Music: Gary Barlow Lyrics: Gary Barlow and Tim Firth Director: Matt Ryan Reviewer: Kelyn Luther This is not the first adaptation of the film Calendar Girls. The original stage adaptation (non-musical) had two national tours, the second of which lasted for two years. Will Gary Barlow’s musical adaptation, previously titled The Girls, equal this success and does it capture the ...

Writer/performer: Robin Dale Boon Reviewer: James McColl In his latest show, What Does Stuff Do? Robin Dale Boon asks the all-encompassing and important titular question. Through his inventive juggling, ping pong mastery, water-bending and philosophical leanings, the Circomedia trained Boon does his best to answer his own question by exploring the relationship between objects and people in a tight hour-long ...

Writers: Gary Barlow and Tim Firth Director: Matt Ryan Designer: Robert Jones Reviewer: Julia Beasley Getting naked for charity was a cheeky move by 11 female friends in North Yorkshire over 20 years ago. Modestly poised with sunflowers, teapots and currant buns,  their Women’s Institute nude calendar started life as a local controversy. It was all quietly subversive and heaps ...

Music and Lyrics: Cindi Lauper Book: Harvey Fierstein Director and choreographer: Jerry Mitchell Reviewer: Kelyn Luther The original film, Kinky Boots, was written by Geoff Deane and Tim Firth, the latter of which wrote Calendar Girls (the musical adaptation is running at Theatre Royal Plymouth from 22nd July 2019). Charlie Price (Joel Harper-Jackson) inherits a shoe factory from his father, but ...

Reviewer: John Kennedy From Cape Town to Cape Cornwall – courtesy of a personal invitation and introduction by Glastonbury beard-confused guru, Michael Eavis, together with Reverend Mbuso Kubone and St Just Methodist Miners’ Chapel’s David James, Cornwall hosts the most deliriously stealth-Christian evangelism ever set in song – possibly. Or at least since the hypnotic 1958 recording of Missa Luba ...

Writer & Director: Tristan Fynn-Aidu-enu  Reviewer: James McColl London, the early Nineties. Black British culture is a dominant part of mainstream culture, with garage, jungle and soul music bubbling under the surface of the capital. Sweet Like Chocolate Boy, the latest play from writer & director Tristan Fynn-Aidu-enu, is a coming-of-age story spanning multiple decades and generations. Two young black ...

Writers: Alain Boublil & Jean-Marc Natel (based on the novel by Victor Hugo) Music: Claude-Michel Schönberg Lyrics: Herbert Kretzmer Directors: Laurence Connor & James Powell Reviewer: Joan Phillips While the original 1985 production of Les Misérables continues to break box office records in London’s West End, the New touring version continues its hugely successful run and returns to the UK ...

Writer: Dom Coyote and Rich Rusk Music & lyrics: Dom Coyote Director: Rich Rusk Reviewer: Phil Goodwin Dom Coyote’s sci-fi themed slice of ‘gig theatre’ takes us on an HG Wells-infused journey back and forth in time. We first meet the time-traveling, real-life Dominic Lawton in his nerdy flat, which is packed out with analogue synths and a collection of ...