On the final stretch now and my brain is starting to look ahead to life back at home. Going into the office, seeing local shows (I can’t wait to catch up on City of Angels, The Great Comet, Jailbaby etc) and sleeping in my own bed again. But first I have a couple of days and a few more big shows to fit in!
Cabaret (Piccadilly Theatre / The Kit Kat Club) ★★★★★
Book by Joe Masteroff. Music by John Kander. Lyrics by Fred Ebb. Piccadilly Theatre / The Kit Kat Club. Booking through June 2024.
I’ve kept missing this since it opened in November 2021 with Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley. Either it was completely sold out or the prices were astronomically high. Now that the show is closing in on its second anniversary, and is onto its third (I think) main cast, things are less frantic and I managed to get a decent stalls seat for regular West End prices (still not cheap, but not ridiculous). With the lead cast of Mason Alexander Park (The Sandman) and Maude Apatow (Euphoria) I finally got to enter the drastically remodelled theatre.
I’ve not seen a theatre space undergo this dramatic a transformation before, turning the traditional proscenium arch theatre into a cabaret venue in the round. Audiences enter via the old stage door, walk through the basement as performers mingle around them, before popping up in the old front foyer leading into the auditorium.
This version of Cabaret is directed by Rebecca Frecknall, whose Romeo & Juliet I saw last week, and has some similarities in style – using dance to transition scenes, lots of more abstract movement work and a focus on the darker side of the text. The Emcee is much darker than I remember in previous versions, with Park leaning back into the queerness that Redmayne apparently did not. Apatow, a performer who was new to me, makes for a brilliantly brittle Sally Bowles. The core trio of characters was sadly let down by an actor playing Cliff that I thought was absolutely awful. His entire performance rang false and shallow while everyone around them brought shocking emotion.
I’m almost getting tired of seeing shows about the rise of facism and being reminded that we’ve not learnt the lessons of the past. They’re timely and powerful of course, but I feel like we’re screaming into an oncoming storm (the debate about whether art can change anything at all is one to have another time) but it’s Herr Schultz’s denial that something horrible is growing that hit me hardest.
A brilliant production of a powerhouse classic, worthy of its seven Olivier Awards, and finally affordable. Definitely worth seeing if you get the chance.
A Playlist for the Revolution (Bush Theatre) ★★★1/2
Written by AJ Yi. Bush Theatre. 3 Jul – 5 Aug, 2023
Set in Hong Kong 2019, this meet-cute rom-com shines against the backdrop of student protests and violence. Hong Kong native Jonathan (an adorable Liam Lau-Fernandez) and Chloe (Mei Mei Macleod), a Hong Konger studying in England, have a great first date the night before she flies back to England. They’re an odd couple. She’s freewheeling and political, while he’s straight-laced. When Chloe assumes Jonathan is involved in the student protests, she’s impressed and he’s too embarrassed to correct her. When Jonathan meets protestor the older Mr Chu (Zak Shukor) who starts giving him life advice, and dubious dating tips, Jonathan is drawn into the politics around him.
The programme for this play goes to great lengths to distance itself from the political ramifications of this small play which I found bizarre. Stressing that it is all a work of fiction for entertainment value, that characters bearing any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental and that the political views of the characters in the play do not necessarily reflect the views of the writer, the creatives, Bush Theatre or the staff. Take from that what you will…
This is one of those plays I could definitely see being staged in Sydney. The topics and politics probably hit us harder than they do for the British audience seeing it now. As the rom-com fades away and the politics take control of the story, these performers got to really show their skills. Shukor’s gruff, funny Mr Chu grows to like the uptight schoolboy Jonathan, and when he joins the protestors on the streets the ramifications are all the more hard hitting.
The simple, stunning set by Liam Bunter (mimicking an aerial view of Hong Kong’s highrises) combined with lighting and video work by Gillian Tan keep it active and exciting. Director Emily Ling Williams works the comedy and drama with assuredness.
Song From Far Away (Hampstead Theatre) ★★★1/2
Written by Simon Stephens. Hampstead Theatre. 28 Jun – 22 Jul, 2023.
I’ve got a soft spot for playwright Simon Stephens. His mega-hit, adapting Mark Haddon’s The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-time has eclipsed all his other, excellent work. I interviewed him once for a magazine profile and he was charming, a non-stop talker, with an infectious laugh and real passion for writing. I also had left over credit at Hampstead Theatre from shows that were cancelled due to Covid, so I thought I’d use it up and see a Stephens play I’d not seen before.
Will Young has been earning his chops as an actor for quite some time now, moving from doing musicals into straight theatre and this is a big role, a monologue running just under 90min in length with some major emotions to explore. But there’s a nice synchronicity to the casting. Our narrator, Willem, is a 30-something gay man brought back to Amsterdam to attend a funeral. He is a gay man familiar to me, the outsider who left his home country to find his fate in New York, returning to a home that never felt like home and Young brings these elements to life with a verisimiltude only a gay actor could bring to the role.
But a 90min monologue needs dynamics to carry the audience through, and while the emotional through-line was clear, this production of Song From Far Away doesn’t quite have the highs and lows to fully animate it as a piece of theatre (unlike when Andrew Scott performed Sea Wall at the Old Vic in 2018 – but then that’s a shorter piece and he’s Andrew Scott). Despite some wonderful directorial flourishes by Kirk Jameson, staging by Ingrid Hu, sound design by Julian Starr. It’s definitely in the ‘good’ but not ‘brilliant’ camp for me.
Dr Semmelweiss (Harold Pinter Theatre) Preview Performance
Written by Stephen Brown with Mark Rylance. Harold Pinter Theatre. Booking till 3 Oct 2023.
After a hit run at the Bristol Old Vic, Mark Rylance hits the West End with this story of maverick Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis who pioneered the use of antiseptics, that he developed himself. Rylance is a legend, who recently returned to his seminal role of Rooster in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem. And while I do love a science play, this one was pretty average.
Historical plays can be tough because the ending is pre-scripted. The art in them is to make it about the journey, not the destination, and director Tom Morris has thrown everything at the stage. Rambling science, mixed with dance and the drone of four live violinists – the production was wearing a hat on a hat. Rylance tumbled from mumbling, fumbling outsider to outraged warrior in the way he has finessed, and it’s never dull to watch, but there was a lack of drive to the text.
Final thoughts from the airport terminal…
So if I were to pick my favourite shows of the trip, what would they be?
Top 3 Plays
- The Motive and the Cue (National Theatre) ★★★★★
- The Crucible (Gielgud Theatre) ★★★★★
- The Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Theatre Royal Haymarket) ★★★★
Top 3 Musicals
- Operation Mincemeat (Fortune Theatre) ★★★★★
- Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! (Wyndhams Theatre) ★★★★★
- Parade (Bernard B Jacobs Theatre, New York) ★★★★★
Cultural Binge 
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