Reviews by Karen
A domestic comedy about 2 couples and their friends who are having a dinner party where one couple tries to announce the name they plan to use for their unborn baby. Things don’t go to plan when one of them tells their friend about a name too early and they are upset at his suggestion that the baby will be called Adolf. There is a lot of confusion and laughs as the full explanation of the name is only revealed gradually.
8/10
A strange dark family comedy about a family who have a seriously disabled daughter and how they try to use humour to cope.
5/10
I saw the Saturday matinee on 28 September 2019. This is the latest offering from the Mischief Theatre Company and is very funny. It was also good to see the original members of the Company performing in London again. The play focuses on a group of 5 school friends through primary, secondary and a school reunion. It was funny to see how the adult actors are made to look small with the giant props at the start of the play, and there are laughs throughout, building up to most farcical parts near the end of the play.
The play has only been on for about a week, and the rest of running time was longer than the 2 hours 20 given in the programme – it was close to 2 hours 40, but this was possibly due to the amount of laughter from the audience.
10/10
The stage adaptation of the Disney film featuring all the famous songs with some new ones added. The flying carpet is very good, and due to the number and variety of movements, it is difficult to work out how it is done (unless it is actually magic). One disappointment was that Aladdin’s pet monkey Apu (replaced by 3 human friends) was not included and Jafaar’s parrot Iago was also a human.
It was also very crowded with people trying to pick up tickets making it hard to get through.
7/10
I got a day seat for this classic musical and it a good seat in the stalls. This musical is about people putting on musicals in America and is very good, but the refreshments and souvenirs are overpriced.
8/10
Funny play by Oscar Wilde about the perils of romance, with day seats available on the front row.
8/10
This Oscar Wild comedy includes some elements of comedy, political intrigue and bsuspense. It isn’t as funny as the Importance of Being Earnest, but it still an enjoyable play.
6/10
A very funny farce about the Cornley Polytechnic drama society trying to stage a murder mystery play. There is chaos with broken props, fighting actors, and falling sets. There is also pre-show entertainment largely in the stalls, where some of the cast interact with the audience asking for help looking for a dog and a tape.
This was the second time I saw this play (the first was at Kingston Theatre with the original cast before it went into the West End).
There was an extra unexpected part where someone from the Theatre came on stage and they had to stop the play for a couple of minutes. I checked on Twitter and this was actually something that was unplanned, so I was very lucky to see it. It only lasted a couple of minutes and the crew member who was in one of the boxes was ready to keep the audience entertained.
10/10
This a very funny farce from the creators of the Play that goes wrong (they plug the play at the curtain call).
It is set in 1950s America and is about a diamond heist from a bank it has laughs from the start to the end and has some funny physical tricks and stunts and a small amount of audience participation (they look for a man in the front row who has a wallet they can borrow).
The theatre is mainly underground but the stalls don’t take too long to get to, but there isn’t much slope so if you had a very tall person in front you might have problems seeing.
9/10
I saw this funny Ray Coony farce at Richmond Theatre for a quite empty Saturday Matinee.
The main story revolves around a Tory MP who is having an affair with the leader of the opposition’s Secretary. They are in a hotel with a fussy manager, a nosy waiter, the MPs worried junior, the juniors mum’s nurse, the MPs wife, the secretary angry husband and a possible body on the balcony.
They added in some topical points in this oplay originally from the 80s with mentions of Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson and Trump.
The set was on a platform on the stage makongjit higher than normal and there was a new understudy on as the MAP but he seemed to do quite well and wasn’t the only one who needed to say the same line twice.
8/10