Guy Common News

Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre has announced full cast and creative team for their forthcoming production of the show-stopping classic musical La Cage aux Folles (29 July – 16 September, press night 8 August 2023).

Local favorites Third Date return to Common Ground Theatre with a unique improv show to close out the summer. In The Guy Show Third Date regulars Dan Sipp and J Chachula are joined by former members of Transactors Improv Company, Tim Johnston and Eric Singdahlsen, for two performances that explore friendship, careers, love and what it means to be a man in the world today.

Local favorites Third Date return to Common Ground Theatre with a unique improv show to close out the summer. In The Guy Show Third Date regulars Dan Sipp and J Chachula are joined by former members of Transactors Improv Company, Tim Johnston and Eric Singdahlsen, for two performances that explore friendship, careers, love and what it means to be a man in the world today.

Cameron Mackintosh's 25th Anniversary production of Les Misérables, presented by The Paper Mill Playhouse, has finally hit the friendly American shores after touring Britain, and perhaps symbolic of its Atlantic crossing is the new opening picture devised by co-directors Laurence Conner and James Powell.  Sure, 24601 (a/k/a Jean Valjean) is still a prisoner in chains for the crime of stealing a loaf of bread for his starving sister and her family, but he and his fellow inmates are now rowing oars on a galley ship.  The music (Claude-Michel Schonberg) and words (Herbert Kretzmer, based on the original French text by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel) of this world-famous adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel, set against the backdrop of Paris' 1832 student revolution, are unchanged, but the new locale not only starts the evening off with a visually striking image, but signals to the musical's two-and-a-half decades worth of fans that this will not be just another variation of the original Trevor Nunn/John Caird production they are accustomed to.  (A production that can still be enjoyed on the West End.)

While there's certainly plenty to enjoy in the new musical version of Pedro Almodóvar's 1988 film, Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown - David Yazbek's jaunty Latin-based score, the winning performances of a star-studded cast (three Tony winners and four other nominees) and the kinetic flashiness of Bartlett Sher's kicky production - the show is also a prime example of how the sum of the pieces can add up to more than the whole when the missing ingredient is a strong book.  Not that the talented Jeffrey Lane doesn't make a game try at it.  Sticking closely to the source, his work is frequently clever and he and Yazbek concoct some quirkily fun musical scenes, but the odds are working against him in this one.