Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Book: Harvey Fierstein Music & Lyrics: Cyndi Lauper Director: Nikolai Foster  Truth be told, the first time that Kinky Boots strutted into the West End was a disappointment, but Nickolai Foster’s new production feels like a different show completely. The publicity cheekily suggests that the musical has been ‘rebooted’ and now at last everything works, especially Cyndi Lauper’s songs. Featuring stellar performances from Strictly icon Johannes Radebe and X Factor winner Matt Cardle, the red high-heel boots are finally good for walking. From the opening number, The Most Beautiful Thing, to the rousing finale, Raise You Up, Kinky Boots fills…

Writer: Robert Khan & Tom Salinsky Director: Josh Roche Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky have carved out something of a niche with their contemporary historical thrillers that explore how grubby machinations, rivalries, and backroom deals among small groups of often ego-driven people change the course of British history. Coalition, Kingmaker and Brexit looked at the Cameron and Johnson years. Last year’s sell-out, The Gang of Three, focused on the factional splintering of the Labour Party in the 1970s. Set a decade later, their fascinating, timely, and impeccably put together piece, In The Print, explores the splintering of an entire industrial…

Celebrating its 20th birthday as a company which started out by creating a centralised hub where people could more easily locate smaller London shows, OffWestEnd comes into its 16th year of awards to recognise the talent found in less prestigious venues. In the programme’s welcome notes, Managing Director Denholm Spurr states clearly, ‘Independent theatre has never had a talent problem. It has an infrastructure problem’. And these awards are a remedy for that. This is the first time the awards take place in the grandeur of Central Hall Westminster, and the first time it’s been live broadcast. Some of the…

Space Gravy is like one massive sketch — the ultimate sketch — with all the bizarre jokes connected by the story’s absurd internal logic, forming a narrative about trying to make YASA (Yorkshire Aeronautics and Space Administration) the first organisation to land on Mars. It’s performed by the trio Pat Rascal: Anisa Khorassani, Matt Blin and Rob Davidson. Are they characters? Are they comedians? Are they clowns? They are all exceptional performers who can definitely make us laugh. The show has come to Soho Theatre after an extremely successful Edinburgh Fringe run, where it was the seventh best-reviewed show of…

Writer and Director: Naomi Wood  An audacious exercise in staring down the abyss of infinite potential and atoning for conformist virtue, Naomi Wood’s music-infused comedy stage show Monster is witty, heartfelt and hilarious. Expressing her enlightening thoughts over an hour of free-flowing personal anecdotes and lyrical poetry, Wood begins with the observation that soon after we can see, we’re aware that we can be seen, and develop fear around our exposed condition. She notes that this sense of unease, similar to being in the deep ocean, watched by a multitude of unseen, ravenous creatures, is usually reinforced by crushing comments:…

Should the rough and ready pigeon replace the noble robin as England’s national bird? Toussaint Douglass thinks so, and over the course of a zany hour of stand-up, he makes a strong case. What other bird suffers the same level of derision and dismissal that pigeons do, only to keep powering through to achieve practical domination up and down the country, while also racking up numerous wartime decorations, unlike toff robins, who never got close to the frontlines? A proper working-class bird, as Douglass says. The pigeon as unsung hero ties the night together, with fun (mostly bizarre) facts about…

Writers: Martina Laird, Hassan Abdulrazzak, Julia Rudd, Pound Puppy, Louis Catliff, Isabella Thompson, Lucy Ellis, Chelsea Bondzanga, Joshua Haigh Directors: Mojola Akinyemi, Cara Dromgoole, Elizabeth Laurence, Issey Vogel, Nash Metaxas, Julia Sopher, Hen Ryan, Tom Rainn, Steve Medlin, Joe Harrington Chaos, now in its third edition, is a cabaret-style scratch night showcasing new writing from artists at a range of career stages. Its title feels apt as the evening embraces an intentionally unconventional structure, with some pieces fragmented across the programme and an undercurrent of absurdity threading through the work. While the format tends to favour recurring pieces that reappear…

Conductor: Tan Dun Inspired by Beethoven’s Symphony no 9, Tan Dun’s Choral Concerto: Nine was intended to be performed alongside it. And that’s how this fine concert is programmed, with the composer, a life-long explorer of the interface between Chinese and Western classical traditions, on the podium to conduct both works. This is the London premiere of the concerto. Comprising three movements and running 25 minutes, the piece opens with intense, magical quietness, although sadly, at this performance, it doesn’t, in the opening bars, get the silence in the hall it warrants. It uses voices, a huge choir from two…