UK / WEST END THEATER REVIEWS

Spend Spend Spend, a show that first hit the West End back in 1999 - with its tuneful score, hard-nosed but also raunchily humorous book and an emotional core that rings with human truth - is a much underrated gem of a musical. Now, in a newly forged 'actor-musician' production at the Watermill Thea...

Does the biting wit and satire still have resonance?...

The opening number of Sister Act - the musical, which opened on June 2 at the London Palladium, is entitled ?Take Me To Heaven? - and that is precisely what this delightful new show does to its audience. It is divinely fresh, funny and fabulous. ...

Twelfth Night at the Unicorn Theatre is a hit for ages 10+...

A single figure appears at the back of the stage. A single voice begins to sing a Barry Manilow classic - exquisitely, soon to be joined by the other members of BBC's Last Choir Standing winners 'Only Men Aloud' and suddenly 'One Voice' explodes into an huge wall of sound as stunning vocals advance ...

The Thorn Birds - which began life as Colleen McCullough's multi-million copy best selling 1977 novel and went on to become one of the most successful TV mini-series of the 1980s - deals with the clash between passionate love and faithful duty to God. Anyone who finds the courage to go to see the ne...

Anyone who has ever experienced the joys - or woes - of transatlantic flying may wish to fasten their seat belts and head off to see a new musical that takes its audience on a flight from London to New York and back again. That is precisely the theatrical experience created by Jet Set Go! (currently...

In a time when the average musical theatre menu served in the West End consists of revived old musicals, bland and rather inconsequential new musicals or purely commercial vehicles with little originality of content and no original score - it is a breath of fresh air to have a musical theatre piece ...

From the misty opening on the Essex marshes to the bittersweet denouement of Dickens' compelling story, Clwyd Theatr Cymru's new musical adaptation of Great Expectations charms, delights and grips its audience throughout. Faithfully yet innovatively adapted and directed by Tim Baker, cleverly enhanc...

Hidden away in the tiny basement that is London's Jermyn Street Theatre is a new production of a relatively unknown gem of a show - Saturday Night - with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Casablanca screenwriters, Philip G. and Julius J. Epstein. And in the intimate theatrical world c...

It is a rare thing in musical theatre that a show comes along that is vibrant, funny, touching, thought provoking, edgy, relevant, timeless and thoroughly entertaining. Spring Awakening is just that kind of rare thing. The Lyric, Hammersmith is the current home of the UK premiere production of Dunca...

Yet another 'juke-box musical' with a whimsical plot written around a collection of well known hit songs would appear on the surface to be a nightmare theatrical scenario. But Bill Kenwright's production of Can't Smile Without You currently playing at the Bristol Hippodrome during the early stages o...

David Harrower's play, 365, currently being staged by the National Theatre of Scotland at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith following a successful run at this year's Edinburgh International Festival, is a quite stunning piece of theatre that examines the experiences of a disparate group of 'care-leaver...

The Joe Dipietro and Jimmy Roberts musical revue, 'I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change', is a smash hit Off Broadway show which in July 2008 ended a 12 year run of over 5,000 performances at New York's Westside Theatre. In August 2008 Edinburgh's Fringe fans have been flocking to Take Note Theatr...

'Only the brave die young' claims a lyric line in the title song of the over-hyped and under achieving musical 'Only The Brave' playing at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. If you are a discerning fan of serious musical theatre then perhaps a more apt phrase would be 'only the brave should come...

An elite group of graduate students from The Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama have been serving up a delicious musical theatre menu at the Edinburgh Fringe for the past three weeks with Sally Rapier's atmospheric and tightly knit UK premiere production of The Off-Broadway musical 'The Spitfir...

Currently taking off at the Edinburgh Fringe's intimate George Square 2 venue is a new British musical, Jet, Set Go! by Pippa Cleary and Jake Brunger, directed by Luke Sheppard. For 75 minutes audiences are treated to a hugely enjoyable feast of humour and catchy tunes as this 'cabin crew musical' t...

From the moment the cast of twelve actor/musicians step out onto Diego Pitarch's atmospheric set, which draws its focus from a central black spiral staircase, and begin to play the strains of Andrew Lloyd Webber's haunting musical prologue for Sunset Boulevard, the audience at the Watermill Theatre,...

Marguerite, the new musical currently playing at London's Theatre Royal, Haymarket, has most of the ingredients required to make a great show - stunning music, a wonderfully inventive set, a very strong story that should stir the emotions of an audience, a stellar cast led by performers of genuine s...

West End Sound of Music star Connie Fisher swapped her nun's wimple for an adjudicator's hat at the Grand Theatre, Swansea on Saturday March 1st as a member of the adjudicating panel for the 2008 Welsh Young Musical Theatre Singer of the Year contest. During the evening Connie also made a welcome r...

After years of fruitless speculation, the long overdue and hotly anticipated transfer of Broadway smash Hairspray has finally arrived in the Shaftsbury Theatre. And for a venue that has recently been plagued by a stream of short-run productions with poor box office success, what a blessing this must...

When Jonathon Larson conceived his ground-breaking musical Rent, he set out to create a serious piece of musical theatre with a rock score. Director William Baker and musical supervisor Steve Anderson have decided to 'remix' what has become a revered rock cult classic musical rather than re-hash the...

The current UK tour production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Charles Hart/Don Black musical, Aspects Of Love, graces the stage of Cardiff's New Theatre this week on its way to 15 other venues, ending at Nottingham on March 22, 2008. On the evidence of the Cardiff staging, director Nikolai Foster, aided...

The old millennium is in its dying moments and the new millennium is about to begin as a group of friends, lovers and ex-lovers gather in a Manhattan loft apartment on New Year's Eve. As the plot develops, relationships and friendships also witness their dying moments while others develop new beginn...

Nine years after its Broadway premiere at Lincoln Centre's Vivian Beaumont theatre, the Jason Robert Brown/Alfred Uhry musical Parade finally made its way to the London stage on September 24 when it opened at the Donmar Warehouse. It has been eagerly anticipated by musical theatre afficionados in th...