Truth, Lies and a Nervous Breakdown

It's not been a particularly inspiring start to the New Year but at least the only way is up. I caught up with Women On The Verge Of ANervous Breakdown at the Playhouse on Tuesday and I have to say that it wasn't great. There was greatness in there - good solid songs oozing samba rhythms and flamenco beats - from David Yazbek, the same guy behind Dirty Rotten Scoundrels; Almaldovar's movie is lauded as one of the great Spanish comedies of our time and launched both his career and kick-started that of Antonio Banderas; I admire Tamsin Grieg as a performer and Haydn Gwynne is easily one of the West End's secret weapons; Anthony Ward is an exquisite designer, whose work I have long admired. Sadly it just didn't gel. Bartlett Sher's direction seems awfully pedestrian, the choreography perfunctory and the casting off-kilter.

I was back in the Charing Cross area the next evening for Truth, Lies, Diana - a 'factional mock-u-drama' examining the death of Princess Diana. Author Jon Conway is obviously passionate about the subject but his writing style and dramatic structure leave much to be desired. The presumably partisan audience decided to treat the drama like a pantomime and started to boo the baddie 'establishment figure' as he trotted out the X-file style clichés that invariably closed each scene. Conway is a confident stage presence but really doesn't do drama well - he's a natural comedian - and easily the most successful moments were the occasionally groan-some jokes.

On a different note, I was invited to hospitality ahead of the show at 7pm. I was rather looking forward to this and having a chin-wag with the other reviewers about Women On The Edge or whatever. It turns out that the hospitality was a drinks voucher and a seat upstairs, while most of the other reviewers I know were at Bat Boy - hey-ho! Tomorrow night, I am at the Above The Stag Theatre in Vauxhall.

My 'Hits of 2014' List

With all the lists having been published for the New Year, I thought that I would cast a glance over my personal year in theatre and consider the best pieces of 2014. Now that The Stage are including a star system with their reviews, it seems that my job has been made somewhat easier. Certainly one of the high points included a trip to Chichester to see Imelda Staunton scale new heights as Momma Rose in Jonathan Kent's five-star production of Gypsy. I can't wait to see how the transfer fares at the Savoy in March.

As for my four-star reviews, they were a good deal more varied across the board, from the quirky delights of Iris Theatre's production of Alice Through The Looking Glass - one of three Lewis Carroll adaptations I saw this summer - to the gory pleasures of the Theatre Royal Plymouth's production of GrandGuignol at the Southwark Playhouse. The Donmar revival of My Night With Reg was one of the few 'straight' dramas to garner four stars from me and in fact, I am seeing it again next week when the transfer opens at the Apollo.

TheBlack Cat Cabaret transferred to the Speigeltent from its usual home at the Cafe De Paris for an exceptional summer season and Christmas saw the return of Meow Meow to the Southbank. Tim McArthur's excellent production of IntoThe Woods at Ye Olde Rose and Crown in Walthamstow was a revelation that will undoubtedly stay with me longer than the movie ever will.

Writing for Musical Theatre Review has meant that I have managed to catch some other great shows including the ill-fated I Can't Sing at the Palladium; In The Heights at the Southwark and Altar Boyz at the Greenwich.

Before the star system was introduced, I had also seen exceptional productions including FingsAint Wot They Used T'be at the Theatre Royal Stratford East; the hilarious Gay Naked Play, Above The Stag and Phil Willmott's Lost Boy at the Finborough - still for me the most moving production commemorating the Great War.

There have been a few turkeys of course and unsurprisingly - for me at least - they are not confined to the fringe only.