London Theatre Reviews - West End & Off West End

The thing about Oliver Sansree (Luke Culloty) is that he appears to be a designer of clothes that people could feasibly wear, as opposed to items seen on catwalks at London Fashion Week and other such events: those costumes are undoubtedly innovative and push boundaries, but it is a struggle, at least for me, to determine any reasonable context in which such clothes would be appropriate. Heavy on conversation, Her Hem is entirely set in one of Sansree’s fitting rooms. I do not mean those cubby … [Read more...]

The King Symphonic, presumably timed to complement the recent movie biopic, is a concert of about 25 Elvis Presley songs, mostly well known, performed by the “Las Vegas Symphony Orchestra”. This is actually a 30-piece ensemble, heavily amplified, and not to be confused with the Las Vegas Philharmonic Orchestra which IS a symphony orchestra giving ‘classical’ concerts throughout the year in the USA. In fact, sound design and balance was one of the problems of this concert, the overall effect … [Read more...]

Do you ever come out of a theatre with a quizzical expression on your face and the thought 'what have I just seen?' It does happen to me sometimes, most recently as I left the Camden People’s Theatre following Luis Amália’s one-person show Stigma. Written by Luis Amália and Adam Zmith, Stigma is a series of stories, some autobiographical, that are told in an interlinked way. They examine, in detail, Esther Moya’s time at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Then there is the teenage boy that was no … [Read more...]

When watching a play set in a previous generation – that is, a time before the ubiquity of mobile telephony and social media – it is easy to question how powers of deception deployed back in the day would work in contemporary times. Surely all one would have to do is go online and, if necessary, make enquiries in appropriate places, and all would be revealed one way or the other. A recent news story demonstrates how people are still hoodwinked in this day and age: an American woman began a … [Read more...]

When I think of Victoria Wood, I smile, I have a very clear memory of her sitting at a piano, wearing a blazer with sleeves rolled up, smiling at the camera, singing, and making me laugh. The song I always remember is the Ballad of Barry and Freda and that iconic line “Beat me on the bottom with the Woman's Weekly let's do it, let's do it tonight!” I’d imagine many Brits have a similar memory due to her prolific TV appearances starting in the late 70s until her death in 2016 - Victoria Wood, As … [Read more...]

If there’s one thing A Letter to Harvey Milk can’t be faulted on, it’s the sheer topicality, even in a story set a generation ago. The show explores the (mis)use of guns in society as well as prevailing negative attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people and anti-Semitism. It quickly becomes clear that as work is still to be done on such matters in 2022, a show set in 1986 in San Francisco is something of an indictment of where we are today. Harry Weinberg (Barry James), a widower and retired kosher … [Read more...]