Franco Milazzo - Page 8

If burying the lede was an Olympic sport, Eun Me-Ahn’s Dragons would be in serious medal contention.

Probably one of the finest bands most people have never heard of, quite why Bourgeois & Maurice aren't widely recognised as national treasures is something of a mystery.

Death is not the end - at least, if there is a journalist on hand to tell the world of your deeds. Michael Coveney is best known for his work as a theatre critic at the Daily Mail, Financial Times, The Guardian and Observer alongside which he wrote a series of obituaries covering many of the most famous actors of the last century.

Family-friendly shows like Kinder can serve and do deserve the widest audience and, despite its dark material, it edifies and satisfies without dumbing down or skirting the emotional impact of the situations they depict. In a fast-moving hour, it delivers a brilliant blend of clever storytelling and smart theatre which is suitable for children and essential for adults.

Over a decade has passed since Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to The Phantom Of The Opera, was an undoubted flop during its first (and last) London run so this week’s revival in concert is a welcome retrospective. Was it a victim of its own hype or is it just a bad show?

Is there no stopping (or topping) Phantom Peak? Just one year after debuting, this epic immersive theatre launches a summer season filled with new stories and is now looking to expand into the US.

In Matthew Bourne’s dystopian take on the classic love story, there are leaps aplenty - and not just in the physical sense.

Back in 2011 playwright Tanika Gupta staged her adaptation of Great Expectations. 12 years later she has re-worked the script, shifted the time frame and collaborated with the Artistic Director of Tamasha Pooja Ghai. Pooja played Mrs Gargery in the original, and who is now directing this new version for the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

In an opening sketch which could reasonably have been titled “The Thin Of It”, we meet a team of Downing Street press officers in crisis mode: the Prime Minister has once again gone off-script and ad-libbed something offensive to an unnamed section of society.

The exuberant all-male musical The Choir Of Man motors on at the Arts Theatre with a new cast and a new contemporary context.

Almost as secretive and hidden away as the Batcave, Soho’s Park Row is a restaurant dedicated to the Caped Crusader. At its heart lies Monarch Theatre, an immersive dining experience which combines projections, magic and a sumptuous tasting menu.

“I am the soul that dances chainless. I am the moon’s insatiable dream. I am a witness in life’s shadow…there is no need to tell you that this is my flamenco heart which has a bolero soul.” And with this, Alma's opening speech lays bare the poetic nature of this legendary flamenco dancer’s highly dynamic and deeply hypnotic shows.

With a plot packed with clichés that are older than the hills and gags of pure corn which may be even older, it’s just as well that Crazy For You is an utterly spectacular feast for the eyes and ears.

With June being a prime time to get hitched, now should be as good as any time to dig up and put on stage Felix Mendelssohn’s 1842 incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a score which features the famous Wedding March. Despite the play’s themes, this melding of classical sound and drama from historical performance ensemble Figure is from magical.

Hot off Broadway with a Best Musical Tony and a Pulitzer Prize for its script, Michael R Jackson’s A Strange Loop comes to London for a summer run at The Barbican.

Before DC, Marvel and Spider-Man cottoned onto the potential of cinematic crossovers, Off The Record created arguably the most intriguing of them of all: a staged multiverse drawn from Quentin Tarantino films which is as sweary, gory and fun as one would expect.

Whether We Will Rock You will attract the attention of Trading Standards is unknown but rarely has a show been so poorly named.

Going by this latest show, the Tiger Lillies are still very much kicking against the pricks, still ploughing their own particular furrow, and still staying artistically relevant.

National treasures Giffords Circus return for their annual tour of village greens and stately homes with another show, another theme and, it appears to be, another hit.

Athletes have the Olympics. Chefs have Michelin stars. Actors have Hamlet. Citius, altius, fortius, Danish. In his one-man show Re-member Me (co-devised and directed by Jan Willem Van Den Bosch), Dickie Beau ponders death, mortality and legacy but not in a morbid way; it’s less a shoegazing mope and mumble about whether “to be or not to be”, more a defiant exploration of what it is “to be and not to be”.