suspect, be a bit more Marmite for audiences. He’s an effete, manic demon with a Mr Punch leer and a strangulated (but perfectly enunciated) voice, hips jutting and shoulders slumped like a half-strung marionette. A play that’s ostensibly about speech involves an awful lot of body language.

The creators’ experience in crafting three-minute hits and their relative ignorance of musical theatre convention prove liberating. Several numbers, particularly those involving the bros, sound like superior boyband ballads: I mean that as a compliment. There are party tunes as Henry goes out drinking both pre- and post-accident. OK, it’s a little obvious to give Parris, the only black woman in a lead role, a gospel-inflected tune: but the lyrics communicate both the stress and the passion of a doctor’s life.

Believe the hype. Daniel Fish’s radical staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Western musical from 1943 is utterly thrilling. Though the music is as gorgeous as ever, this version strips away many of the folksy, hokey accretions the show has acquired over the years and finds something much darker and more powerful.

Believe the hype. Daniel Fish’s radical staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Western musical from 1943 is utterly thrilling. Though the music is as gorgeous as ever, this version strips away many of the folksy, hokey accretions the show has acquired over the years and finds something much darker and more powerful.

And oh dear, the characterisations. Emmeline advocated violent protest to win wealthy, older, married women the vote: Sylvia wanted universal suffrage for men and women, by peaceful means. Here, their ideological differences have the air of a domestic spat. Knight and Rose (and Ellena Vincent as Christabel) transcend the stilted relationships through sheer charisma and vocal power.

Director Sam Mendes’s enthralling production blends domestic and world events, a ritualistic family saga, and homages to American culture. There’s a curved Cinerama-style screen at the back of the stage showing the Atlantic, empty Alabama vistas and the changing New York skyline, plus a live, silent-movie style piano accompaniment throughout. The witty performances have more than a touch of vaudeville: I was occasionally reminded of the Marx Brothers.

The script is expertly crafted and sometimes incisive. Steiner doesn’t beat any particular drum, but the central concept strikes chords in contemporary politics, both in recent attempts to limit the right to protest or to strike here, and in more authoritarian regimes overseas.

If you surrender to the absurdity, it's ...

Overall, this is a handsomely mounted, well-acted work that strums reliably on the emotions, but feels inescapably like a museum piece. Scratchy film at the end tells us about the real Jewish-American-German couple that inspired Watch on the Rhine, and Hellman’s own later steadfastness during the McCarthy witchhunts in the 1950s. A new play about either might feel more stimulating.