Writer: Peter Quilter Director: Kirk Jameson In 1940s New York society, Florence Foster Jenkins was a renowned figure. An heiress with a passion for music, she hosted fundraising soirées that included her own operatic performances. Unfortunately, even though she was an enthusiastic coloratura soprano, her zeal was not matched by any tunefulness. While she had fans, including such musical luminaries as Enrico Caruso and Cole Porter, Jenkins was renowned for her own inability to hold a tune. Peter Quilter’s play Glorious! debuted in 2005, the same year as his other musical biography End of the Rainbow, which catalogued the last…
Author: The Reviews Hub - East Anglia & South East
The Reviews Hub - East Anglia & South East
The South East team is under the editorship of Peter Marcus. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.
Book: Mark Bramble Music: CY Coleman Lyrics: Michael Stewart Director: Jonathan O’Boyle If you’re looking for a quiet night at the theatre, Bill Kenwright Limited’s production of Barnum, the biographical musical based on the life of the circus impresario of the same name, isn’t the ticket; the Watermill 2024 production now on tour is loud, energetic, and sometimes brash – and with a cast led by former Joseph Lee Mead (although out for this particular performance) it feels as though director Jonathan O’Boyle looked up ‘spectacle’ in Charity Barnum’s dictionary and decided to go all in. A cast of 21…
Writer: John Godber Director: Jane Thornton It’s more than a couple of years since this reviewer studied GCSE drama but John Godber’s Teechers, updated for its 2026 tour with new references and a soundtrack featuring the best songs of the past few years, immediately transported me back to ‘the new hall’ where a 15-year-old performed for a stoney-faced examiner guided by teachers who’s impact on me I never really understood until I had left – much like the three characters who brought the story of a year in the life at a normal British school to life with the energy…
Writer: Danny Robins Director: Matthew Dunster and Gabriel Vega Weissman Five years after it originally thrilled the West End 2:22 A Ghost Story has arrived in Portsmouth, bringing Danny Robins’ Olivier nominated play to the historic Kings Theatre. Albert Road’s historic theatre, which has plenty of ghost stories of its own to tell, provides the stage for Robins’ modern classic asking the question do ghosts exist or can we explain life’s ghostly happenings through science. Director Matthew Dunster returns for the UK tour alongside Gabriel Vega Weissman, delivering a technically precise show which had its audience on the edge of…
Writer: Michael Cooney Director: Ron Aldridge The surname Cooney is synonymous with the English farce, a particular subset of stage comedy that relies almost as much on the number of doors a set has as on the number of actors. Ray Cooney’s West End farces are built on strange coincidences, verbal misunderstandings, and a series of escalating stakes that always threaten to explode in the faces of their protagonists, typically men who have subverted societal norms and are attempting to hide it. Whether that’s the bigamist taxi driver in Run For Your Wife or the philandering doctor at the heart…
Book: Joe Penhall Music and Lyrics: Ray Davies Director: Edward Hall The swinging sixties and anarchic rise to rock and roll stardom for The Kinks comes to the fore in this riotous jukebox musical, Sunny Afternoon. Penned by Joe Penhall and Ray Davies, the production is back on tour after COVID-impacted plans thwarted an attempted revival in August 2020. The musical charts the chaotic rise to stardom for The Kinks, against a backdrop of the British music Invasion of America in the 60s and personal turmoils that threatened to tear the four-piece apart. As iconic frontman Ray Davies, Danny Horn…
Writer: Agatha Christie Adaptor: Ken Ludwig Director: Lucy Bailey There is moustache twiddling aplenty as Agatha Christie’s iconic Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, investigates a poisonous love triangle in this lavish production of Death on the Nile. Ludwig’s adaptation gets us on board the S. S. Karnak, where Poirot and a number of guests are travelling along the Nile as part of a group returning an Ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. The omens are pretty obvious from the start, and become even more looming as heiress Linnet (Libby Alexandra-Cooper) and new husband Simon’s (Nye Occomore) are tracked down by stalker Jacqueline, former fiancé…
Director – Phyllida LLoyd Reviewer – Steve Turner With so many great songs and so much of a story to tell it’s quite an accomplishment to manage to fit all of this into a show that runs for about two and a half hours. Domestic abuse, parental abandonment and casual racism would seem to be a difficult fit for a jukebox musical such as this, but the fact that the Tina Turner Musical leaves the audience with a sense of joy is a testament to how well this spectacular show is written and performed. As Tina, Jochebel Ohene MacCarthy brings…