Peter Pan Birmingham Hippodrome- Dazzling Spectacular *****

Michael Harrison who directed this version of Peter Pan at the Birmingham Hippodrome recently said there are five elements to a successful Qdos Pantomime - Special effects, Stars, Script, Production values, and Marketing. There is no doubt that these elements are all present in this spectacular production and on a second viewing combine to make a near perfect show. 

The Special effects by Twin FX, Ian Westbrook and Flying by Foy here are what grabs the attention and there can't have been a pantomime this season with more invested in and packed into the production. From the opening scene with silhouetted characters appearing in the windows of the roof top set the magic starts. Then Smee (the irrepressible Matt Slack) is seen in a video flying over the rooftop that seamlessly becomes an actual bike to fly out over the audience and turn upside down. It is a great opening sequence. 

On arrival in Neverland we meet a charming Captain Hook (Darren Day replacing Jimmy Osmond who is sadly ill and proving he too can act as well as sing) who bursts into song with "Crazy Pirates" accompanied by a fabulous ensemble of ten and a wonderful animated parrot who speaks and flaps his wings in time with the chorus! Later he sails out into the audience on a huge rocking ship. As we know he fears the crocodile who bit off his hand and we meet the spectacular creature twice both to amazing effect at the end of each Act.  In between times there is some excellent use of video with a projected map of the island and of Tinkerbell (Kellie Gnauck) dying and of course the expected flying of Peter Pan (Jaymi Hensley), Wendy (Cassie Compton) and The Mermaid (Meera Syal). 

All these elements come together with the high Production Values to create an excellent first half which tells most of the Peter Pan story, incorporate the effects with some great songs and comedy like when Smee plays ball with Nana the dog or when Hook sings Donny Osmond's "Love me for a reason". There are good routines such as the Shirley Sure tongue twister which is very well executed by Hook, Smee and The Mermaid (and much better that the Dawn French version at the Palladium) and an excellent clever flags routine from Smee. There is a hint of the variety show that is too follow in Act 2 when the Neverlanders (played by the incredible Timbuktu Tumblers, who won speciality act of the year last year with GB Pantomime Awards) perform their routine.

But the Script which has already cut the Darling Parents in the Nursery, Wendy being shot by Tootles and Tiger Lily (an underused Imogen Brooke) being marooned largely abandons the storytelling completely in the second half. Instead it is a series Star turns with Darren Day and Matt Slack singing some seventies hits; Hook, the Mermaid, Smee and Tinks doing a routine weak "if I were not in Neverland" (done better in Cinderella at Manchester Opera house); Hook, Smee and Mermaid doing a music clip routine (done much better in Snow White at Swan Wycombe even if Matt Slack did write the original version) and Sascha Williams performing his astonishing Rola Rola circus tricks . In addition, for some inexplicable reason Jaymi Hensley, the Union J singer, appears to mime along to "Rewrite the stars". Thankfully at the end in tribute to Jimmy Osmond, Darren Day  performs a mini concert of "Love me for a reason”, "We going to party" and "Crazy Horses" to create a rousing finale.

The end result is another excellent Qdos Variety show which like the Palladium show is loosely linked by skeleton pantomime Script with fantastic Special Effects , strong Star performances from Darren Day / Jimmy Osmond and Matt Slack and a great ensemble , all slickly staged and lit in excellent Production Values and there is no doubt the fifth element , Marketing , clearly works as the show was strongly profiled on the BBC One show and is playing to full houses.

You will not have seen many better Pantomimes this year, perhaps the Qdos Production of Peter Pan at Richmond with the wonderful Robert Lindsey , but for largely smut free entertainment Birmingham delivers and will continue to do so until 27^th January.

I think I will have to see it again won't I!

Nick Wayne 

Five stars

Cinderella - You shall go to the ball in Manchester (5 stars) and Cinderella Woking (4 stars)

Cinderella is one of the best pantomime titles but sometimes it starts to feel tired and old fashioned with old gags about nine carrot necklaces, fox hunting and picking up sticks in the woods. It is very refreshing when the producers (Qdos) and writer Alan McHugh give it a lively update, telling the basic story but making space for a large amount of brilliant Panto business. When you see the same title within a few days by the same producer and writer you begin to see their production process. With 35 pantomimes in all to produce it is a machine-like production line that produces a basic script, selects main songs, slots in special effects and sets and then gest the local Director to incorporate the casts own business in the spaces left. The result is a fast-paced two-hour show In Manchester Opera house and Woking New Victoria where large segments are the same, but the shows differentiated by their cast. Both feature a smooth transformation from the kitchen with a pumpkin man into the flying carriage for a spectacular act 1 finale borrowed from the London Palladium production of two years ago.

Manchester Opera House driven along by a hilarious Ben Nickless as Buttons with wonderful support by two excellent Ugly sisters Connor McIntyre as Phelina and Les Dennis as Michaela. The Uglies work well together McIntyre constantly eyeing the audience with a wicked smile and reaching out to hold Dennis’s hand, Dennis delivering his lines in a dry way which is evil and yet likeable at the same time.

They seamlessly integrate Nickless's comedy and impressions into the show and from his first entrance out of the magic boxes piled on stage he holds centre stage and has the audience laughing and eating out of his hands. He interacts well with the Dames in a succession of scenes that steal the show, some great lap top gags, a lesson in wooing, an excellent Apple Watch routine, a fast show recap, a nice routine with a Teddy and a wonderfully timed "if I was not upon the stage routine ".  On his own he entertains us with his impressions (Michael McIntyre, Ozzy Osbourne, Alan Carr, Take That, and Jose Mourinho) and an old Elvis routine learned from a broken record.

He also has charming comedy scenes with Cinderella, a very good pantomime debut from Shannon Flynn, as he reviews his record collection to cheer her up instead of the usual imagined carriage routine and when he sings first with a guitar and then on a wall in woods with her and the Prince, Gareth Gates. There is a strong feel of a cast of equals working hard together to deliver the show.

There is also an excellent Fairy Godmother, by singer Hayley-Ria Christian who gets several very good songs with the ensemble most notably in the woods with a host of pantomime characters.

The sets and costumes are very good with a lovely Italianate perspective to the village for the opening song "At the opera house" and two toy dogs to accompany the Uglies entrance

This is a funny slick show with a good mix of silly and adult humour, great songs and dances and a little bit of magic but most of all it showcases Ben Nickless’s comedy talents perfectly.

The Woking New Victoria version is led by Craig Revel Horwood who is outstanding as Baroness Hardup (and replaces the Ugly Sister’s main business in Manchester with those roles relegated to smaller walk-ons). He is magnificent in “Look at me” and in the Dance competition at the Ball and his disdainful looks and his Strictly Come Dancing Persona is curiously loveable and detestable at the same time.

The comedy is lead by the wonderful Paul Chuckle who after 51 years of pantomime with his brother Barry (who sadly died earlier this year) plays Baron Hardup. He recreates all his famous Chuckle Brother routines with the help of Buttons, comedian Phil Butler. Just as at the Mayflower last year we are treated to the old routines of Goldilocks, If I were not at Hard up Hall, Costume making routine and the magic cucumber routine. He is held in such high esteem and affection that the audience love it and enjoy the familiar gags, faux corpsing and brilliant comic timing. Butler himself has a lovely moment making a rose out of a paper tissue.

The result is a fun familiar show, true to the traditions of pantomime and suitable for the whole family and unless you too want to try the 3-hour drive between them, then I urge you to go to the nearest one to you!

Nick Wayne

Manchester Opera House 5 Stars

Woking New Victoria 4 stars

Summer and Smoke - "a dramatic and powerful platform for these wonderful young actors" ****

Tennessee Williams wrote Summer and Smoke in 1948, in between A Street car named under desire (1947) and A cat on a hot tin roof (1955). Like its better known plays its central character is a woman consumed by desires but Alma is desperately trying to control and suppress her feelings in pursuit of a higher spiritual satisfaction.

 This powerful modern feeling production which transfers from the Almeida is stripped back to a bare stage surrounded by seven open pianos, metronomes and chairs. They contain and underpin the action with haunting strains when played. The effect is to focus our attention on the two young central characters, Alma and John who inhabit the semi circular space like fighters in a boxing ring. Such focus requires performers of the highest quality and precision to sustain our interest and this production is delivered by two of the finest two young actors to debut in the West End in the last few years.

Patsy Ferran, who graduated from RADA in 2014 has astounded audiences in all her West End appearances, dominating the stage with her intense, physical and expressive acting. Here she completely inhabits Alma's complex uptight awkwardness as a preachers daughter who teaches music in the small town of Glorious Hill , Mississippi but hints at the passion that is boiling up inside her ready to explode if she lets her self control slip. it's mesmerising to watch from her first compelling breakdown at a microphone and she hardly ever leaves the stage.

 

Opposite her is Matthew Needham, who recently brilliantly played a gay man in Mike Bartlett's Cock at Chichester, here is the young redneck doctor’s son brimming with passion and desire for the young women of the Southern American town who becomes the obsessive target of Alma's suppressed desires. He talks of feeding his mind, his stomach and his sexual desire, while she is feeding her soul and this creates a desert between them.

When the summer of suppressed passion passes, a sudden dramatic shock (brilliantly played) to the community changes everything and her resolve weakens as the fires of her desire within her cloud her thinking.

The leading two are well supported by a cast of six others playing the family and other community members often without a change of costume. In particular I enjoyed Anjana Vasan who plays all the other young women in the town and Forbes Masson who plays both Alma’s preacher father and John’s Doctor Father, especially in the dramatic events of the second half.

Director Rebecca Frecknall brings a clear distinctive vision to the  production giving it an ethereal feel as if the action is all in the mind of Alma and keeps the action moving along at pace with a minimum of fuss which is reinforced by the spine tingling underscore .

This may not be Tennessee Williams greatest play but in the hands of Needham and Ferran it provides a dramatic and powerful platform for these wonderful young actors

Nick Wayne 

Caroline or Change - "moving and inspiring, reminding us of the changes that have been achieved over the last fifty years"

My review from Hampstead Theatre 

Tony Kushner's has magnificently created a musical of its time (1963) but at same time for today. As he explains in his programme notes, the play comes from sorrow, anger and grief but also hope learned from history which has shown us both the terrors and also the pleasures of change. It is about a period of American History, the time of JFK's assassination in streets of Dallas and close to 100 years since the American Civil war ended slavery: a time of race relation tensions and the civil rights movement of African Americans. It's highly charged emotional themes resonate with the global tensions of today and the desire for change with greater diversity and equality in every field.

It is powerful musical built around strong black female characters with soulful voices. At the centre of them is Caroline, the maid to the Gellman family, proud and hard working but struggling with her own grief and supporting her family of four children as well as adjusting to the societal changes. A twenty dollar bill becomes the catalyst for change in the Gellman family and for Caroline herself. Sharon D Clarke is awesome as Caroline , the maid of twenty two years who never smiles, bearing her sorrow with a stillness and pent up anger as she belts out her melancholy songs with emotion and strength while dreaming of being kissed by Nat King Cole. Her daughter Emmie (Abiona Omonua) reflects what is going on outside the basement that imprisons her mother and becomes the rebellious mouthpiece for change. She is full of energy, animated and sassy and the symbol of a more optimistic future. 

As Caroline grapples with her feelings and religious beliefs while going about her arduous daily routine in the Gellman's house, she finds herself in a flight of fantasy talking to the domestic appliances. A bubbly, agitating Me'sha Bryan is the washing machine, a sexy, dynamic Aka Mitchell is the dryer and the trio of T'shan Williams, Sharon Rose and Carole Stennett are a supreme like portable radio shimmying across the stage in long gowns, tight bob haircuts and radio antenna headdresses. They are supported by a strong ensemble.
There are delightful performances from the young boys in the show especially on the night I saw it by Aaron Gelkoff as Noah Gellman who has such as a pivotal role in the show and explores the emotions of a distant father, a new step mother and overbearing grandparents. The tension mounts and then explodes when Caroline and Emmie are asked to serve the Gellman family Chanukah party and Noah misses Caroline's presence in his house.

Director Michael Longhurst and designer Fly Davis have done an excellent job creating the Gellman's home simply slickly and effectively including the physical divide in the family and use the two revolves a raised balcony and flying moon to great effect. There is wonderful positioning and blocking in the critical scenes to heighten the relationship tensions.

The music throughout by Jeanne Tesori is a joyous eclectic mix of styles of the fifties and sixties with Jazz, Blues, Motown, Soul, spiritual and even a Christmas Carol blended together with a minimum of dialogue. My personal favourites were the "Laundry Quintet" with its delightful harmonies, "Roosevelt Petrucius Coleslaw" which closes Act 1, "Santa comin' Caroline" which opens Act 2 , "1943" which reveals her backstory , and then the closing emotional crescendo of "Lot's Wife" and "Salty Teardrops".  All of them feature Caroline, Emmie or the domestic appliances in engaging entertaining delivery and choreography and capable of being show stoppers. The final "Epilogue" by Emmie and her brothers brings hope and optimism.

The overall effect is moving and inspiring, reminding us of the changes that have been achieved over the last fifty years, encouraging us to embrace change- even if it hurts- and showing the power of family love to support change. It is fantastic that this delightfully original show will reach a wider audience when it transfers to the Playhouse in the West End in November.

Nick Wayne

Four stars

Guys and Dolls Concert at Royal Albert Hall

The Guys and Dolls concert at Royal Albert Hall promised to be a brilliant event, an A list cast, the thirty one piece Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, the wonderful cavernous amphitheatre and the delightful music and lyrics of Frank Loesser. Yet it somehow fell short in delivering what I regard as one of the greatest Musical theatre pieces ever written. The memory of Richard Eyre’s 1982 glorious NT production and Michael Grandage’s enjoyable 2005 revival hung over this concert version and it failed to reach the level that the recent excellent Camelot concert at the London Palladium reached. This is at least in part due to the venue itself which tended to dominate the whole evening as the performers sang before the huge organ pipes and sitting in row 11 of the stalls  (£70 seat) seemed to be one hundred metre from the stage. You almost wished for a TV screen to see the faces of the cast!

However the wonderful score did fill the venue especially during the overture which swirled around the roof space and occasionally the choreography and performances brought the concert to life as in Adelaide’s Bushel and a Peck, a fabulous Luck be a lady dance routine using two levels of the stage and the show stopping Nicely Nicely Johnson’s (played by the wonderful Clive Rowe) Sit down, you’re rocking the boat. In these well produced numbers the stage filled and focused our attention down to the performances. At other times the performers looked lost in the vast stage.

The other drawback of this style of presentation, neatly avoided by the Camelot Concert was the story telling and character development with just three days of rehearsal. The narrator, the talented Stephen Mangan, did not have a witty damonesque enough script to work with and the performers although they did use New York accents never got a chance to perform the songs as anything but themselves.

The big success of the night is the cabaret artiste Meow Meow as the hot box girl Miss Adelaide; she was perfectly cast, used the stage well and provided most of the best comedy moments in her business and songs as she tottered around the stage in her outrageous costumes and large wig.  Musical Theatre specialists like Lara Pulver as Sarah Brown stood out especially in If I were a bell and I’ve never been in love before and Paul Nicholas as Arvide Abernathy in sweet lament More I cannot wish you.

Jason Manford as Nathan and Adrian Lester Sky Masterson showed they can both hold a tune in Sue me and Luck be a lady respectively but seemed to be well within their full capabilities and I feel would have shown more with more rehearsal and a more intimate staging. The amazing Sharon D Clarke as General Cartwiright was wasted in the limited singing role so we never really heard her powerful voice. There was a nice cameo from Sevan Stephan as Big Jule.

These concert versions are an excellent way of refreshing interest in the classic musicals and giving performers a chance to shine with limited time commitment but to fill the vast Albert Hall more is needed as in the Showboat staging referred to in the rather expensive £10 programme. Nevertheless the large audience seemed to enjoy the experience and gave it a rapturous response and I hope neither the producers nor the performers will be put off from doing another musical concert in 2019.

Nick Wayne

Three stars.

Height of the Storm - "See it twice to fully appreciate the quality of the direction and writing."

Christopher Hampton, who has successfully translated Florian Zeller's French plays before for the West End, says in the programme that it was only when he sees Zeller's plays a second time that they become clear. So having seen this interesting play in Bath last month I was excited to see it again at the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End to find out if it was correct. I can report that it is absolutely true, as the complicated jigsaw of clues unfolds on a second viewing you can follow the action and begin to understand what we are seeing and more importantly appreciate the quality of the performances and production.

Like in the highly emotional and moving play about dementia, The Father on which the writers collaborated all is not what it seems and for a while we struggle to follow or even work out who is telling the story.

When the curtain rises on the wonderful set by designer Anthony Ward of a grand duck egg blue kitchen of a French countryside house with Andre staring out of the window in the half light as his daughter Anne enters we soon get a sense that not all is right in the family. In the scenes that follow we see time slips, character switches and changes in intensity which seems on first viewing deliberately written to confuse and mislead the audience. This may be intended as it explores the confusion of feelings of dementia in parents and the grief from the loss of a family member or two.

Director Jonathan Kent guides us through this confusion of memories and reality with visual clues and lighting changes that add to the verbal clues within the script. The storm of the title has taken place the night before we first meet them but is also a metaphor for the storm that has hit the family and the impact of the “situation” the two daughters are dealing with.

It is hard to imagine two more appropriate actors for the central roles of the long married couple Andre and Madeline. Jonathan Pryce conveys the tender affection for his wife with a gentle quiet authority. His stillness and slow deliberate movements convey the loss he feels and the confusion of dementia. Eileen Atkins is his wife Madeline, drifting in and out of scenes, fading into the darkness but when centre stage she is in charge, organising and caring for him and the family. Their years of life experience are etched on their faces and in the looks they share with each other. Their dependency on each other is clear. As she says to him in a promise they will always be together.

Amanda Drew and Anna Madeley are their daughters Anne and Elise who arrive at the house from Paris to deal with "the situation" by looking at Andre's old diaries, recalling past conversations and planning for the future. We observe their interactions with their parents in a series of short scenes which create the jigsaw pieces that we need to assemble to understand the play. James Hillier plays a man lurking in the background or on his phone about a house sale in perhaps the strongest clue of all of what we are seeing.

The exquisite lighting design by Hugh Vanstone captures the sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows and subtly fades across the room to create a sense of half life enabling characters to fade into the shadows. On a second viewing he subtle lighting changes help distinguish the switches from realities to memories in each scene.

By the end of this intense moving production each audience member will have view of who has died but on a second viewing there appears only one logical explanation for the switches we witness  and if that logic is true it makes the whole thing incredibly powerful and wonderful. This is a play you should go and see for the quality of the production and the performances of Pryce and Atkins but you should see it twice to fully appreciate the quality of the direction and writing.

Nick Wayne

Five stars

Cock- "This is theatre in the round at its very best"

Mike Bartlett's play Cock is an unusual offering for Chichester. It takes minimalist staging to an extreme place with no set, no props, no costume changes and very little physical contact between the four actors. We are left to imagine the action and concentrate on the rapid fire words they speak which are littered with an excess of the F-word. Yet it works and produces a fascinating ninety five minutes of engaging drama that makes you think about sexuality and your closest relationships.

Bartlett clearly sees these protagonists as opponents in a verbal fight and the director Kate Hewitt has the cast circulating each other as if in a Sumo wrestling circle , a bull ring or two cocks set to fight each other. When one character's father enters the arena he positions himself as a referee or umpire in the verbal exchanges. The setting and direction creates the competitive tension as the man and the woman fight to win over John who is torn between his love for both. We first meet John and the man, his lover, in a series of short witty exchanges separated by a flash of red lights and a buzzer, almost like the bell between rounds. You could also imagine each of the four characters sitting in each corner of the ring and their verbal battle being played out in a tag team bout.

It makes for a gripping and thought provoking play which depends on the four actors disciplined and intense performances as they only have the words, and more importantly the awkward pauses between them to communicate their feelings and thoughts. Even when the scene depicts them making love they never touch but sway and gently move as they each speak. Matthew Needham is excellent as the gay man fighting (at times bouncing and jabbing with his hands) to keep John who Luke Thallon plays. John shows a wide range of emotions from love and excitement, to uncertainty and confusion as he is torn between the two and is unable to reconcile his feelings leaving him trembling by the end. Isabella Laughland is the 28 year old woman he meets on the way to work each day and falls for and Simon Chandler is the man's father. He tells John "I think you need to work out what you are first". The man tells John "it is o.k. to like both men and women, but not at the same time".

It shows the quality of the writing that this production can be so enthralling and moving when staged in such a stripped back simple way. In the end is not about sexuality or sex at all but about what it takes to make a relationship last.  This is theatre in the round at its very best and the Minerva is a perfect venue for the production.

Nick Wayne

Four stars

Mountaintop -"He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land"

On 3rd April 1968 Martin Luther King spoke at a rally in Memphis where he said “I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land." The following day as he left room 306 of his motel he was assassinated on the second floor balcony by James Earl Ray. This extraordinary moment in American civil rights history is the starting point for Katori Hall's remarkable play as she speculates on what happened in that motel room that night and how King felt about the civil rights movement he passionately but almost reluctantly led.

The result is a gripping, engaging and extraordinary two hander drama that runs without interval for an hour and forty five minutes, but the time flies by. King arrives in the hotel room alone, paranoid about being bugged by the FBI and spooked by a bomb threat on his plane to Memphis earlier in the day.  He is thirty nine and has campaigned for racial equality and an end to segregation though non violent resistance for thirteen years. In later years he had widened his campaigns to poverty and against the Vietnam War.
Gbolahan Obisesan plays King with a wonderful combination of intensity and power in speech but at the same time shows fear and uncertainty and regret for the distance from his wife and family. It shows why he succeeded in leading his communities but also the stress he must have endured in his campaigning. When Camae enters the room to deliver his coffee and cigarettes we see the effect this stress has had on him and a sense of loneliness and isolation.

Rochelle Rose is amazing as Camae , growing in power and presence as the show builds to its conclusion and excelling in the sequence looking to the future promised land as the civil rights baton is passed from campaigner after campaigner who have followed King. The chemistry between them is electric as their relationship changes with witty exchanges, sexual temptation and physical tension that build as we learn more about him and where he has reached in his life. Though the situation is imagined and surreal, they both make it believable and real. 

The design by Rajha Shakiry is excellent, the sixties motel room and the balcony outside are cleverly created in the intimate space of the studio with deft touches that tell us all is not as it seems. This is reinforced by a very effective lighting design by Lizzie Powell that flickers as a storm rages outside the room and picks out atmospheric changes on the balcony. The video montage projection by Nicky Dunn on the rear wall is dramatic and stunning whisking us through the US civil rights history after King's death putting his role in the context of change. Roy Alexander Weise brings all the elements together into a moving and educational drama that is one of the most powerful calls for us all to carry the baton of change forward and work for equality.

Nick Wayne

Five stars

Bat out of hell - "All revved up with no place to go"

In the late sixties the first rock musical Hair defined a genre in an innovative and compelling form that has seldom been surpassed. Perhaps only the staging of the Who’s rock opera Tommy has really combined successfully rock music with a strong story line and its influence is hinted at in the criss-cross pattern around the proscenium arch which echoes the Tommy album cover. But in Bat out of hell we have a exciting new rock musical that combines strong rock anthems, innovative staging and a large talented cast to produce a genuine modern rock musical for today. Having seen it in Manchester and at The Coliseum in 2017 it was with great anticipation that I saw it in its new residency at the Dominion.

Jim Steinman has created a wonderful dynamic show around the music made famous by Meatloaf. There are strong allusions to Peter Pan in the story created to link his songs. We have Peter, here called Strat, leading the lost with his special confidant , Tink and falling in love with Raven (Wendy ) while being pursed and at war with Falco (Hook) .But at its heart are the love stories between Strat and Raven and between Falco and Sloane (his wife and Raven’s mother).

From the moment Strat, played by Andrew Polec, climbs on stage to polish his beloved Harley Davidson and delivers his menacing opening monologue the tone is set .He is a leader, a rock star and his lost tribe will follow him against the police state lead by Falco.  Raven played with youthful innocence by Christina Bennington is locked away from him in her 1st floor bedroom but she breaks free to meet him.  She is embarrassed by her own parents’ passionate love making played with amazing stage presence and powerful voices by Rob Fowler and Sharon Sexton.

The relationship between these two couples is supported by a wonderful cast of 26 (perhaps at times too many) with standout performances from Danielle Steers as Zahara and Wayne Robinson as Jagwire. Their duet of “Two out of three ain't bad” is exciting and, but they surpass this with a thrilling “Dead ringer to love”. Throughout the songs are backed with high energy modern tribal choreography.

The staging is grandiose and multi layered with amazing automated scene changes, multiple projections and some stand out special effects to create the post-apocalyptic city of Obsidian.

Of course at the heart of the show is the music with classic rock anthems such as “Objects in the Rear View Mirror”, “Dead ringer for love”, “Bat out of hell”, “I'd do anything for love”, and “All revved up with no place to go”, sung with great musicality and energy the show builds to an exciting finale which is certain to produce standing ovations night after night.

The production have just announced six sing along performances to add to the fun.

Nick Wayne

4 stars

Killer Joe - "A highly sexualised taut tragicomedy"

Great drama should challenge the cast, take production risks and leave the audience breathlessly on the edge of their seats and this West End premiere of Killer Joe certainly does all three of these. Author Tracey Lett’s subject matter is an unpleasant, poor dysfunctional trailer trash family in southern USA and its adult content is certainly a risk for a West End audience. The play presents producers and cast with a number of challenging physical sequences but they pull it all of with great skill to create an exciting dramatic climax that does have the audience at times pin drop silent and then on edge of their seats before rising as one for a standing ovation.

The extremely detailed design of the trailer home by Grace Smart, exquisite lighting design by Richard Howell and atmospheric musical underscore by Edward Lewis create a perfect setting. It’s claustrophobic and chaotic with the neighbours close by and the family living on top of each other and the use of primary colours to illuminate windows and doors adds to the tension and sense of a threatening environment. The family unit is inherently unstable when they invite Killer Joe into this caravan to assist with their problems.

Simon Evans’ direction creates a highly sexualised taut tragicomedy which is often on the edge of descending into a very dark shocking thriller.  It is a sort of Sam Shepherd (bleak, surreal and alienated American citizens) meets Joe Orton (shocking but amusing black comedy).  Murder, infidelity, fraud, incest, violence against women, drugs and alcoholism are all tackled often graphically. It requires a strong cast working effectively together to deliver this extraordinarily combustible mix of depraved characters.

The first we meet is Dottie, the young mentally damaged innocent twenty year old played with a fragile intensity by Sophie Cookson as she tidies the caravan before climbing on the roof where she escapes her family members. She is the pivotal character of the story being the object of desire but also the young child in need of protection.

Her brother Chris is a wild dangerous disruptive force and the catalyst for the explosive events that unfold. Adam Gillen gives an extremely physical performance twisted in physical and emotional pain. Much of the time it is manically over the top but his poignant telling of the failure of his rabbit farm is in contrast mesmerizingly quiet.

His father Ansel (Steffan Rhodri) seems to seek the simple non confrontational life – watching TV, drinking beer - and appears almost uncaring about his children. His new wife, Sharla is the fourth member of the family to share this space. Neve Mcintosh is challenged to descend from sexual siren to a frightened submissive with a guilty secret and it is uncomfortable watching at times as the violence increases.

Into this family is unleashed Killer Joe with shocking effects on them all. Orlando Bloom creates this cool, scheming, dangerous interloper speaking in a southern drawl and deliberately burying the memory of his film creations of Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean and Legolas in the Lord of the Rings. He inhabits the character with a gripping compelling slow delivery which is almost soothing and chilling at the same time. His presence on stage becomes the focus and he controls the action until the final moments.

The whole glorious production builds to a traumatic climax in which Fight Director Jonathan Holby and Movement Director Oliver Kaderbhai create choreographed mayhem veering quickly between extreme realistic violence to comic knockabout cartoon brutality.

You may not like or sympathise with the characters or the play content but this is a brilliant piece of dramatic storytelling wonderfully executed by an excellent cast in a first class production that reflects on the gun-toting underclass of America.

Pressure - "There is nothing predicable about British weather"

David Haig has written and stars in this fascinating play about a little known critical role in the D-Day landing planning played by Group Captain James Stagg, a committed straight talking Scottish meteorologist who is called upon to lead an international team to predict the weather conditions in the channel for the landings. Set in the room he occupies constantly in the run up to the events in Southwick House on Portsdown Hill in Hampshire over the period from 2nd June to 6th June 1944, the play explains his predictions and the response from Allied Command.

It requires the audience to understand the different terminology and techniques in predicting the weather and the writing manages to make this interesting. On the one hand the American Krick uses historical charts over the last twenty one years, whereas Stagg uses his intimate experience of British weather patterns and a 3D view of conditions including the high level gulf streams. He says he is a scientist not a gambler and says amusingly " there is nothing predicable about British weather" and that a long range forecast is twenty four hours plus! It is a critical decision for General Eisenhower because he has to safely land 160,000 men and equipment on the Normandy beaches. As one character says there is so many tanks and equipment in Britain that "only the barrage balloons stop the country sinking"!

The play revolves around three characters. Stagg, played wonderfully by David Haig himself, a man who despite his brilliance is racked by doubts caused by the pressure of his work and home life situation. Eisenhower is a very convincingly performance by Malcolm Sinclair, a clear leader but also feeling the pressure of his decision and its impact on the lives of the soldiers, especially the paratroopers to land behind the enemy lines. The third character is the General's driver / secretary, Kay Summersby, a charming performance from Laura Rogers, although she is perhaps too similar to the character Sam in the TV series Foyle's War. There are touching scenes between the three of them enjoying an orange or glass of whisky and a rather over extended comparison between American football and rugby union.

They are well supported by the rest of the cast with an amusing cameo by Michael Mckenzie as a local electrician seconded to the unit and not allowed to leave, a devise used to explain some of the background to the five DDay beaches, and from Philip Cairns as the unbending American meteorologist, Colonel Krick.

The sense of the moment and the pressure on the occupants of the room is enhanced by the view from the balcony of the weather condition through the window, the sound of the planes outside and the blackout curtains over the windows. The large frame up stage is used to mount the weather maps at key moments and project the date and time which despite the fact that we know the outcome before the start does enable Director John Dove to create tension and drama in the lead up to the go/no go decision.

With the recent success of the movies Dunkirk and The Darkest hour and the excellent new play Shadow Factory at the Nuffield Southampton, Pressure is another World War II story that celebrates some of the key personal human stories behind Britain's war. It makes for an enjoyable and intriguing evening’s entertainment and another success for David Haig

Lieutenant of Inishmore - "It is incidents like this put tourists off Ireland"

Martin McDonagh is a very confident and clever writer whose most recent success was the film "Three billboards outside Ebbing Missouri" but he must also have felt incredibly brave when he wrote "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" in 1994 (although it was not staged until 2001) as it is a very dark satire about the IRA and their splinter group the INLA. He spares no punches in portraying them as "fecking" idiots whose answer to everything is torture and murder. The plot is simple Mad Padraic, a terrorist so dangerous that he is thrown out of the IRA, is disturbed to hear that his beloved cat Wee Thomas is ill that he interrupts his torturing of a local drug dealer to rush to his home on the island of Inishmore to be with him. It sets up an elongated black comedy sketch worthy of Monty Python or Spike Milligan.

The setting designed by Christopher Oram, as always with Michael Grandage's artful productions is impressive and detailed. The main scenes take place in his father's cottage on the island , which apart from the plain blue cyc outside the front door and windows, looks incredibly solid and shows Padraic's humble rural background. The rest of the scenes are played in front of a splendid 3D map of the island of Inishmore which is also used to cover scene changes in the cottage.

The two central characters who open the play are the terrorist's father Donny, a delightful comic performance by Denis Conway who has been charged with looking after the cat and the young  Davey, an impressive West End debut by Chris Walley who has discovered the body of the cat on the road and boosts a "girl's mane of hair". They decide to let Padraic down the gently with the news, just like the very old joke about the person told to let people down gently by saying the cat is on the roof when it has died and later explains to his relative that the mother in law is on the roof. This is the level of the farcical comedy throughout even in the dark bloody scenes of torture and murder which comes to a climatic conclusion in a bloodbath at the end of the play.

Aiden Turner plays Padraic, dressed in a white vest and a two revolver holster and is required to look mean and broody throughout even when he encounters a love interest with another would be terrorist Mairead played with cool authority by Charlie Murphy. Even in his most desperate difficulties with three guns at his head and hands tied he still believes "something will turn up". His fan base from his role on TV Poldark will easily put aside his unpleasant character and enjoy his performance.

They are well supported by other members of the INLA who are seeking to keep control of the group and are involved in the desperate shootout which leads one character to muse, "it is incidents like this put tourists off Ireland" and another to reflect that "I don't suppose it is the travel that attracts fellas to the INLA".

Michael Grandage's company consistently deliver very high quality productions, well cast, beautifully staged and directed with a strong clear hand and never let the audience down.

King Lear " Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say"

Ian Mckellen as King Lear

King Lear is one of the great Shakespearean tragedies and a character that has been tackled by some of the greatest British actors over the years . Sir Ian Mckellen having earlier in his career played Edgar and Kent, and then Lear in 2007, at the age of 79 returns to the play and says "as you get closer to King's age the more telling it becomes , more a therapy than a job." He gives a wonderfully rich performance drawing out the King's tragic descent from powerful ruler in full regalia, looking like Charles III in the opening Act, to the slightly demented exile within his own kingdom, dressed to look like Keith Richard in the second half. He has a strong stage presence, even as he searches and stumbles for words and is particularly moving in the touching scenes when he awakes in a hospital bed and slowly recognises his daughter Cordelia. 

Director Jonathan Munby and designer Paul Wills have created a brilliantly conceived modern setting for the play which creates an intimate acting space (retaining the feel from the Chichester Minerva studio where it started) by building a walkway which divides the Stalls. The large panelled semi circular rear wall provides a flexible backing to the stage in the first half with the circular red carpet to create the various internal settings with carefully and appropriately selected props providing the detail. In the second half the carpet is stripped away and the panels folded back to create a bare white space with echoes of the white cliffs of Dover. Again the contrast between the luscious court setting of the opening scene with an enormous portrait of Lear dominating the stage , with the ugly abattoir which closes the act and then the bare landscape of the second act is dramatic and effective.

The twentieth century costumes makes this tale of an ageing father aware of the onset of his dementia and his feuding children feel more relevant and interesting for today's audiences and the recasting of the loyal Kent as a female , a delightfully serene and effective performance from Sinead Cusack is consistent with this modern feel. The lighting design by Olivier Fenwick adds to the tensions with some dramatic sharp blackouts and the sound composition by Ben and Max Ringham adds heavy beating drums as the drama and body count mounts . Together it creates a believable entrancing environment for the action.

The large ensemble supporting cast are impressive with the three daughters sharply contrasted in style and dress: Goneril  is played by Claire Price as an untrustworthy political leader , Regan is played by Kirsty Bushell as a flighty overexcited Sloane ranger and Cordelia played by Anita-Joy Uwajeh as a serious military leader. There are strong performances also from James Corrigan as the scheming Edmund (simply dressed in black) and Lloyd Hutchinson as Fool (in Eric Morecambe glasses and with a Ukulele). The bloody scene where Danny Webb's Gloucester's eyes are gouged out is chilling. 

The modern setting , excellent cast and the outstanding Ian Mckellen make this a compelling production and it's message of "speak what we feel, not what we ought to say" is a strong message for today's politicians and leaders . This remarkable production will be broadcast live to cinemas on 27th September.

Nick Wayne 
Five stars