BroadwayWorld.com •

Review: WHEN THE CLOUD CATCHES COLOURS, Barbican Theatre

“It’s not Buddhist to be gay”: from this early line in Singaporean drama When the cloud catches colours, one might expect a hard-hitting, intellectual look at homophobia in the South East Asian nation, which decriminalised male homosexuality in 2023. What follows, however, is something both more profound and more tender, a look at queer attitudes towards domesticity and community through the lens of two middle-aged Singaporean lives. The lives in question are those of Qing and E (short for Eileen...
BroadwayWorld.com •

Review: STILETTO, Charing Cross Theatre

A musical set in the 1730s heyday of Venetian opera ought to be a glamorous glimpse into a different, dangerous era. Stiletto, from the composer behind the classic Disney hero’s journey Mulan, has all the ingredients for that to be the case – simmering rivalries, power struggles, romance and murder. Sometimes, though, the real power struggle is between seedy underworld glamour and the story’s tendency to veer into fairytale schmaltz...
MA Portfolio •

New exhibition sheds light on the bygone era of early fashion shows

When you think of a fashion show in Paris or Milan, you’re just as likely to think of rows upon rows of influencers clamouring for the perfect Insta story as you are to focus on the clothes themselves. However, a new immersive exhibition sponsored by Vogue shows that this was not always the case. King’s Cross “projection storytelling” venue Lightroom’s newest exhibit takes us back to the earliest days of the runway show, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when couture was an altogether more intimate affair...
Museums Journal •

Rooms Through Time: Winter Past, Museum of the Home, London - Review

Following the relaunch of its perennially popular Rooms Through Time exhibition in July, Hoxton's Museum of the Home has decked the halls of its household displays to tell a series of winter stories from London’s past, present and future. The permanent exhibition – a series of reconstructed household rooms transporting the visitor from London in 1630 to a speculative vision of the capital in 2049 – has been subtly altered to reflect what each group of characters would do to celebrate...
BroadwayWorld.com •

Review: PICTURE PERFECT CHRISTMAS SHOW, National Gallery

Ever wanted to step inside the world of one of the National Gallery's paintings? Immersive theatre company Boo Productions may have the answer. In what is surprisingly the gallery's first time hosting theatre, the somewhat blandly titled Picture Perfect Christmas Show takes as its inspiration the Dutch painter Hendrick Avercamp's idyllic oil snowscapes. Writer-director Francesca Renèe Reid and composer Edward Court pluck their protagonists, the steadfastly heroic Frederik (Ciarán McCormack) and...
BroadwayWorld.com •

Review: THE NATIONAL, All Points East

In their first UK festival performance since before the pandemic, American soft rock quintet The National have shown themselves to be capable of a competent return to form. Their particular brand of soaring choruses and stomping refrains is reminiscent of a brooding film soundtrack, and is a perfect fit for the atmospheric twilight surrounds of East London's Victoria Park. The National have a knack for never letting the theatricality of a live performance undermine the music itself...
BroadwayWorld.com •

Review: THE MAGIC FLUTE, Arcola Theatre

The stated goal of an opera festival such as the Arcola's Grimeborn is to put a new spin on the classics in order to introduce them to new audiences, and in this respect The Magic Flute seems to pose more adaptational challenges than most. Mozart's elaborately plotted Singspiel concerning Prince Tamino's fish-out-of-water immersion in a fantasy land of seductive Egyptian cults, demons, and vengeful queens resists straightforward transferral to a modern setting, but this is what Opera Alegría ha
The Indiependent •

‘Eiffel’—Romantic Biopic Of Tower Architect Falls Flat: Review

This new romantic epic telling the story of the Eiffel Tower’s architect and the woman who inspired him is well told, but falls short of being profound. From the opening shot of a bearded, brooding architect gazing over the Paris skyline, to the balcony of the structure which has just redefined that skyline for eternity, it is clear that the Eiffel of the title refers to Gustave Eiffel the man, not his famous tower. Martin Bourboulon’s new French-language drama resists...
BroadwayWorld.com •

Review: COSÌ FAN TUTTE at Royal Opera House

Mozart's Così fan tutte has always been a work that tells us about ourselves. The tale of two hapless lovers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, and their attempts to prove that their girlfriends, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, will be faithful in their absence (and to win a bet against their friend Don Alfonso, who believes the titular adage "all women act like that") is a timeless parable of attitudes towards gender, how we ought to conduct ourselves in relationships, and what aspects of ourselves we present...
The Indiependent •

Book Review: The Best of the West End // Charles Duff

Like so many other art forms in the 1950s and 1960s, the post-war British theatre was in a state of flux. The upper-class comedies of manners of Terence Rattigan and Noel Coward were giving way to the kitchen sink dramas of Pinter and Stoppard, and the core of theatre in London was shifting from Shaftesbury Avenue to the ‘angry young men’ of the Royal Court. In the newly reissued 1995 book The Best of the West End, it is the aim of the actor, critic and theatre historian Charles Duff to reassess...
BroadwayWorld.com •

BWW Review: THE PARADIS FILES, Southbank Centre

Plays, musicals and operas which focus on women from history have become pleasingly commonplace over the last few years, but new touring opera The Paradis Files not only tells the story of a forgotten female contemporary of Mozart, but also puts her disability front and centre. Graeae, the theatre company behind the opera, aims both to address the problem of disabled representation, by spotlighting the so-called 'Blind Enchantress' Maria Theresia von Paradis, and to make the theatre a truly inc
Cherwell •

Review: Intimacies, after Vallotton

In 1890s Paris, Swiss-French artist Félix Vallotton’s striking, monochrome woodcut series known as Intimités captured all the illicit affairs and longing glances of his aristocratic belle époque subjects. Put simply, his work explored the ways in which they related to one another, and the nature of intimacy itself. Ever ambitious in its approach to what art and theatre can be, Oxford production company Paper Moon aims with its new exhibition Intimacies, after Vallotton not only to apply Vallotto
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