Alice Saville

Here We Are is full of wit and flair, but Sondheim’s final musical feels incomplete Familiar TV faces Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jane Krakowski, and Rory Kinnear make up a formidable if unlikely cast

A knockout staging of an odd, incomplete final Sondheim - I entirely get why they went for a reverential approach, but he often wrote to & supported younger musical theatre writers - would have been so interesting to invite other voices to finish it off...
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta....

So good, I love/fear the clapper horses!

Tim Crouch’s experimental play An Oak Tree is pure magic This theatre landmark has been around for 20 years, but it still continues to create something new and uncomfortable

Jessie Buckley was just wonderful in An Oak Tree - I love the way she balanced the vulnerability that comes with being pregnant on stage with cheekiness + clowning, throwing herself to her knees for a virtuoso air piano sesh [paywall - but currently only £1!]
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Spent yesterday morning perched on a wall watching the Hastings Jack in the Green parade going by and already it feels like a dream - take me back!

This Great Gatsby musical lacks respect for F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic – review As Gatsby, Jamie Muscato brings stupendous vocals and a jarringly approachable goofiness to the most elusive of literary creations

SO many unhinged choices in this Great Gatsby musical, the way it tramples over the novel would be kind of exciting if there was any particular artistic intention there beyond creating a fun + aggressively sexy 1920s romp [paywall]
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

This Great Gatsby musical lacks respect for F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic – review As Gatsby, Jamie Muscato brings stupendous vocals and a jarringly approachable goofiness to the most elusive of literary creations

SO many unhinged choices in this Great Gatsby musical, the way it tramples over the novel would be kind of exciting if there was any particular artistic intention there beyond creating a fun + aggressively sexy 1920s romp [paywall]
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Manhunt is an intense study of Raoul Moat, but its message is uncertain – review Samuel Edward-Cook is effective as the prowling fugitive, but Robert Icke’s risk-taking production is not as compassionate as it makes itself out to be

I can't summarise my thoughts on this examination of male violence in a pithy way, sorry, you're just going to have to read the review
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta....

Imagine how proud the creator of my local topiary peacock feels every April, when its tail and crest burst beautifully into bloom. You'd just never get over it. Carry pictures in your wallet.

I miss getting to write about new writing/live art on small stages but the outlets for this are few - thinking of starting a substack with a weekly write-up if there'd be interest in that?

Spotted some beautiful botanical b-sides and rarities at Museum of the Home: daffodils that exploded like fireworks or honked like ducks bills, snakes head fritilleries and glowing golden ferns

Feels like West End/Broadway theatre critics are engaged in an urbane little game of tennis, volleying back anything exciting that makes it across the Atlantic with furious grunts

Wow the NYT review of Operation Mincemeat is absurd and humourless. Its main criticisms:
1) the show jokes about too many different things
2) the people it's about would NOT have been so larky and silly in real life (otherwise how would they have won the war 😤)

Ranked: the most beautiful theatres in London The show doesn’t begin when the lights go down

The second I finished this list I thought of at least three London theatres that should be on it... what can I say, my brain has been permanently addled by exposure to dizzying amounts of gilt and velvet www.timeout.com/london/theat...

Returning to freelancing after mat leave feels a bit like being the baker of Pudding Lane returning to the ashes of his ruined kitchen BUT we shall rebuild!

And if you need an arts writer or editor, I'm at alice.n.saville[at]gmail.com

Clueless the Musical – a cynical knockoff? As if! Original writer Amy Heckerling returns to adapt her iconic Jane Austen remix for the stage

This is defo on the better end of the current never-ending supply of teen movie remakes - first act is uncanny valley central, its young cast lab-grown imitations of the OG, then it gradually gets a mind and heart of its own.
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

The Barbican’s star-studded The Seagull is an utterly engrossing update of Chekov Cate Blanchett stars in a three-hour production of the classic play that’s languid, thoughtful, and often hilarious

I knew I'd love Thomas Ostermeier's The Seagull when it opened with a Billy Bragg song and it only got better from there, with its adolescent skulking and self-obsession and big rants about theatre and art (no paywall)
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Jonathan Bailey is charismatic as the queer-coded despot of Richard II – review The ‘Wicked’ star delights in the extravagant speeches of Shakespeare’s homoerotic text

I fell in love with Richard II as a student ("I wasted time, now time doth waste me" felt v relatable as finals loomed) - so I was captivated by this production, and Jonathan Bailey's whimsical performance, lightly edged with cruelty and madness
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

I know I shouldn't but I love the chaotic slapstick ballet that unfolds when rollerbladers get into London Bridge and station staff try and catch em, solid team lanyard against liquid limbs

Did all the theatre companies form a little huddle sometime in 2022 in order to dub this The Long Grim Winter of Greek Drama, for reasons unknown?

OR is this a horrible accident, where theatrical soothsayers misread the entrails of birds & told each director their production would stand alone?

This is v fair. I'm kind of fed up with the West End box office equation of weird play + massive star, because avant garde theatre fans who might appreciate the production (however flawed) can't get seats, while celebrity chasers who go all out for tickets are feeling tricked

A human pet bed

You can tell a lot about the mental state of the world from the middle isle of Lidl... & right now apparently everyone just wants to curl up on the floor like sad old dogs

A great read! And a reminder that arts criticism is necessarily a subjective, human, awkward thing - feeling out the space between artists' imaginings and audience experience

Timothy Sheader’s EDM-fuelled Tolstoy rock opera is a thing to marvel at – review After a decade of anticipation, the much talked-about musical arrives in London

Words cannot express how much I love Dave Malloy's experiments in dragging musical theatre somewhere new and strange (but I did nonetheless try quite a few different ones in this review)
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Anne-Marie Duff is fascinatingly nasty in Lyndsey Turner’s Little Foxes – review Duff’s Regina is such a monster in this production that it’s hard to feel any kind of surprise or sympathy, as she manipulates and is manipulated in turn

Such an intriguing play (and thanks to its probably-Communist author, one with a harsher perspective on white Southern women's culpability than Tennessee Williams' misty-eyed visions)
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Local hardware store have turned their famous mascot into Santa - maybe he'll fix our dodgy plumbing for Christmas

Oh I loved this outpouring of Wicked nerdery - it's high time you signed up to Exeunt's Substack, for theatre chat in your inbox twice a week

If you see one show this Christmas season, make it the effusive, lovable Ballet Shoes Leaping between its period setting and the present, Kendell Feaver’s adaptation of Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 book is as delicately balanced as a dancer en pointe

What a lovely thing the NT's Ballet Shoes is - fun and magical, while also quietly celebrating difference and the power of chosen family
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Even Elton John can’t save this truly diabolical adaptation of Devil Wears Prada ‘Desperate Housewives’ star Vanessa Williams turns in a decent performance as the fearsome Miranda Priestly, but this West End production feels frozen in time

Gosh it's so long since I disliked something this much - looks like the tyranny of endless West End jukebox musicals has been overthrown by a still worse enemy, unimaginative adaptations of millennial nostalgic films
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Yes, nothing will replace early 2010s Twitter but it is nice not to have to look at AI and fascism

Haha what a terrifying thought- I've kept a diary which I'm sure will be surreal to revisit. And yeah, I feel very lucky to have been in the window of opportunity to go to even two baby shows - not exactly something venues can build a longterm audience for